//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: Dappled Shores 
// by MaxKodan 
//------------------------------//





Friday





No sooner had Sunset pulled the door open than Rarity swept through and wrapped her in a flowing, spinning hug, completely unaware of Sunset’s contemptible secret.
“Oh, I’m so excited!” Rarity released her mid-spin and danced across the apartment, dropping her overnight bag beside the couch. “I’ve been on pins and needles all week!”
Sunset threw her hand out to steady herself against the doorframe, pressing her other hand to her heart and catching her breath.
“Oh, do you think Alejandro really has a twin sister? Did Marien kill her own parents? And Snowball’s leg looked like it was bothering him, is something wrong or…” She stopped and eyed Sunset up and down. “Are you alright, darling?”
Sunset caught her own eye in a mirror, and when she looked she saw a wide smile plastered across her face. “I’m fine!” she said, grasping at the door handle and missing three times before swinging it shut. She breathed in deep and headed straight for the corner she called a kitchen.
“So what did you have planned for tonight?” Rarity joined her, a hungry glint in her eye.
Sunset bit her lip. “I decided to be a bit...experimental.” She tapped a rhythm on her thigh. “I hope you don’t mind, I’m not really sure if you like it.” She slid a small dish filled with green powder across the counter.
“What is it?” Rarity leaned forward to sniff at it.
“It’s called matcha,” she said, rummaging through a cabinet and pulling out a packet of popcorn. “It’s like an instant tea, but,” she pulled the plastic open while she searched for the right word, “good.”
Rarity gasped, her eyes going wide. “I was just telling Twilight the other day that I wanted to try this!” She instinctively reached for it but pulled her hand back. “May I…?”
Sunset chuckled and shoved the microwave door shut, hitting the ‘popcorn’ button. “Please. I should make sure you like it before I ruin a bag of popcorn.” She watched with bated breath as Rarity took a pinch and licked her finger, and she didn’t let it out until the corners of Rarity’s lips quirked up.
“I approve.”
“Great! Now go get cozy.” She nudged Rarity with her hip as she leaned down to fetch the second bag of popcorn and a large plastic bowl. “I’ll mix the snacks.” She smiled at the happy giggle Rarity let out, listening to the tip-tap of her toes as she skipped across the room, then the click of the bathroom door’s latch.
She took in another deep, soothing breath, and then let it out in a long, slow, contented sigh. It had been 3 weeks exactly since she and Rarity had started dating in earnest, and that meant it was the third installation of the Weekly Dappled Shores Binge Night. It was probably a strange first date by some standards, but hey; she was a magical horse transformed into a human by a mirror that popped ponies out into an alternate dimension’s high school’s front lawn statue. Sitting around and watching a TV show was downright pedestrian. The biggest relief of all, though, was that her second-greatest shame would soon be naught but a memory.
As she carefully shook the first bag of popcorn into the bowl, the light rattle and creak of her bathroom door drew her attention. Over her shoulder, she saw Rarity step back into the main room, smoothing out a set of purple, silken pajamas. It was just about all Sunset could do to not fling herself across the room and sweep her up in her arms. She was so wrapped up in the glint in Rarity’s eye and the tiny smile pulling at the corners of her mouth that the microwave’s beep nearly scared her out of her skin.
