I never know what to do with my hands when I'm using my magic.
My sister always makes her levitating spells look so effortlessly casual. It doesn't matter if she's hard at work sewing or “fainting” dramatically on her fainting couch and floating over her third tub of ice cream, Rarity's magic looks natural. I have no idea how she does it. Even if all she's doing is making a feather duster flick its away across her coffee table she somehow makes it look elegant. Maybe it's the way she stands, or how she angles her horn. Or maybe it's the gorgeous white-but-just-faintly-blue blouse and elegant royal purple skirt combo that makes her signature look together with her hair and tail styles, I don't know. All I could do was sit on her sofa and fiddle with the hem of my own much lighter pastel purple skirt while I watched and, reluctantly, listened.
“Now, Sweetie Belle,” she said in that stern-but-still-friendly tone she uses whenever she's trying to get me to do something, “I expect the boutique to be in one piece when I get back.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Rarity…”
“I do NOT want to find my stock ruined. Or that you've managed to destroy all of my windows again. Nor do I want a tree growing out of my sink, again.”
I picked at a loose thread that'd started to come unraveled right at the edge of one of my skirt's pleats. “Apple Bloom said she was sorry about that. We thought since the potion was so old it wouldn't work anymore so we threw it out. It's not our fault there was a seed stuck in your drain!”
“Never the less, I must insist that you not bring any potions onto the premises. Or any enchanted artifacts. Or any animals.” She turned and jabbed the duster at me. “And under NO circumstances are you to bring any colts over!”
I felt my face heat up with a light blush. “Rarity!”
“I mean it, Sweetie!” she said with a menacing wave of the poofy duster. “It's perfectly natural for a young mare to be… 'interested' but I know for a fact that you don't have a boyfriend. I'll not have you jumping into one night stands at your age.”
I crossed my arms and glared at my older sister with my ears laid back. “I'm eighteen, you know.”
Rarity set her lips into a thin, hard line. “For all of two days, yes, Sweetie, I know. If you ask me you're still much too young to be getting involved in such things. I recognize that the law has to draw the line for everypony somewhere--”
“I wasn't even going to invite over any colts but you don't have to tell me why it's a dumb idea, you know. I'm not a filly anymore!”
It was Rarity's turn to roll her eyes. “Sweetie, darling, that much is obvious to anypony with eyes. That is rather why I'm concerned. A young lady as lovely as yourself is going to attract a lot of attention and not all of it should be accepted.”
I tightened the cross of my arms over my chest a little self consciously. When I was a filly I'd held onto a bit of my 'baby fat' a lot longer than my classmates. Once I'd hit puberty I hadn't so much lost it as moved it around. I went through a LOT of bras before I finally stopped growing (as far as I could tell), not to mention keeping up with my hips and rump. I didn't have quite as much going on there as Apple Bloom but after a while I gave up pants completely because at least a generously cut skirt wouldn't get too tight in a few months and Rarity wouldn't be caught dead letting me wear anything as baggy as Apple Bloom's hand-me-down overalls. I probably could have gotten more time out of my last pair of pants but Rarity said they were “scandalous”.
I could only wish somepony would have told Scootaloo that at some point. Darn her and those darned shorts to Tartarus.
“I don't know about that,” I mumbled. “I don't think anypony is interested in me at all.”
“Trust me, Sweetie, they're interested. It's simply that you'll not find any stallion making a pass at a young mare that's still in school here in Ponyville. Not right under the nose of a Princess, certainly. As for the colts your age, well…” Rarity turned back to the shelf and picked up her dusting where she left off. “I'm afraid most of them probably think that you're a little out of their league.”
“I'm not that pretty.”
“You most certainly are!” she scoffed. “And don't play innocent with me, darling. You're not wearing those stockings with that skirt because your legs get cold.”
I flattened my ears back again in embarrassment. “Yes I am!”
“And the undone buttons on your blouse?”
“Er,” I made a few self-conscious adjustments to smooth my blouse over my chest a little, “it's laundry day and this shirt is a year or two old. It kind of strains if I do all the buttons.”
Rarity cast me a deadpan look over her shoulder. “Gracious, now why ever could that be?”
My already warm face got a little bit warmer. “Apple Bloom's almost as, um, y'know… She's got-- Um--”
“They're called breasts, Sweetie,” Rarity said in a matter-of-fact tone as though she wasn't being super embarrassing. “If you want to treated as an adult you really mustn't get so flustered by this sort of talk. Especially if you're going to be keeping your current look for a while. And yes, your friend does have a rather divine figure as well. If she ever wore something a little more flattering than those,” she pulled a face like she'd bitten into an unpeeled lemon, “hand-me-downs, I assure you that she'd get just as many stares as you do.”
