In a disappointing twist, the monstrous thing turned out to be a huge swath of fabric hanging from a clothesline. Rainbow Dash was thoroughly embarrassed.
“What is that thing doing in there anyway?” she huffed five minutes afterward, shifting uncomfortably on the kitchen floor. “Is it just hanging around waiting for somepony to walk into it and freak out, or what?”
“Why, Rainbow Dash! Are you implying that I set all of that up for the express purpose of making a foal out of you?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well.” Rarity sniffed haughtily, pausing in her impromptu first-aid to stick her nose toward the ceiling. “At the very least, you could have given me some credit for my own foresight! If I were truly about to play a trick on you, I would not have gone to nearly as much effort as I did in accidentally doing so.”
“Gee, thanks.” Rainbow frowned. “I think.”
“Though I must admit,” the unicorn added thoughtfully, “that if I’d known you could be so easily spooked by some cloth, I might have actually decided to go ahead and—”
“I wasn’t spooked!” Rainbow interrupted quickly. “The Dash doesn’t get spooked. I was just the teeniest bit surprised that it was so dark inside. I mean, you don’t have vision that good, right?”
“Hm. Well, ‘The Dash’ made an awfully convincing argument otherwise. What with your shrieking and flapping around like a wayward bat—”
“I thought that thing was a dragon!”
“How could you possibly make that mistake?”
“I don’t know, it was just big and … and huge, okay?” She hissed as another bandage was telekinetically tightened around her foreleg. Did Rarity have to pull it that hard? “But seriously, what’s up with it?”
“If you must know, it’s Sweetie Belle’s Nightmare Night costume.” Rarity bit her lip, glancing in the direction of the still-dark workroom. “Or rather, it would have been if she hadn’t decided to be a vampire at the last minute. I haven’t been able to make something else out of it.”
As the unicorn levitated the unused bandages away, an idea came to Rainbow’s mind. A wonderful, terrible, awful idea. Seriously, this had to be the worst thing she’d ever thought up—
“So I guess that means you lost your touch?”
Something shifted in Rarity’s posture, tensing up her delicate muscles. “Hm? What do you mean, darling?”
“You haven’t thought of anything to use that thing for? It’s been months since Nightmare Night. I guess you’re not as creative as I thought, even though all you do is dresses and boring stuff.”
Rainbow realized her mistake as she wilted under Rarity’s burning glare. The white unicorn said nothing for a moment, but a close look at her body revealed that she was shaking in partially concealed rage. “Did you come over here just to tell me that, Rainbow Dash?”
“Uh … yeah.” Sweat beaded on her forehead when Rarity’s horn took on a faint glow. “I mean, no! That’s not what I meant!”
“Then what exactly did you mean?”
“… Something else.”
Tense silence hung over the boutique like a heavy blanket. It was so quiet, in fact, that they could easily hear a pin drop. So naturally the terrifying moment was thankfully shattered at the crash of a hundred pins dropping all at once.
“Uh, sorry big sis!” Sweetie Belle’s voice trilled from upstairs. “Can you help me out, please? I’m kinda stuck under these pincushions and things!”
Much to Rainbow’s relief, Rarity broke eye contact and looked in the direction of the ceiling. “Coming, Sweetie Belle! Be careful not to poke yourself before I get there! And you,” she added to Rainbow, “had better stay here until you explain yourself.”
And with that she trotted haughtily up the stairs, with her elegant, violet and beautifully curled … her perfectly normal tail swishing back and forth before vanishing out of sight.
The pegasus stood up awkwardly, wincing at the bandages that were digging into her skin. “Nice going, Rainbow,” she snapped. “What the hay did you even do that for? Now you’ll never get that prissy giggling thing out of you.”
She reached the threshold to the workroom, frowning into the darkness. What was up with this, anyway? Her curiosity got the best of her, and she pawed at the walls nearby for several seconds before catching the light switch.
Something sparkled suddenly on a table at the far side of the room, shining as bright and radiant as the sun. Grunting as the stinging light struck her temporarily blind, she flipped the switch again and cast the thing back into mercifully cool darkness. Bizarre afterimages swam in her vision, and she rubbed her eyes in a futile attempt to clear them. Why was that weird thing familiar?
“That’s the Downspiral Diamond,” Rarity’s voice explained behind her. “It’s still quite sensitive to light. I probably should have warned you.”
“Augh … it’s fine,” Rainbow lied, looking around and squinting at the white Rarity-blob.
“It will be,” the unicorn agreed. “I made a similar mistake only a hour ago, you know.” There was a light scraping sound of a hoof against a tile floor. “So. Explanation?”