“Almost—” She cleared her voice to remove the squeak in it, “Almost ready.” She turned away, partly to avoid whatever effect the beaming grin that was blossoming on Rarity’s face might have on her, and partly to hide her own expression, because whatever it was would probably get her in trouble. She had never tossed popcorn so fast. By the time Rarity settled into the couch, she was already moving onto the second bag.
“Is this a new blanket, darling?” Rarity asked, followed by the faint sound of sniffing.
“You can never have enough.” She had absolutely bought the blanket for the occasion.
“Is that—” Another sniff— “Sunset Rose fabric softener?”
Rarity’s unexpected and in-depth knowledge of different types of laundry essentials was slightly startling, but she caught her game quickly. “Total coincidence, I swear.” She turned and saw a mischievous smile barely visible above the plush blanket.
“And the fact that it’s Snuggle brand?”
“That,” Sunset said, adding a bit of a sway to her hips as she crossed the room, “Was definitely on purpose.”
Rarity giggled and writhed around beneath the blanket, then grew suddenly sober. “Alright, serious time. Who…?” She let the pause settle into a deep gravitas, “Is your favorite character?”
Sunset should have thought for just a moment, but she spoke with finality and conviction. “Jeffers,” she said, setting the bowl of popcorn on the table. “He really balances everyone else out, and I like how straightforward he is with everyone.”
There’s a special kind of silence that exists only in moments between someone saying something incredibly stupid and realizing that they’ve said something incredibly stupid. It is a deep, oppressive silence that wraps itself around their ears and squeezes until they take notice of it. Sunset’s ears popped the instant before Rarity finally responded.
“Who?”
She saw the entire evening fall apart in her mind. Every carefully planned foray. The grassy seasoning for the popcorn. The rose-scented blanket. The flirtatious manner...well, that would have stayed regardless. But now it all flew out the window. As Rarity’s eyes widened in surprise and hurt, it was settled. Her secret was out.
“You watched ahead!?” Rarity pulled the blanket down and straightened her back. Sunset contemplated lying for about a second and then discarded the thought. Jeffers was introduced in the very first episode of season 3, so trying to say she’d been thinking of another show would be instantly disproved. Instead, she fell into the throes of panic mode.
“I...I didn’t mean to!” She said.
“I cannot believe you!” Rarity huffed, stomping.
“I was taking a break from working on something—”
“You know how important this was—”
“And I really wanted to know if Snowball was going to be okay—
“We were experiencing this together, this was something we shared—”
“It was just going to be the one episode, and then before I knew it—”
“There are hundreds of other shows you could have watched, but you chose to—”
“It was just over, and I felt really bad and I tried to make it up to you—”
“—hide it from me, so I guess—”
“—with the matcha and the blanket and—”
“—I’m just not that important to you!”
Any further explanations caught in Sunset’s throat. Her mouth open and shut a few times, her jaw trying very hard to remember what it had been doing. She shook her head so slowly she wasn’t sure it was perceptible.
“That’s...not true.”
It was all she could say before the look in Rarity’s eyes forced her to run away and lock herself in the bathroom.
After a good, hard, silent cry, Sunset went directly to her phone. Obviously, she was completely inept at this, so it was time to call in the least terrible people she knew.





