Sweetie Belle waited. She didn’t know what else she could do. She cried until she could cry no longer, and then she waited for her sister to return.
The shadows lengthened. The sky darkened, and then night pressed in. The nights here in the mountains were darker than any Sweetie Belle had ever experienced. No friendly glow from other cottages broke the blackness here. Just dark as deep as pitch on every side, stretching on and on forever.
A little corner of Sweetie Belle’s mind wondered if she should get a candle. She shut it down. What would be the point? Everything was gone, ruined and broken beyond repair.
But what if Rarity can’t see the cabin if there are no candles, the little corner whispered, and that was enough to make her stir. She would do anything, anything, if her sister would just come home and make the world alright again.
She clambered slowly upright, and with blindly groping hooves, found the candle drawer. The spell to light a flame was a simple one, within even her limited range of spells, but casting it tonight was the hardest thing she had ever done. Finally, she had one trembling candle ablaze, and used it to light the others; every single one in the drawer, and she placed them in every window of the house until she knew it must shine like a lantern. A waymarker to guide Rarity home.
She was positioning the final candle in the little square bathroom window when the glint of the mirror caught her eye. Her breath hitched, but she caught up the candle again and crept closer to that cruel steely surface. It would show her what was real. It just had to.
She peered into the mirror, and found the eyes of her reflection. Her soft fur, her rosy cheeks, the gentle curls of her mane. Her big green eyes, catching the candlelight. All as it should be.
But all a lie.
Sweetie Belle looked deeper, and willed herself to see beyond. Look closer. Show me what I am. The reflection flickered, and warped, and then finally faded out.
The illusion fell away, the facade was gone, and Sweetie Belle knew that she was seeing clearly at last.
An alien creature regarded her from the mirror. Its skin was furless, gleaming; shimmering white chrome that shone orange with the candleflame. Harsh black tearmarks split her face on either side of her muzzle. Her mane was mere strips of pink and purple rubber, lying flat over her neck.
And her eyes.
Inequine eyes, glowing green in the darkness with a light all of their own. Green circles that contracted and expanded even as she focused in on them. Cameras. Just cameras, and not eyes at all. The visual receptors of a machine.
Sweetie Belle felt like she might vomit, and she saw the rubbery neck of the monster contract. She took a step forward, and another, until her nose bumped against the glass, and now she could hear the metallic clink of her ‘skin’ quite clearly.
Her sides moved as she breathed and her flesh throbbed with a pulse, but she saw those movements for what they were now. Mere artifice, another part of the illusion. Stop, she commanded them, and stop they did.
Sweetie Belle stood very still, her breath gone from her body, her pulse stilled forever. But still she lived. If living you could call it.
She was an abomination.
Hardly knowing what she was doing, she turned and left the room. She walked down the corridor, across the living room, and out of the house. She felt a curious detachment from everything she saw. She could not breathe. Without air, she could smell nothing, taste nothing. It was as though she was already dead, and was wandering the world as some sort of ghost. The stars were beautiful above her, but what was beauty? What was anything that she perceived, but a false reflection of a past pony?
She wanted — oh, she so badly wanted — to believe that this was all some sort of terrible nightmare, and she would wake up in the morning to find Scootaloo and Apple Bloom laughing at her for taking their ghost stories so seriously.
But she could not. She had met the real Sweetie Belle. Seen her. Heard her.
And known that it was she who was the lie.
She met Rarity on the path just outside the garden. Her head hung, and her careful coiffure was in tatters. Sweetie Belle thought about hiding. Letting Rarity pass her by. She could try to make her way down the mountain. Find somewhere with other ponies, ponies who might not have known the Sweetie Belle who came before. The — the real one. But…who would accept her, monster that she was?
Rarity sobbed again, a low and broken sound, and Sweetie Belle was moving before she could stop herself. Though it was not her who had done it, how could she abandon her sister for a second time?
Rarity held her for a long while. “You’ll never leave me, will you, Sweetie Belle?”
Sweetie Belle felt the softness of her sister’s coat beneath the hard steel of her hooves. The fragility of her sister’s heart, and remembered when she had believed that she had a heart of her own. “I…no. No, Rarity, I won’t.”
Rarity sniffed hard, and straightened. “Come on. Let’s go home. Just you and me, mm? And I’ll…I’ll help us forget all about it.”
Sweetie Belle hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know that I want to forget, Rarity.”
Rarity’s hoof tightened on hers. “It’s better this way, Sweetie Belle.”
“But I don’t want—”
“Enough, Sweetie. I’m your big sister, and you must listen to me, darling. That’s all there is to it.”
Hoof in hoof, the two ponies made their way inside the humble little cabin, and the wooden door closed behind them. The mountainside was quiet again, with nothing but the snow and the stone to be seen.