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// Mountains and Molehills 
// Story: To Have and To Hold 
// by Freglz 
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Little did I know that Rainbow’s surprise announcement would be the tip of a big, troublesome iceberg.  At that point, most weddings in my experience hadn’t been all that austentatious, nor had I ever seen the appeal in making a massive show of it.  Love ain’t something you have to prove to anypony but yourself and your betrothed – that’s how I see it.
Evidently, Lyra and Bonbon had other ideas.
“Does it really need to be this tight, Rares?” I questioned as I watched myself in the mirror.  Rarity’s magic levitated fabric, sewing needles and thread, measuring tape and a steaming cup of tea around me and the dress I wore, using whichever instrument she saw fit.  “The stitchin’ feels weird along the back.”
“It needs to be, darling, or else it won’t conform to the dress code,” she answered matter-of-factly, too preoccupied with her work to think about sounding diplomatic.  “I’m sorry, but the instructions were very particular.  I’d typically prefer to have a nice compromise between form and function myself, but if the newlyweds want a formal ceremony, then I’m never one to disappoint.”
I cocked an eyebrow and turned my head to give her a sideways look.  “They’re already married.  How can they be newlyweds if they’re already—”
She sighed and rolled her eyes, then strolled around the dias to stand facing me.  Although I’d never dare say it aloud, those red-framed glasses of hers always made her seem ten years older.  Didn’t help that she had that quaint smile – the kind where you can never really tell if she’s being sincere or condescending.  “It’s not about what you call it, dear, it’s about the concept.  And it’s a rather romantic notion if you ask me.  This is their opportunity to outdo themselves – to improve upon their special night.  To spark their love anew.”
“To put the rest of us through a whole lot of hassle, more like.”
“C’mon, AJ,” Rainbow said before Rarity could open her mouth.  She looked over her shoulder from the small desk in the corner of Carousel Boutique, a fountain pen in her right wing – generously loaned by the resident fashion expert – while she steadied a piece of paper with her left forehoof.  “It can’t be that bad.  At least it beats working on the farm all day, right?”
I snorted, smirking.  “Like you’d know anythin’ about that, freebooter.”
“Hey, you take that back.”  She unfurled her other wing and jabbed its tip directly at me, smirking in kind.  “I’m a crucial member of the team, because I boost morale around the house.  Haven’t you ever seen how happy your sister is nowadays whenever I swing by?  She’s turning into Scootaloo two-point-oh.”
“Scoutin’ out a newer model to replace her with, huh?”
“You wish, Jackie.”
Rarity glanced back and forth between us.  At first her expression was neutral, but then a proud grin started shining through like a polished gem in direct sunlight.  “You two really do make a wonderful pair,” she said whimsically, then focussed on me again and sipped her tea as her measuring tape wrapped around my barrel.  “It honestly boggles the mind how you didn’t fall for each other sooner.”
“Yes, Rarity,” I groaned, “we know, we’re dense.  No need to kick up a fuss about it.”
“I dunno, AJ, she raises a good point.”  Rainbow snickered to herself as she returned to her scribbles.  “How did you last so long against my wily, feminine charms?”
“Feminine charms?  There’s hardly anythin’ feminine about you.  Heck, my brother can be more girly than you, and he’s damn near straight as an arrow.”
Rarity’s hoof shot up to cover her mouth as she gasped, and excited glint in her eye as she swung back around to witness Rainbow’s reaction.
She hadn’t seemed to have been paying much attention, but that was before she hung her head and let out a long, quiet breath, running a forehoof through her mane.  And after tapping the tabletop a couple of times, she swivelled in her seat to face me with an infatuated smile.  “Have I ever told you how much I love you?”
Yes, she has, plenty of times – so many that I’ve lost count, in fact – but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to hearing it from her.  There’s just… something in those deep, swirling, beautiful pools of magenta that keeps me hanging on every syllable.  It fills me with warmth, all the way from the tips of my ears to the end of my tail, and makes me feel like I could float with her to the clouds and beyond.