“Hello? Is that you, Sunset?” Fluttershy’s voice drifted through the line.
“Yeah, I just wanted to talk about something.”
“Oh, of course! What is it?”
“See, Rarity and I have this date night thing going…”
“Rarity told me about that!” she said, leaping into the tiny pause Sunset had left her. “We were talking about Dappled Shores at lunch just yesterday!”
“Oh,” Sunset said, off-stride. “Did she?”
“Uh huh! I asked her if she knew about it, and she said that she’d been watching it with you.”
“I see…”
“She also said that while she would love to talk about it further, she couldn’t. She wanted to be absolutely sure to avoid spoilers.”
“Oh.” Fluttershy clearly hadn’t picked up on the thick layers of dread and self-loathing in Sunset’s tone, because she plowed on.
“She told me how much she loved spending time with you and exploring something new together! It’s her favorite night of the week, and she could hardly wait until Friday—that is, today!”
“Ah.” By now, Sunset had started silently banging her head against the tile wall.
“Is...is something wrong?”
“No, never mind, I uh...thanks, Fluttershy.”
“You’re welcome...I think?”
Sunset hung up the phone and planted her forehead firmly against the tile before her, letting out a long, long sigh. Strike one.





“Hello, P—”
“CAN YOU BELIEVE MARIEN WAS THE ONE WITH THE TWIN!?”
After daring to get close enough to the phone to speak through it again, Sunset finally responded. “Yeah, I...no, wait, what?”
“I thought for sure it would be Alejandro!” Pinkie was referencing something that happened in the first episode of season 3, the one Sunset would be watching right now had everything gone well.
“Pinkie, I’m not watching the show right now.”
“Oh! Shoot! Was that spoilers? I thought I timed it right.”
“No, I mean...What exactly did you time right?”
“Well I heard you and Rarity were watching the show, one season at a time, once per week, on Friday Night, starting at about 9 o’clock! That sounded like fun, so I thought I’d do the same!”
“I...see. That’s...nice?”
“But if you’re not watching right now and you’re calling me instead, that must mean something stopped you from watching it. Did you two get into a fight? What were you fighting about? And how did you know what I meant when…” A long, hard gasp sounded over the line. “You watched ahead!”
Sunset gaped at the phone. “How did you...Okay, yes. Yes, I watched ahead and it was dumb and bad and Rarity found out and now I’m hiding in the bathroom.”
“Well don’t do that! You need to make up for this right now!”
“You’re right. What do you think I should do?”
“Well, first you’re going to need some matcha seasoning for the popcorn.”
Sunset blinked. “Um, I already did that…”
“Oh. Didn’t work? Then how about a new blanket…”
“That, too.”
“Let me finish! You need a new blanket, and there’s this fabric softener called Sunset Rose, it’ll make a really good joke with your name and the mood will lighten right up!”
“...Pinkie, did you steal my shopping list?”
“Woah, that didn’t work either? ...Did you say it was Snuggle?”
“Yes, I said it was Snuggle.”
“Geez. Well, that’s the best I got on short notice.”
“How would running a laundry cycle be short notice?”
“Sunset, this is my new priority. I need time, but I will come up with something that will blow Rarity’s mind.”
Sunset slumped against the wall and hung her head. “Thanks, Pinkie.”
Pinkie’s voice sounded suddenly hard. “There will be confetti.” And with a click, she hung up. Sunset shook her head. That one...was more of a foul ball than a strike, but...strike two.





Sunset ran a hand through her hair, waiting through the rings for Applejack to pick up.
“Yo.”
She lifted her head and stared at the phone. She had definitely called AJ. It said so right on the screen. “Uh...Hey?”
“What’s up, Sunset?”
“Nothing...why do you have Applejack’s phone?”
A light snickering came over the line. “Don’t worry about it. But you didn’t call this late at night for nothing. What’s up, Red?”
Resigned to her fate, she decided it would be best to just plow forward. “Alright, look. You know how Rarity and I were watching Dappled Shores?”
“Oh, yeah! I heard her talking with Fluttershy about—”
“I watched ahead.”
There was only the merest moment of a pause before Dash responded. “Oof. That’s pretty rough.”
“No kidding.”
“Well, you can’t tell her about it! She’ll flip!”
“Uh…”
“...She found out already, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, she did.”
“Alright, here’s what you do. You gotta play it cool, alright? Don’t freak out about it, don’t treat it like a big deal, just act like nothing’s wrong and before you know it everything will have just blown over.”
“Are you sure? I mean, she was really upset…”
Before their conversation could continue, Dash let out an “Uh-oh” and another voice raised in the near distance. It was a few moments before the voice became decipherable, and  Sunset quickly identified it as Applejack.
“...in tarnation d’you think you’re doing with my phone! Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Sunset!” AJ’s tone was far more genial now that she wasn’t addressing a phone thief. “How’s the date night with Rarity going?”
“Not too great, I...I sort of watched ahead.”
She could hear the wince through the phone. “Well y’gotta be upfront about it! Tell her straight what happened, and I’m sure she’ll forgive you.”
Sunset let out another sigh and hung her head between her knees. “She found out about it on her own.”
She wasn’t sure what a disapproving wince looked like, but she heard that one through the phone, too. “Well, best you can do is apologize and wait.” Her voice raised just a bit, as if she were including someone else in the conversation. “Sometimes some of us do things that are pretty dumb, and that takes a bit of time and space to get over it.”
“Isn’t there anything I can do to make it better though?”
“Just wait, darlin’. Things’ll get better. Eventually.” She raised her voice again. “Probably.”
“Yeah...thanks.” Before she hung up, she could hear Rainbow Dash in the distance.
“What? I didn’t mean anything by it. You were asleep and your phone was ringing and after this evening I thought you could use the res—” Beep.
The fact that those two had given sound advice didn’t really help Sunset’s current disposition. There had to be something she could do right now, tonight, to do more than just push it aside and wait until things got better. She decided to consider those two foul balls as well. After all, she was still at bat, and had one more chance…





