You’re practically
vibrating.
“Am I, darling?”
Like an unsteady hand.
“How charming.”
Gertie agrees.
Rarity wrapped the creature’s face in as wide a hug as she could manage. She almost got round her whole cheek. Gertie rumbled in a friendly manner, and raised her head, and Rarity hung on for a second, two, before falling back on her rear. Gertie shook her head amusedly. Rarity grinned. “I feel alive!” she explained. “Alive as I have not felt, I suspect, for a long, long time.”
Does this have to do
with dreaming?
“Dreaming!” said Rarity. “Why, yes, I suppose in a way it does.”
You are being unusually
mysterious.
“Hah! I’m allowed to be, am I not? Let me say just this, then: I have decided to give up something I’ve been holding on to for far too long, and I feel about twenty years younger.” Gertie lowered her head quizzically, nosing at her flank. Rarity rubbed her neck in just the spot she knew the dinosaurus loved to scratch. “Gertie knows what I’m talking about, don’t you, girl?”
Give up?
The voice sounded, for perhaps the first time, almost alarmed.
“Why, yes. All right, if you must know...” And as she rattled through an explanation of events, all leading up to her little dinnertime announcement, the feeling began to creep over her that the voice knew a lot of it already.
“So,” she finished, “I’m stepping away. Giving it up! No more dresses, suits, soirées, no more fancy jackets and gemstones! Farewell to fashion! Good-bye!”
I see.
“You know,” said Rarity, “I think – no offence to this place, of course, it’s really rather lovely – I’m actually looking forward to waking up! Dreading it, of course,” she added quickly, “but, really...looking forward to it, as well.”
There was a silence. Gertie idly scratched her chin.
Gertie will now show that
she isn’t afraid of me and
take me for a ride.
Rarity frowned. “What—”
Gertie vanished. To where, exactly, Rarity wasn’t sure. To some other space, she gathered, some world beyond the boundaries of this one. To waking-world, perhaps, or a world further yet. All was silent, all was still – without Gertie in it, she noticed, suddenly, nothing in this world moved at all. And then...
Stepping back in from wherever she had disappeared to, life returned. Slow-bobbing neck, great ponderous feet, a graceful, agile tail. Something small and black and very thin was standing on her back, waving a whip in a rather distracted manner. “Hello!” came the voice, very distantly, that Rarity recognised. She stared. “Delighted to meet you at last,” he said, as they came closer.
Years of careful repetition kicked in automatically. “The pleasure’s all mine!” she managed. “I...hmh, forgive me. I can’t make you out very well up there, and I’m just now realising I have absolutely no idea what to call you!”
“Call me?” he asked. “Hold on...” He said something else that Rarity couldn’t quite make out, and Gertie’s huge eyes rolled round, but she nodded, and picked the gangly fellow off her back, depositing him clumsily on the ground. The thing picked itself up, shook a limb at Gertie, and turned back to her. “Hello, Rarity,” he said, again, and Rarity realised that the little pale ball at the very top was his head. “I’m Winsor,” he said, cheerfully. “Winsor McCay. I’m a human. And an animator! I draw pictures and make them come to life.”
“A...magician?” she asked.
“A dreamer,” he answered. “Come, let me tell you a story.”
Windor McCay was born in 1871 (he said, with a wink), and spent his life drawing pictures for various magazines. His real passion, though, was animation. He made ten films: ten inventions. “Gertie here, well, she was one of them.” All this was starting to sound like a bit too much for Rarity, especially the parts about bringing Gertie to life – sounding like the sort of Forbidden Knowledge Twilight was always running after – until he told her, eventually, that he stopped animating.
“You grew out of it?” Rarity asked.
“Worse,” he said, with a sad sort of smile. “It grew out of me. All that...corporate interest.”
“Oh, yes,” said Rarity, darkly. “Yes, we’re well acquainted.”
“No doubt,” he said, still smiling. “But here’s what happened next...” And he described to her how he gave it up: sold it, in fact, his ability to keep going, keep bringing his pictures to life.
“They paid me well for it,” he said, grimly. “I could hardly complain.”
One day, not much long after, he’d woken up, and been unable to draw entirely. “Paralysed. Completely. My right arm: gone. Couldn’t draw a thing.”
“Oh, no!” gasped Rarity. “What happened then?”
“Then?” he let out a chuckle dark and bitter as old coffee. “Why, then I died.”
“Oh.” He didn't look much like a ghost, thought Rarity, but she kept the opinion to herself. “I'm sorry.”
“Yes. I am, too,” he said, wryly. “It was a nice funeral, though. Well-attended.”
Rarity searched for something to say. She hadn't had a lot of experience with that sort of thing. “Ah. Well, at least you must have looked the part. It's a fine outfit. Very fine. I'm glad to see your species wears clothes!”
“Thank you!” he laughed. “Yes, we're almost as fond of them as you ponies.”
“Although, mmn.” Rarity bit her lip, considering. “If I could be allowed to make just one or two adjustments...”
He beamed. “Please! Adjust away. This is dreamland, after all.” He looked down a moment later at his new suit: a rich, dark purple, completely encrusted with gems. “Marvellous!”
“Mmn, yes, I think so, too. Rather good, actually, if I do say so myself.”
He smiled, and then reached down, taking her hoof very seriously. “Don’t let them win,” he told her. “It isn’t worth it.”
“Pardon?” Rarity asked. “I'm not sure what you...”
“Don’t give it to them. We dreamers need our dreams to keep on going.”
And he bent to kiss her hoof. “Good-bye. It’s been...transformystic.”
He let her go, and Gertie picked him up and placed him on her back, and she could see him waving, all the way up there. “Good-bye!” called Rarity, back to him. “It was lovely meeting you! I hope we can do this again soon, sometime!”
He laughed, and waved the whip, and for a moment, all was still. Rarity held her breath.
Good-bye!
She smiled, and ran up as Gertie stepped back into the world. “There you are, darling!”
Gertie trumpeted, swung her head down for a hug. Her scales were hard and very beautiful, and Rarity realised the great dinosaurus was crying, huge fat tears that ran down her cheeks and soaked the ground in puddles.
Rarity pulled back. “I'm not going to see you again, am I?”
Gertie's massive shoulders rose and fell, a shrug, in motion. No, thought Rarity, looking her over, perhaps not. No, maybe she wouldn't suit clothes, after all. Such dreams were better left to the animals that needed them: humans and ponies and griffons and yaks. I wonder what the weather's like there, this time of year? Cold, probably. She smiled, despite herself. Well. Perhaps she didn't need to give up on fashion entirely...
Music rose, and Gertie began to bob her head. Oh, all right. One last go.
And there the two of them danced, as the rhythm moved through the air and slowly all the lines began to come undone, rolling up like thread the mountains, the trees, the rocks, until there wasn't much left but she and Gertie, and then they began to unravel as well, leaving nothing but whiteness, a blank expanse of possibility. Everything froze.
And Rarity woke up.