I scrunched up my face in a confused scowl. “Wait, so Apple Bloom needs to wear better looking clothes but my pants were a crime?”
Rarity heaved a long suffering sigh. “There are worlds of difference between 'flattering' and 'provocative'.” A final flick of her duster got rid of some lingering microscopic bit of dust that only she could see and she turned away from the photo shelves to face me with her arms crossed. “Those pants of yours were the latter. Far too much so for a sixteen-year-old filly to go gallivanting about in. I'm certain overalls are perfectly practical wear for life on a farm. Why she feels a need to wear them everywhere is beyond me. I do keep telling Applejack that it would be my pleasure to put a little something together but she will insist on being stubborn. Hmph! 'Charity' indeed! As though charity is some dreadful crime! She is perfectly capable of affording some new clothing for her sister. That she chooses not to purchase any is entirely--”
I groaned softly and slumped further back into the couch. This was going to take a while. She wasn't wrong about Apple Bloom, though. A pony might think that a hard working farm filly would be all muscle and no curves, but Apple Bloom? She has some muscle alright but she's also the second most busty of us three Crusaders after me, has hips that won't quit, plus the full, round rump to go with them. But ever since she got old enough to take on the harder work at the farm she'd started to stick with hard-wearing flannel shirts and loose fitting overalls pretty much all the time. One exception was the beach last summer, where her swimsuit came out in all its figure-hugging glory. And Apple Bloom has one hay of a figure to hug.
“--always so stubborn! At least she's not as bad as Rainbow Dash. The lengths I have to go to get her to take even the slightest interest in her looks… Applejack at least understands the value of taking care of ones appearance, even if she usually doesn't partake for the sake of practicality. And, yes, I suppose pegasai can have some trouble maintaining an elaborate hairstyle when they fly at high speeds. Not to mention the impact of heavy and restrictive clothing on flight. And that's all to say nothing of their appalling standards for a mare's physique. I'm not blind to the challenges, Sweetie, but to not care in the slightest? I simply cannot imagine such a mindset. And the influence she's had on Scootaloo! Alas, what could have been if only she'd had an idol with an appreciation for--”
Scootaloo. When it comes to looks, Scootaloo is Apple Bloom's complete opposite. Apple Bloom is tall, Scootaloo is short. Apple Bloom is curvy, Scootaloo is skinny. Apple Bloom wears her hair long and puts a bow in it, Scootaloo keeps hers short and I'm not sure she even puts conditioner in it. Apple Bloom dresses baggy, I don't think Scootaloo knows the meaning of the word anymore.
Ever since she started flying it has been nothing but shorts and tank-tops with her outside of winter. “Low drag” she calls it. She kinda grew up last out of the three of us and also kinda grew up the least. She's in great shape but she's really skinny. She's the flattest mare our age and her hips look like the bones rounded out but there wasn't enough Scootaloo left to put on them. Just about the only part of her with any sort of curves to it is that tight little rump of hers that she always fits into those snug, snug shorts that hug that rump like their life depends on it. Getting a good look at Apple Bloom is a rare treat. Getting an eyeful of Scootaloo is my daily torture and I swear she knows it.
“Oh, I dropped something! Let me bend waaay over to pick it up. Now I think I'll hover juuuust high enough to put my rump right at eye level. Here, let me move my tail out of the way for you while I adjust my shorts. And remember, it's important to stretch before you work out so check out how far I can bend backwards! Cool, right? Also, it's toootally cool if I throw my arm around your shoulders and just… bump up against your chest, right? I think I'll just stay here for a while, maybe move around a little so that we sorta rub against each other. Now, watch while I go do it to Apple Bloom. Wow, is it hot in here or is it just us?”
Okay, she's never actually said all of that out loud but I swear that's what it's like with her sometimes. The thing is, I don't even get why she bothers me so much! I know enough about what I, well, “like” to know that Scootaloo shouldn't be it. When it comes to mares it's always curvy ones like Apple Bloom who catch my attention, not skinny, athletic types like Scootaloo. Scootaloo wasn't my type. Shouldn't be my type. Was almost the complete opposite of my type. But every time she touched me I felt like my heart was gonna burst right out of my chest.
“Wouldn't you agree?”