“Let me get this straight,” Twilight said after the explanation, “You did something really bad and you need help patching up your relationship.”
“Yes.”
“With your girlfriend.”
“That’s the size of it.”
There was a short pause. “And you called me.”
Sunset made a few vague sounds before settling on the truth. “I’m running out of options here.”
“I can tell.”
“Look, anything would probably help me right now.”
“To be honest, the whole thing sounds kind of silly. It’s a TV show, I don’t see what there is to get so worked up over.”
“When you put it like that it sounds minor, but this is really important to us.”
“Didn’t you once try to take over the world?”
“I’m not sure how that’s relevant,” Sunset said flatly.
“I’m just saying, compared to that, this should be nothing. I’m sure you’re both just blowing it out of proportion and you’ll both have forgotten by tomorrow.”
Sunset didn’t find that at all likely, but instead, she said “Maybe you’re right. Thanks, Twilight.” She had already considered this call to be “Strike 3”.
“Great! Now, if you have any more girl trouble…” She left the end of that hanging for a few moments, “...Just call someone else, I have no idea what I’m talking about.”
Sunset ended the call and stood up. Given that her only potential plan of action was an apology, which was required one way or another, she strode purposely to the door and pulled it open.
Two steps later, she realized that she stood in a completely unoccupied apartment. Fighting off a wailing sense of dread and regret, she collapsed on the couch and pulled the new blanket over her head. Monday. She would fix everything on Monday.





Monday





Sunset shoved the door to her apartment open so harshly it banged against the wall. Fluttershy, who had been making up for her faux pas on the phone by helping her the entire day, winced.
“I’m sorry! I thought for sure she would like them!” She said, her voice squeaking lightly.
Sunset sighed and threw herself into her computer chair. “No one in the world could have guessed she’d be allergic to goldenrods.” She leaned her elbows on the armrests and rubbed her temples. “I’m sorry, I’m not angry at you. Just myself.”
“Oh…” Fluttershy managed to look both relieved and upset all at once. “Is there anything else I can do to help?”
Sunset shook her head. “I just need some time to think. You’ve helped a lot, Flutters. Thanks.”
Fluttershy’s foot scuffed at the floor for a moment. “If you need anything else, just give me a call.”
“I will.” Sunset picked her head up. “Do you want me to walk you home?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ll cut across the park and be home in no time.”
“Alright,” she said, relieved to no end to be able to stay home. “I’ll see you tomorrow, ok?”
After their goodbyes, Sunset stared out the large window, eyes clouding over as she tried to think up a new plan. She could call up Pinkie again, but something about the way she said the word ‘confetti’ sent a shiver down Sunset’s spine. No, she would need something different. Something more subtle. Something with tact. She picked up the phone and dialed.
“Hey, Applejack? I need to borrow your kitchen.”





