"I'm not sure if I did the right thing."
"Dear, you're being too harsh on yourself. What makes you think that?"
Aloe smiled, but did so internally. On the outside, her muzzle preserved her usual neutral polite expression, as befits an expert of her calling. It was a habit born from years of practice. Ponyville Spa has been rightfully known as a place of utmost quality, no discounts for being "rural" required.
"Have you never had any doubts of your own? You were in my horseshoes last year. From what I've heard, Rainbow was outraged – in the midst of your family reunion no less!"
The pony to whom this phrase was addressed smiled behind her fruity mask. She was entrusted to Lotus' care while Aloe treated her light-coated neighbor. Her hooves habitually massaged the thews of shoulder-girdle and around the withers of her guest, unerringly seeking out strained knots, a true sign of stress, deep in the muscles with their sensitive back parts and then kneading them with hard front ones.
"My dear, you don't know the half of that. We haven't seen each other for, what? Five years? Ten? Probably since the very graduation, once I left for Cloudsdale. To think of it... So much time passed. The thoughts tend to slip into the place a mare in her prime should not explore," Lotus' client, a sky blue pegasus mare with a mane of pale orange, weakly smiled. "You were the mature one, I thought back then. Surely you would have foals long before I do. Not to mention who advises whom. It is your talent, your cutie mark, isn't it?"
"I know, I know," a pony of rich beige shifted under Aloe's hooves. Barring certain troublesome areas she was incredibly soft and yielding. "Still. You've backed Rainbow in everything she did, you were her support through all these years yet that didn't save you from falling out."
"Save it didn't, that much is true, but we eventually reconciled, my dear. Do not forget. This time Rainbow didn't argue when her parents decided to pay her a visit on the holiday eve," Lotus' client paused, as if collecting her thoughts. Aloe didn't look at her. The talent of a spa master was that of being unnoticeable, of blending into the surroundings, never reminding of his existence by idle movements or even excess attention. Doing exclusively what the moment ordained. "Let me tell you something I never revealed to anyone before. Rainbow Dash included. I always question myself. Questioning things is a sign of every conscious being."
"But you're an all-time paragon of confidence, Windy."
"On the outside," the one called Windy agreed. "Because that's what I believe a model mother should be. But there were times when this belief let me down, that quarrel you mentioned being a prime example. I was so consumed by behaving as I thought I should, by being what I believed was an ideal mother, that I forgot to mind my surroundings and look for shifts in the wind. The thought of how I should behave silenced my intuition. I ceased being myself."
The beige pony eased a bit. Steam rising from their jacuzzi brought with it scents of honey spiced with ginger.
"Relax, sweetie. What does your heart tell you?"
Aloe nodded, if barely. She both listened and didn't, yet another habit born from years of practice. Her head dutifully sliced the conversation, just as a boat sliced the surface of a calm river stretch, fixating on the essential and bypassing, as if ignoring, intimate dribs.
Spa is where a pony opens the soul. Without this one cannot come clean, just as a tortoise cannot wash off hardened mud without going out of her rigid shell. A spa master can hear many things a pony never tells the closest of friends. But only some jitney third-rate place dares to abuse that trust.
And Aloe Vera, just as her sister in craft, was a pro.