Rarity never quite liked the concept of soul flowers.
Ponies would always express their shock when she told them as such. “You’re such a romantic pony!” They would say, and she’d roll her eyes and inform them that her soulmate quite clearly had a death wish. Not from the many, many scars they had acquired over the years, oh no, quite the opposite. Rather the verbal thrashing they were going to receive whenever she discovered who had saddled her with these unwanted weeds.
She used to be horrified whenever a new length of flowers would mar her otherwise perfect white fur. She would scream and cry and ruin her makeup and no matter how much her parents tried to assure her that her soulmate was fine she would just cry harder. Truth be told, she wasn’t crying over the safety or presumed lack thereof of her soulmate, but rather the fact that flowers weren’t ‘in’ and they would ruin her look.
She used to be a rather vain little brat.
Of course, not much had changed- but at least she had the dignity to admit as such.
Out of necessity, over the years she learned to tolerate, if not quite appreciate, the constant aesthetic nuisances. They were never very large, although the one that parted her eyebrow and made its way down across her eye had given her quite the fright upon its first appearance. She had resigned herself to the fact that whatever lucky mare or stallion she was destined to be with would be a little reckless and she would just have to deal with that. She was fine with the unsightly flowers. She was fine with the fact that her soulmate was a little on the daring side.
She was fine with that.
Until she wasn’t.
Rarity remembered the first time she experienced death. Peering down into the casket her grandmare almost looked to be sleeping. She might have even been able to convince herself of that fact had it not been for her parents shooing her away to play with the other foals when she innocently asked why her pa’s flowers, of which he usually showed off with such pride, were wilted and grey.
Rarity wasn’t a stupid pony, even as a young filly it had dawned on her that there was a connection. Her grandmare was gone and the flowers were wilted. It was at that moment that she began to appreciate her flowers, for no matter how garish they were, as long as they bloomed it meant her soulmate was safe.
As long as they bloomed.
It was raining. Not the quiet sort of drizzle she would usually look to for inspiration on her latest piece, but a violent, angry downpour, the kind that would have even the strongest stallion quaking at its very sight. The ugly kind that starts quickly and without warning and brings with it blinding flashes of lightning and a deep rumble that shakes you to your very core.
Rarity liked to pride herself in not being shaken easily, and yet even now as she lay poised on her couch, working on a new piece and watching the storm from the safety of her boutique, she felt a deep uneasiness that kept her from making any true progress on her gown.
She supposed with the atmosphere being the perfect setting for something bad to happen (as always did in the dime-store detective novels she loved to read with such avid fervor) what happened next shouldn't have been a surprise, and yet..
Another flash of lightning illuminated the room, causing Rarity to involuntarily flinch backwards.
And then.
A burning sensation erupted across her back. Letting out a panicked shriek, she dropped the half-finished dress and scrambled backwards off the couch, causing the rug to crumple up against her legs. She snapped her head around, trying to find the cause of the sudden pain, the sensation already ebbing.
Blinking the pain from her vision, she froze.
Hundreds of tiny flowers were blooming all over her flank, expanding outwards rapidly like weeds taking over a once beautiful garden.
She stopped breathing. The flowers finished blooming.
Rarity felt her heart stop beating in her chest.
Only the sudden and unmistakable sound of something wet and limp landing on the roof of her boutique shook her out of it. Now that her heart was beating again, Rarity could feel it sink to the bottom of her hooves as she shakily stood up. Before she could decide what to do or what even was happening, the roof creaked once more and a large, bedraggled shape fell right through the ceiling and landed with a wet thud in the middle of her boutique.
The crumpled blue mass lay mere feet away, steam rising where raindrops met fur and wings bent at an unnatural angle. Rarity staggered backwards, holding down the bile swiftly rising in her throat.
There was a pony in her boutique. There was a smoldering pegasus pony in her boutique and a hole in the roof. And it was pouring.
The shape let out a weak groan.
Another, weaker groan from the pegasus shook Rarity out of her stunned stupor. She rushed forward, ignoring the water pouring in through the gaping hole above her and tried to block the rain from drenching the mare more than she already was. Definitely a mare.