Tuesday





The first surprise had been that AJ knew how to shape fritters into letters. The second surprise was how easy it had all been. The third surprise had been someone’s lacrosse ball rolling down the hallway and directly under Sunset’s foot.
Incidentally, Rarity’s first surprise had been a dress full of still-hot and very smashed apple fritters which almost, but not quite, said “I’m sorry". Perhaps, had she not had to run screaming for the bathroom to remove said dress and avoid second-degree burns, it might have still turned out okay.
Sunset glowered at the high ceiling and let out her frustration in one, long, loud, growling groan. Eschewing a second outburst, knowing that her neighbors didn’t deserve such abuse, she settled for grinding the heels of her palms into her eyes. Subtlety and tact were now basically off the table. She needed aggression. She needed...Well, she didn’t need confetti.
She swept up the phone and made a call.
“Yo.”
“Rainbow Dash?”
“Oh hey, Sunset, I hear you’re the reason Rarity was walking around in a plaid shirt and jeans all day. She looked pretty uncomfortable with it all.”
“She looked amazing anyway, but that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Lemme guess. You finally got smart, and now you’re asking for my help?”
“You got a plan?”
“Oh you know I do.”





Wednesday





“I thought you had a plan!” Sunset said, storming through the apartment.
“Hey, I did! It’s not my fault it didn’t take.”
“A square dance?”
“Hey, I’d been thinking up that idea for days.”
Despite the fact that Dash’s plan had clearly been meant to make up with Applejack, the fact that she had spent it to help Sunset instead meant that she couldn’t really be that mad. That, however, made her even more frustrated. Similarly, the fact that AJ and Rainbow Dash had disappeared part way through the ‘plan’ and hadn’t returned for several long minutes was something she couldn’t rightly blame her friend for, but she did anyway.
“Look, thank you for trying,” she said, throwing herself onto the couch and pulling off the cowboy boots she’d worn for the occasion, “It means a lot, but I think I’m going to take a different route. I’ll let you get back to your day.”
A light shined behind Dash’s eyes and she barely gave a ‘good-bye’ before sprinting out the door. She had hit the stairway before the latch clicked shut.
Sunset laid down on the couch and hung one leg off the side. She lifted her phone above her and started punching in the contact information.
P-I-N-K…
She stalled and stared. No. No, she still wasn’t comfortable with it. She deleted the characters and made another call instead.
“Hello?”
“Twilight, I need your help.”
“Sunset, we went over this. I’m not good with—”
“I want to make a dye the likes of which no one has ever seen.”
“That...sounds like a Rarity problem.”
“It is a Rarity problem, but it’s also a science problem. Plus, I want to make it live, for an audience.”
The line went silent for a few moments. “Science, you say?”
“Science.”
“...Alright, let’s do this.”





Thursday





Sunset glowered into the mirror. There was still black ash staining a good portion of her face, and her hair refused to settle into the right position. Or color. Her only saving grace was that detention didn’t start until Monday. At first, she thought the sentence had been fairly lenient, but then again blowing up half of the auditorium’s stage was somehow one of the least egregious hijinks she’d been a part of. Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna had some pretty tough skin.
Wiping away a smudge with a wet washcloth, she made a call.
“Pinkie? Get the confetti.”





Friday (again)