“Huh?” I looked up to see that Rarity was looking at me from across the room, one eyebrow raised and her hands on her hips.
“You didn't hear a word I said, did you?”
“Uhh… Your friends need to let you give them makeovers?”
She frowned and started to say something but paused. “Er, I, well, that is-- lucky guess! I can tell you weren't listening!”
I sighed and slumped a little further into the couch cushions. “Sorry.”
“Sweetie Belle, is something the matter?”
I turned my head a little bit off to the side and mumbled out a “No.” I must not have sold it very well because she floated the duster off onto the coffee table and sat down on the other end of the couch.
“Is there something you need to talk about? If you don't mind me saying so, you've been a touch… out of sorts recently. Even Mother and Father noticed and you know how oblivious they can be.” She said that last part like it was a joke but it hit just a little too close to home and so I just recrossed my arms and stared at the arm of the sofa. She changed tactics.
“Sweetie, I know that I am not always, shall we say, the best at being a supportive sister, but I truly do wish to help. It wasn't so very long ago that I was your age, after all. You'd be surprised at how much it can help to simply get things off your chest.”
“I dunno…” …What I'm doing. “It's just that--” Colts aren't the only ones you should worry about. “I mean--” I keep dreaming about my friends. “Um, last night I was--” Thinking about Apple Bloom while I was in the shower and I couldn't help myself. “The other day--” Scootaloo did one of those stupid one-armed-bump hugs and I was THIS close to just grabbing her head and shoving her face into my--
I felt Rarity's hand gently squeeze my shoulder and glanced over. She had concern written all over her face. “Sweetie?”
“I guess I'm just… Worried about what I'm going to do after graduation.” Rarity fixed me with a long, piercing look. She wasn't buying it. Truthfully, this actually had been bothering me on top of all the other stuff. Maybe if I just explained it she'd buy it? “I mean, I don't know what job I'm gonna get. Our special talent is great and I wouldn't trade it for anything but it's not really steady work. Everypony will find their talents eventually with or without us just like they always have and most ponies know exactly how to use theirs already.” I sighed and slumped over with my elbows on my knees. “What if we can't make enough bits? Where am I going to live?”
Rarity sat back, legs crossed and arms folded in thought. “Hmm… perhaps you do have a point there, it is a rather narrow niche you've carved out. Never the less, there's nothing to fret over. I'm certain we can find you some way to make ends meet. It's not as though we'll all just throw you out in the cold the moment you graduate. You know full well I will not stand for anypony in Ponyville languishing in a financial abyss.”
“I know. I just wish I had some idea of what to do with my life.”
Rarity's expression went stern. “Sweetie, a pony's life is so much more than her job, you know that! For ponies with more esoteric talents a job may simply be about putting food on the table and carry no more significance than that. Just look at Scootaloo!”
I let my ears droop. “Yeah, but she at least has something. She knows what she's doing.”
“Speaking of which, have you talked to her and Apple Bloom about this?”
I shrugged. “A little. We were maybe talking about expanding the clubhouse into a real building so we'd have a bit more space to do consulting. It's sorta just a kid's tree house and, honestly, most of our clients who really need the most hands-on help are adults. It's kinda weird inviting a thirty-year-old business stallion into a little filly's tree house to talk about why he doesn't enjoy using his accounting talent anymore.”
Rarity pulled a wry face while she imagined that. “Hmm, yes, I can imagine. I might have a little chat with some of the girls about that. I'm certain there's somewhere in town we could fix up into a more professional office space for you.”
“Thanks, Rarity.”
“You're quite welcome. Now,” she rose from her seat and smoothed out her skirt with her hands. “I really must get back to packing. Remember, I'm back Monday afternoon so you and your friends will have the place to yourself for your little party for the whole weekend. But, so help me, if there are ANY damages then, sister or not, I will make certain that your job after graduation is cleaning out Applejack's pig pen by hand. Do not test me on this, Sweetie Belle.”
I cringed under the withering glare she gave me while she said all that. “Yes, Rarity,” I mumbled. “I already Pinkie Promised…”
“And I'm holding you to it. Now, I'm stepping out for a few minutes to take care of one or two last minute errands. Feel free to stay a while and get your room set up for the weekend before you head back to Mother and Father's.” She swept past me towards the store area of her house. “Be sure to lock the door behind you!”
I sighed then slid off the sofa and slumped my way over to the stairs. Another perfect chance to tell her and I blew it, just like the last time. And the time before that. And the time before that…
Being eighteen stinks.