“Oh gods, oh gods, miss, miss are you okay??” Her voice was catching in her throat and she was finding it hard to talk.
The mare gave no answer, and Rarity could see clearly now the reason she had fallen out of the sky. Dark, burnt feathers parted to show charred flesh creeping across the mare’s wingspan like gnarled, dying branches.
Rarity couldn’t hold back her gasp, she didn’t have much medical knowledge but even she could recognise the unmistakable, terrifying, ugly pattern of a lightning strike.
“Oh Celestia.” The words left her without meaning to.
Another flash of lightning brought her back to the present. She needed to help this poor mare.
“Please stay awake, please stay awake..”
The mare’s eyes fluttered weakly, pupils still glazed over and her head raised slightly, “Celestia..?”
Rarity’s heart skipped a beat, “okay, okay, that’s good dear, keep talking.” The mare muttered something incoherent and her head flopped back to the side, eyes fully glazing over.
Oh gods, oh gods.
Rarity’s eyes darted over to the gaping hole in the roof, water still pouring indiscriminately through. “Okay, just stay right here.”
Taking one last look at the other mare, soaking wet and sprawled out on the floor of her boutique, she dashed towards the door and staggered out into the rain.
“Help! Somepony please help!”
Sitting in the hospital waiting room, Rarity could feel the shock slowly waning and the bone-deep exhaustion settling in.
And she still hadn’t addressed the flowers.
Now that the mare was safe and Rarity’s mind wasn’t cantering a hundred miles a second, she had time to think.
And sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the hospital waiting room, she had a lot to think about.
She supposed she could have gone home, maybe begun to patch up the roof, but ruined fabrics were the last thing on her mind at the moment.
Rarity had found her soulmate- or, more accurately, her soulmate had found her. By falling through the roof of her boutique in the middle of a rainstorm. She had heard worse soulmeet stories (one particular tale involving a toaster still stuck with her) but she had never really considered that something like that would happen to her. Perhaps she had assumed she would meet some alluring prench stallion who would sweep her off her hooves and in a moment of weakness reveal a a small line of flowers artfully hidden by the placement of his mane (received from a poorly timed vet appointment with Opalescence) or maybe a charming young mare would sweep her out of harms’ way, shoot her a dazzling grin, reveal her flowers and invite her to run away into the sunset.
Whatever the case, one thing was clear. Rarity was distracting herself. It was much easier to submerge herself in false realities than it was to face the current one- that her soulmate had fallen through the roof of her boutique after being struck by lightning, compared her visage to that of Celestia’s, promptly passed out and was now in emergency surgery of which there was no certainty she would emerge alive.
Rarity was pointedly ignoring the large patch of freshly-sprouted flowers lining her flank. She didn’t dare look back lest she risk the sight of them wilting already when this should just be the beginning of their bloom. It was harder to ignore the smaller ones that were scattered all over her body, and so she was aware that her soulmate wasn’t dead yet- It was about the principle. As well as giving her something to focus on other than the paralyzing worry gripping her body.
There wasn’t a clock in the waiting room, and Rarity was pretty sure she dozed off at some point so she wasn’t certain of the amount of time that had passed while she sat and waited, but it must’ve been at least several hours.
Rarity could feel herself beginning to drift off again when the door to the waiting room was pushed open and an older stallion wearing a white coat trotted through, snapping her back into full consciousness.
“Miss Belle?”
“Yes, yes that’s me, is this about..” She trailed off, not quite knowing how to finish the sentence.
“You were the one to call in the lightning strike patient, yes?”
Rarity nodded and the stallion continued, “usually patient-doctor confidentiality would prevent us from giving information out like this, but given your..” He paused and Rarity could feel his eyes piercing through her pelt, she shuffled uncomfortably, never feeling more self-conscious about her flowers than now, “..unique situation,” he continued, “we felt it pertinent. She was just released from surgery and will likely make a full recovery, although it will take time.”
Rarity felt all the tense muscles in her body finally relax and a potent wave of relief washed over her as the doctor kept talking.
“You won’t be able to visit her until she is fully conscious and able to give us her information, but we thought you should know.”