“Aww.”  Rarity lowered her hoof to her chest, sharing an affectionate look with us.  “Stop it, both of you.  You’re making me green with envy.”
Rainbow laughed and shrugged, shaking her head.  “What’s there to envy?  You could have any mare or stallion you ever wanted just by fluttering your lashes, and you’re jealous of us?”
“No, not you.”  Rarity waved a dismissive, lighthearted hoof as she began circling the dias once more, now measuring each limb in turn.  “It’s the missed opportunity I’m envious of.  Here I am designing brand new outfits for all of us – myself, Pinkie and Fluttershy included – when I could be redefining the very idea of a bridal gown.”
The smile I didn’t realise I was wearing shrank as a nerve plucked at my core.  “What’s that got to do with us?”
“Why, everything!” she blithely exclaimed, only to yank herself to a halt and snap her gaze toward me with a look of sudden realisation.  “That is, I mean to say, not that I mean to imply anything, of course.  You’re perfectly welcome to progress at your own pace.  Although it has been… how long, exactly?”
“Over a year,” Rainbow answered.  Her enthusiasm waned somewhat when her eyes met mine.  “Officially.  Before then… who knows?  We sure don’t.  The lines get kinda blurry when you try figuring out when the friendship ended and… this began.”
“Not that the friendship side of things ever really ended, mind,” I quickly added, even though I’d rather have remained quiet, because I knew the point Rarity was going to make.  “We’re the same as we’ve always been, just with… some other stuff tacked on.”
“Yeah,” Rainbow agreed, nodding along with me, then switched focus again to Rarity with splayed ears and a coy, apologetic smirk.  “And, uh… Rares?  Could we please not get ahead of ourselves?  We’ll be ready when we’re ready.  No need to rush.”
“Oh, I understand perfectly well, dear.”  She whisked over a pin and stuck it through the fabric between my withers – so close and so sudden that my breath caught and an icy chill ran down my spine.  “It’s just that, well… if you’re both so sure of this bond you share, and from an outside perspective I can most assuredly say that you complement each other quite nicely… why not?”
I arched an eyebrow and deadpanned, unimpressed.  “Because maybe we don’t need to?”
“Well, of course you don’t need to, but it would be sweet, wouldn’t it?”
Since it was obvious she had a wad of cotton stuck in both ears, I looked to Rainbow to gauge her response – see if she was getting as off-put as me.  Perhaps I was after some kind of validation, assurance that said it was okay to feel agitated, to disagree with seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses.  Ponies are allowed to believe whatever they want, but they don’t get to say theirs is the hoop everypony else should jump through.
Dash, however, chuckled awkwardly, shuffling her wings and rubbing her foreleg as she shied away from both myself and Rarity.  “I’m not sure I wanna think about it just yet.”
“Not to mention the legal benefits,” Rarity continued, talking more to herself than either of us.  “And the thought of getting to call somepony else your own.  Stars, if I found my Prince Charming…”
“You did,” I dispassionately stated, then snorted amusedly.  “Or did Blueblood leave such a bad impression that you’ve forgotten all about him?”
“That didn’t count,” she huffed, swivelling back around with a cautionary frown – the sort that said she saw the humour, she just didn’t appreciate it.  “Heavens above, Applejack, how many times are you going to bring that up?”
“As many times as it takes ’til it stops being funny.”
She kept pouting at me for a good few seconds after that, then sighed and shook her head.  “Impossible.  Simply impossible.  Here I am spending valuable time and effort on making you the absolutely best possible version of yourself, and you deign to drag me through the muck of one of the most humiliating nights of my life.  For shame, Applejack.  For shame.”
“It’s a miracle we’re friends, ain’t it?”