Glitter and tiny scraps of purple paper etched with various apologies and sad-looking Sunset faces were still showering from her hair as she trudged across the room to the couch. She almost sat down, but even though her legs were sore and tired they refused to bend that way, so she just turned around and started pacing.
That had been it. That had been the party to end all parties, and it had taken until almost 8:30 to clean everything up and get home. Rarity still hadn’t said a word to her. Not a peep. Not even an angry stare. She was there, she drank some punch, and Sunset didn’t see her for the rest of the day.
She threw the balloon hat towards the wall, but it just drifted lightly to the ground, not expressing even a fraction of the aggravation or agony that she was feeling. She was out of ideas. She didn’t know what to do anymore. She wanted to scream and cry and curse herself to Hades and back.
When the knock came at the door, she expected to open it up to see Pinkie there with an apology, or Applejack there, dragging Rainbow Dash along to comfort her. Instead, when she pulled the door open, she saw Rarity standing there, already dressed in those silk pajamas of hers.
Sunset was too stunned to speak. She stood in the door and stared at Rarity, spotting the effects of the week still marking her skin. Some red around her nose, a mild burn on her collarbone, a single strand of what looked to be pure white hair, and like everyone in the school, copious amounts of glitter still sparkling on her eyelashes.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course!” Sunset said and backed out of the way. “Sure, of course you can!”
“Thank you,” Rarity said, drifting into the room and looking around, her hands clasped behind her back.
“What...I mean...I’m sorry.”
Rarity glanced over her shoulder for a moment and then turned around. “If I’m going to forgive you, I need you to agree to two things up front, without knowing what they are.”
“Done,” Sunset said, a hopeful flutter dancing in her chest.
“Do you mind if we watch Dappled Shores while you’re doing them?”
“Anything.” She could hear the pleading in her own voice.
Rarity nodded, placed herself on the couch, and threw Netflix up on the screen. Sunset watched from a short distance away, not sure what to do. What caught her attention, though, was exactly what Rarity was bringing up.
“First,” Rarity said, “I want a foot massage. It’s been a long week.”
You’re telling me, Sunset pointedly didn’t say. “Okay, but...That’s season 1.”
“Yes, it is.”
“We’ve both already seen it though.”
“Yes, we have.”
“We could both recite half the scenes from that season from memory.”
“Yes, we can.”
“So...it’ll be hours before we get to something you haven’t seen yet.”
Rarity stared silently at her. Sunset creased her brow and tilted her head. Rarity’s eyebrow quirked.
“Oh,” Sunset said without really catching on. “...Oooh,” she said when she finally did.





(Very early on) Saturday





The foot massage was long over and season 2 was coming to an end. Rarity was curled up, her head nestled into Sunset’s shoulder, her face hidden by the still-twinkling hair.
“Do you know,” she said, causing Sunset to start. They hadn’t talked all night. “Why I like you?”
“Pity?” Sunset said, half joking. ...Maybe a quarter joking.
“I like you because you will do anything to get what you want.” Rarity pulled herself closer. “You are the single most determined person I have ever met in my entire life.”
Sunset shifted uneasily, not wholly sure that was a pure compliment. “Is that so?”
Rarity moved her head to look up at her. “You spent this entire week trying so hard to make up for watching a television show. I’ve never seen anyone work so hard at anything. How long did it take to set up that party?”
“We woke up at 3 AM,” Sunset admitted. “We still barely made it in time.”
“And you did that all for me,” Rarity said, descending into a thoughtful pause. “Why?”
“Because I’d done something really bad, and I needed to make up for—.”
“No, not that.” Rarity narrowed her eyes, just a little bit.
“Then…”
“Why do you like me so much?”
Sunset hated this question. They’d had this conversation twice before, and both times she went with ‘Because you’re the most amazing girl I’ve ever met.’ While that was true, it was also wrong. It wasn’t nearly enough. If she said that right now, the rest of their relationship, whatever was left of it, would dwindle away. It wasn’t that shallow. It couldn’t be that shallow, she told herself.
And then, like a slap to the face, it hit her.
“I like you because you are so incredibly open,” she said.
Rarity lifted an eyebrow. It was an invitation to continue and a warning that thin ice was incoming.
“I mean...Look, I’m not the best person. I try to be good and kind and helpful, but I wasn’t always that way, and I can’t change as fast as I want to. Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m doing the right thing.” She took a deep breath and met Rarity’s eye. “But you keep me honest. I didn’t even realize it until this week, but one look at your face tells me if I’m doing something wrong.”
She reached down and brushed her thumb across Rarity’s cheek. “You don’t even need to know about it. I just see it. You make me a better person, and I will do anything to make you proud of me again.”
The Dappled Shores theme song wrapped up on the television and a sheen of comfortable awkwardness settled between the two.
“Also you’re the most amazing girl I’ve ever met,” Sunset said.
Rarity hadn’t said anything, she hadn’t even smiled. But she held a little bit tighter, her leg curled up a little further over Sunset’s, and her head buried further into her shoulder. Sunset adjusted her arm over Rarity’s back. The blanket no longer smelled like roses, the matcha popcorn had gone stale, and there was still glitter in her off-color hair, but Sunset Shimmer couldn’t have been happier.