//------------------------------//
// The Beginning 
// Story: Rarity's Genesis 
// by Impossible Numbers 
//------------------------------//

If it hadn’t been the night before Rarity’s first day of school, she might have felt fewer butterflies in her stomach. But sitting up on the pillow at two o’clock in the morning, lit only by the bedside lamp, she rocked backwards and forwards, fruitlessly trying to sleep again.

When tomorrow comes, I’m not gonna be a baby anymore. The thought seemed too big for her head, no matter how much time she gave it or how often her brain said it.

Warily, she cast her gaze around the room. Dark wardrobe loomed, dark desk lurked in ambush, dark lampshade dangled like a spider overhead…

I’m gonna be a Lady.

Rolling forwards, she waddled along the bed and reached down for the book that had slipped off earlier. Not that she wanted to read it – last time, she’d given herself a headache – but the pictures under the bedside lamp made the butterflies settle down.

I’m gonna be a Lady. I’m gonna meet ponies. I’m gonna be a Big Girl in the World. I’m gonna be me.

There was just one problem: she didn’t know what “me” was.

Rarity opened the cover and let the pages rush past. Across the top of each, the words “Genres and Artistic Categories” flashed past.

Eventually, the slowing pages gave way to the bookmark she’d slipped in earlier – a glittery one with a butterfly on top – and her hoof hit the middle. She skimmed the text, but as usual the headache threatened and she turned to the illustration instead.

Over the last few months, every illustration in the book had received at least one thorough scan. She’d learned to spot the meaningful little touches – the swirl of leaves in a corner, the twitch captured in a painted mouth, the way the lines of dresses suggested a symbol – and had memorized all the subsections of the book, hoping to see broader patterns. She’d seen the rise and fall of realistic paintings, the evolution of abstract shapes to more complex whirlwinds of colour, the clever stories behind apparent nonsense.

Quietly, Rarity turned the page.

It’s not fair, she thought. Look at how pretty they are. Everyone knows what’s surreal and what’s geometrical, what’s allegorical and what’s classical. They all fit neatly. It’s like a big, weird family where everyone can join in.

Oh, artists themselves weren’t always accepted. Some didn’t achieve fame until long past the point when they’d have been alive to enjoy it. Some were hated, some loved; some were geniuses in their own time, some centuries later.

Nonetheless, in this book, their artworks got equal time. Whoever had written it was prepared to welcome anything, even the frankly vile stuff with the bugs and the formaldehyde. Rarity got the impression she could get an entry in there just by leaving her bed untidy.

Not like ponies.

The rest of the house creaked. Elsewhere, Mom and Dad – Mother and Father, she corrected – were snoring. They thought art was “cute”. “Cute”!

In the streets of Ponyville, fillies sniggered behind Mom and Dad’s backs. At their vacation shirts with the garish flowers.

Rarity felt bile burning its way up her throat. She would not – could not – should not – must not be sniggered at. Seeing others sniggered at was like getting shot.

She closed the book and sighed. It used to help. Sadly, not this time.

Instead, she slipped pen and paper off her bedside table and used the book to lean against. She wrote:

Rarity’s Genre:

Do not talk in a funny voice.

Do not burp when other ponies are around.

Do not eat something burnt and say it’s good.

Do not wear ugly clothes.

Do not make ponies ask where I get my money from for all these vacations.

Do not live in a shack near a pond.

Do not have no idea what something is.

Whether it was the act of writing or the butterflies, she burned horribly. Now she couldn’t stop remembering more and more items for less and less space. So she stopped writing.

If these kinds of things caused sniggers, then she had to be a different genre. Tomorrow. She wouldn’t be sniggered at.