“Quite.”  The pins and thread keeping the gown together unwound, and the fabric slid from my body to the dias.  “Now, that’s all I need from you.  Step down, let Rainbow have her turn.  She’s always had the more interesting figure out of the pair of you anyway.”
Before I could open my mouth and mutter a witty quip that would’ve one-upped the parting shot, Dash spun about and hopped out of her chair with a spring in her step, beaming a wide, enthusiastic grin.  “Finally.  Took you long enough.  I was starting to think we wouldn’t get out of here in time for lunch.”
“O ye of little faith, when have I ever let you down?”
I blinked, thoughts and expression blank as my focus hopped from one to the other and back again.  Getting excited for a wedding was one thing, because as she explained before, there’d be plenty of free food on offer, not to mention a responsible amount of alcohol should the event itself prove… well, uneventful.  But if there had to be anything the Rainbow I knew would never have practically jumped for joy over, it was fashion.  And as much as it stunned me, it also confounded me.  And most surprisingly of all…
“Come now, Applejack,” Rarity beckoned, waving me down from the circular platform, “you can’t have enjoyed staring at your own reflection that much.  Or has Rainbow Dash here rubbed off on you more than you’d like to admit?”
“Oh, buzz off, Rares,” Rainbow dismissed, chuckling as she bumped her shoulder with a wing.  “You know I’m not like that anymore.”
“Well, for as long as Applejack hangs Blueblood over my head, I don’t see why I can’t hang your ego over yours.  So, either you convince your girlfriend to lay off the criticism, or I recount every moment I can remember where your pride got on everypony’s nerves – the Mare Do Well incident included.”
She groaned, ears flattening, then rolled her eyes and looked up at me.  “C’mon, AJ.  My turn.”
I blinked once more, then absently nodded and ambled down the steps to the floor of the boutique proper.  I didn’t know what to say, why exactly it felt as if my chest had tightened and both she and Rarity might be silently judging me, and I didn’t know how to express it either.  Instead, I wandered past them for the same table had been sitting at and took her place on the cushioned stool.
While they busied themselves with the finer points of dressmaking, I occupied myself by trying to understand why on Earth I’d feel irritated by Rainbow behaving like this.  Just as ponies are allowed to believe different things, they’re also allowed to expand their interests.  For example, I never cared much for the complexities of flight, or history beyond the stories Granny Smith would tell me, Big Mac and Apple Bloom when we were young.
So, what gave me the right to get agitated over this?  Sure, it was unexpected, but that was hardly a good enough reason.  Maybe she and I just needed to have a talk about it later, but at the same time that would’ve been so petty of me, sitting her down for a discussion on what she could and couldn’t take an interest in.
It’s a pain, when you know how you feel about something yet fail to understand what motivates those feelings.  You want things to make sense, because then you know that you’re making rational, informed decisions… but then you realise that you’re still the same emotional pony you ever were and always will be.
I sighed and peered over my shoulder to the tabletop, then arched an eyebrow and scanned the nearby floorspace.  The pen was there, the paper wasn’t.  “Uh, Rainbow?  Where’d that thing you were working on go?”
“Right here,” she announced, flicking open a wing to reveal the slip firmly secured between two primaries.  “Don't worry, it’s not going anywhere.”
Odd that she’d rather keep it on her than out for me to find.  “What is it, anyway?”
“Oh.”  She held it in front of her and narrowed her eyes.  “It’s, uh… nothing, really.  Just a few ideas for what I wanna say at the wedding, or vow renewal thingy, or whatever.”
My ears perked up.  “You’re one of the speakers?”
“Something like that.  It was Twilight’s idea, so blame her if it backfires.”
I hesitated, pondering on this new information for a short while, then slowly nodded.  I didn’t see why I couldn’t have been told of this sooner, because we’ve always made a point of being honest and true to each other, but at least I didn’t learn about it on the night of the ceremony.  Not that it really would’ve mattered in the end.
“Stars,” I murmured to myself, shaking my head, “I sure hope this is worth it.”