Rarity had never been more thankful for Ponyville’s rather laid-back approach to medical care and patient information.
After giving a heartfelt but hasty thank-you to the stallion, she quickly exited the building and stepped into the fresh night air.
If you were to ask anypony looking in, they would likely say Rarity was avoiding the situation. Rarity, of course, thought the idea was preposterous. She was a busy mare after all, and with all the orders she had piling up, ordering replacements for the materials ruined in the storm as well as hiring a workspony to fix the roof she barely had any time to visit the hospital in the past week.
This, of course, was a lie.
If she really wanted to, Rarity could clear her schedule at a moment's notice and spare a trip to the hospital. Perhaps packing her schedule with as much as possible and leaving herself no time to think was some pathetic way she tried to remain a sense of normalcy since that night.
Even in sleep she wasn’t free of the constant thoughts plaguing her mind. Her dreams were riddled with that soaking wet figure, slumped over in her boutique, looking into her eyes and mistaking her for a goddess.
If she just so happened to wake up covered in sweat and wracked with guilt, well that was her own business.
And so it wasn’t until, almost a full three weeks later, when the shop was closing up and the afternoon rays hit the windows just right, when Rarity heard a knock at her door that she was truly forced to confront the reality.
As she opened the door, she felt any confidence and normalcy flee from her reality.
“You've been avoiding me.”
The blue pegasus she had saved and had spent the past few weeks actively avoiding thinking about was standing on her porch, fixing her with a stern look.
Now that she wasn’t sopping wet and smoldering with freshly burnt fur, Rarity could admit she had quite an admirable physique. She didn’t look well put-together in any sense of the word but she gave off the sort of air that said she didn’t need to try.
Rarity’s mouth felt dry and she couldn’t force any words out. Even if she could- what would she say? It wasn’t as if the pegasus spoke any lies.
The other mare’s face twisted into a grimace as she moved to take a step forward. Rarity’s eyes glanced to her wings and her eyes widened. They were tightly wrapped with bandages that looked dirty and bedraggled and clearly needed to be changed.
“You shouldn’t be out of the hospital yet,” she whispered in realisation, “you’re going to hurt yourself.”
The pegasus rolled her eyes, “I’ve had worse.” No you haven’t, her brain was screaming, I would know.
The thought sent her reeling, over the past few weeks she hadn’t even considered,
Does she know?
As if she had tempted fate itself by daring to think it, the mare spoke.
“I know it’s you. I saw your flowers.”
Wearily closing her eyes, Rarity put on a weak smile, “would you like to come in for some tea? I think we have a lot to talk about.”
Rarity had certainly had her fair share of uncomfortable exchanges in her life, it came with the territory of wanting to live a high-class lifestyle- but she could say without hesitation that nothing had prepared her for this moment, sitting across from her soulmate, untouched tea set on the glass table between them.
She gave an awkward cough, “so, I don’t believe I ever got your name.”
“Rainbow Dash.”
“Rarity.”
Rarity had told herself for her entire life that whenever she met her soulmate she would playfully tease them about their recklessness, perhaps lay the guilt and worry on a little bit before pulling them into a kiss and making them promise to stay safe. Somehow whenever her eyes danced over to Rainbow Dash’s wings, that fantasy seemed less than appropriate.
“I must apologise for not putting aside the time to come see you, the past few weeks have been very-“
Rainbow cut her off, her face shifting into a glare, “Seriously? Are you really treating this like some kind of appointment?”
Rarity winced, the mare’s tone of voice uncomfortably reminiscent of someone masking their hurt with anger.
She felt something heavy settle in her chest and absentmindedly fiddled with her tea.
“I.. I don’t really know what to say,” she began, “It feels utterly selfish to claim that this... Event has turned my life upside down when you’ve been lying in the hospital for the past month.” Rarity gritted her teeth and swallowed, she sounded downright evil when she finally put it into words. “I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you.”
I’m sorry I’ve been dreaming of you every single night and waking up sobbing. I'm sorry I hesitated when you fell through the roof. I'm sorry for that papercut I got when I was twelve.