Rainbow bit her lip. There had to be something she could say that would both pacify Rarity and keep her own pride intact. If only she could figure it out …
“It came out wrong,” she finally said. “What I meant was, I’m surprised. Usually you just whip stuff up and bam! Clothes. Sorry for the misunderstanding.”
“Hm.” Rarity didn’t sound entirely convinced.
Horsefeathers. How was she supposed to make Rarity teach her about fashion now?
The words slipped out of her mouth before she’d fully thought of them. “The Great Dragon Migration is in sixteen days. I’ll bet that by then I can make something out of that thing so awesome that you couldn’t even imagine it.”
Another moment of silence. She imagined that Rarity was raising an eyebrow at this point.
“Is that a challenge?” the unicorn finally asked. She sounded thoughtful, as if it were actually a good idea.
“Yeah,” Rainbow said. “But I have to know how to do it. Otherwise it would just be a big pile of cloth and stuff, you know, like a mess.”
“I … I don’t know.” There was a brief motion, which might have been a hoof raised to rub a chin. “This is a very sudden bet, even for you.”
“Well …”
“But you know? I don’t even care.” Rarity’s tone suddenly grew gleeful, and the white pony-blob began bouncing up and down in place excitedly. “Ooh, Rainbow Dash, I’m going to teach you how to make clothes! We’re going to do lace and sewing and embroidery and crocheting and knitting and color schemes and weaving and stitching and trims and I think you’ll especially love dyeing—”
“I'm sorry, what?”
“Colors, Rainbow. But this is going to be so much fun, don’t you think? And with you of all ponies. Why, I might make a refined yet spirited mare out of you when all is said and done!”
Rainbow nodded mutely, half wondering if Pinkie had dunked herself in flour again and sneaked into the boutique.
“Oh, but we do need stakes for this to be a proper bet, don’t we? Not that it matters with you ultimately learning the finer arts; that’s easily the best part of this entire deal. Still … if I win, and you fail to impress me relative to your current skills, you must join me on an especially lengthy spa appointment.”
“But if I win,” Rainbow finished, a wry grin curling the corner of her mouth, “you have to wear your showiest lady outfit to the migration. Unless you’re chicken?”
“Chicken? I will prove to you that I am definitely not a chicken!”
“Deal!”
She loudly hawked up an enormous glob of spit, which she slathered over a soon-extended hoof. Rarity hesitated, then seemed to draw up enough resolve to tentatively tap the offered hoof in a deal-sealing shake.
Later on, when Rainbow looked back at this fateful day, she would wonder what had possessed her to make such a bet. Then she would berate herself for asking such a stupid question, especially since she already knew the painful answer. Surely this was the lesser of two evils, wasn’t it?
In the early evening, when the Downspiral Diamond and Rainbow’s embarrassing path of destruction were cleared and the lights in the workroom were returned to their usual brightness, the lessons began.
Rainbow poked at the white box thing on the table in front of her. She knew Rarity used them, having crashed awesomely into the boutique multiple times, but its exact purpose was a mystery. “What’s this for?” she asked, unable to keep the curiosity out of her voice.
“It’s a sewing machine, Rainbow Dash.”
“I knew that.” She eyed the needle sticking out from the overhanging part of the machine. “So what does it do?”
Rarity looked over the top of her red-framed glasses at the pegasus in exasperation. “Well, what do you think it does?”
“No, I get that it sews and stuff. I mean what does this do that normal sewing doesn’t?”
“An excellent question! Manual sewing is useful for some of the more complicated and unusual stitches, and it is far easier to undo if you’ve made a mistake. But a machine like this will make the work go much more quickly and smoothly, which I believe is more your speed. And I suspect that you lack the patience to jump into ordinary sewing right away.”
“That’s true.”
“Now, to use the machine you have to keep a firm grip on the cloth you’re sewing, but not so firm that it can’t do its work. You also have to be very careful to keep your hooves away from the needle, unless you want a set of decidedly unwholesome stitches there. Since I doubt you’ll do a perfect job on your very first try, we’ll use these scraps as practice.”
Rainbow nodded, making the two scraps overlap beneath the needle. “Okay, careful with the pointy thing, got it. How does this go?”
“There’s a pedal beneath the table, which you press when you want to start. The harder you push, the faster the needle works.”
“Fast sounds good.” Rainbow fairly stomped down.
“RAINBOW, WAIT—”
For a brief moment, the pegasus felt the bizarre sensation of flying without wings as the cloth was yanked sharply forward, hard enough to pull her right over the sewing machine in a blaze of colorful confusion. Then she collided with the wall, and experienced an unpleasant sense of déjà vu at the impact.
Rarity sighed. “I’m afraid we have a lot of work ahead of us, Rainbow.”