I’m sorry the thought of you lying on the floor of my boutique and looking up at me with awe fills me with such dread and such life.
A thick silence filled the air. Rainbow dash shifted in her seat, wincing as she repositioned her wings.
“You’re not really what I expected my soulmate to be.”
Rarity’s ears perked at the sudden change of subject and complete dismissal of her apology. She raised her eyes to meet the other mare’s gaze only to find it looking everywhere but her. She decided to graciously accept the turn in conversation.
Letting out a slightly forced chuckle, Rarity let her eyes wander around the boutique.
“I’ll admit. I had a vague idea of what you might be like”
She could feel the other mare wince and hurried to continue her sentence, “not that it’s a bad thing to be adventurous of course, it’s always good to live life to the fullest, I just meant-”
Rainbow cut her off again, “No, no, it’s fine. I’m uh, sorry about all the flowers..”
Rarity vigorously shook her head, searching for a way towards more comfortable ground.
“Don’t be sorry! They were always interesting to see appear- pray tell, whatever was it that caused the scar along your left hind leg? It’s quite an unusual shape and I was rather surprised to see that length of flowers appear!” The words slipped out of her without warning and she instantly wished she could swallow them back up, but to her surprise, Rainbow let out a genuine chuckle.
“Would you believe me if I told you I got it from doing something cool like saving a foal?”
“Yes.” Rarity surprised herself with the conviction she felt in her own words.
Rainbow shot her a wry smile, “then that’s totally what I got it from,” her grin slowly turning genuine, “no embarrassing stories here- no siree!”
Rarity let out quite an unladylike snort. She really shouldn’t find this mare as charming as she did, especially with regards to her unkempt appearance.
The conversation settled into a comfortable lull, quite the contrast to the thick silence of minutes earlier. Rarity’s thoughts slowly drifted back to the past weeks and the shame that had settled to a light simmer in her stomach came back full force. It was as though a wildfire had erupted in her stomach and was now trying to crawl up her throat and force its way out of her mouth.
Her mother had always commented on her generosity and lack of selfishness and yet for the better part of a month she had purposefully avoided her problems.
Avoiding her problems until they got too big and blown out of proportion to handle was nothing new for Rarity, but this time another pony was involved. Her soulmate..
“Sorry about your roof by the way,” Rainbow’s apology snapped her out of her thoughts, “I don’t usually get caught out in storms like that. I guess I must have lost track of time..” The pegasus gave an upset and disappointed look at her wings.
Rarity was about to reassure the other mare that no apology was warranted, when an idea struck her.
“I don’t know how much you’d approve of the idea, but as a way of apology and perhaps a method of getting to know each other more, I was wondering if you’d like a piece of some sort commissioned?” The more she spoke, the less confident she felt in her words and the more she found herself stumbling over them, “free of charge of course and, I completely understand if you don’t want to associate with me at all, I have been completely unladylike over the past few weeks and I’d hate for you to feel pressured at all due to our-”
Rainbow cut her off, “look. I am- I was-” She let out an exasperated sigh, “when I woke up in the hospital the only thing I could remember was your face and that line of flowers running through your eye. all I could think about was that I had found you and you had saved my life. I just knew it was you. I knew it.”
She looked down, seemingly examining her reflection in her untouched cup of tea. “I kept waiting for you to visit. I know it sounds stupid and sappy and uncool but i just knew that you knew and every single day you didn’t come made me feel.. something.”
“But.. I get it.” Rainbow continued, shaking her head, “Heck, if I was in your situation I’d probably do the exact same thing- I mean, emotions aren’t exactly my strong suit.” She gave a weak smile, reaching over the table to reassuringly place her hoof against the other mares’.
Rarity looked back at the pegasus, feeling tears well up in her eyes. “Thank you Rainbow, I don’t deserve your kindness..”
“Pshh, like Tartarus you don’t! Besides, if that’s true, you can prove it while we work together!”
“Pardon?”
“Dresses aren’t really my thing, but I think I’d like to take you up on that commission.”
When Rarity looked back at the other mare, she saw nothing but the truth and perhaps a hopeful earnestness in her smile.
She smiled back, “I think I’d like that.”