Pinkie Pie had not left her shop in days.
Well, alright, that wasn’t completely accurate. Rarity wasn’t actively watching her anymore so she couldn’t be certain of the Earth Pony’s comings and goings at all times. But even so, activity from inside the neighboring boutique had gone up significantly while comings and goings were most definitely on the decline. And when Rarity did glimpse her neighbor on occasion through the window Pinkie seemed almost torn at the edges. Mane on end and body language twitchy.
She was planning something, obviously. That was the only kind of explanation for such shifty behavior. Pinkie knew Rarity had been watching her and was planning to launch a counterattack at any moment.
Alright fine. That probably wasn’t what was happening. Rarity had to conced at this point that Pinkie seemed to be the most genuine pony Rarity had ever encountered. She was sweet and fun and full of life. And most definitely not conniving in a way to make her perfect rivals with Rarity.
But still. A pony could dream.
And wonder.
Because if Pinkie wasn't planning some epic move against Rarity, her greatest rival, then just what was getting her so frazzled? Her store was still open and she seemed to be doing relatively steady business. No customer seemed angry or aggressive coming in and out. So what was happening? Not knowing was killing Rarity.
And what was worse was that Fluttershy had left for her trip and so Rarity didn’t even have someone to complain to or try to wheedle information out of!
Speaking of Fluttershy… the dear had made it excruciatingly clear Rarity was not allowed to bother Pinkie Pie while she was gone. She had insisted that the fellow dressmaker would be too stressed out in the coming days to deal with Rarity’s shenanigans.
But stressed out with what? Rarity was positively dying to know.
Suddenly, movement caught her attention from the corner of her eye. Fumbling, she grabbed her binoculars and peered into the upper window of Pinkie’s shop.
Nothing. Just still silence. Maybe she had imagined- no there! A flash of pink and black as the shopkeeper darted by the window again. It had only been a moment but Pinkie had looked… overwhelmed? Panicked? Even a little… scared?
As Rarity watched the boutique door swung open, just long enough for a pink leg to reach out and place the ‘closed’ sign, before it slammed shut once more.
Closing in the middle of a busy day? That was not normal for any shopkeeper worth her salt. Now Rarity had to see what was going on.
With flair, for Rarity did everything with flair, she set down her binoculars and strode out the door, flipping her own sign closed and not missing the irony of the action. But darn it this was an emergency! Justice was on the line!
Well… no… justice most certainly was not on the line. But something definitely was and Rarity was going to find out what!
She marched across the street to her neighbor, her rival, and pounded on the door. “Pinkie Pie, it’s me, Rarity. What in Equestria is going on in there?”
Barely had she gotten her sentence out when the door opened. Not by someone coming to answer Rarity’s call but simply from the impact of her knocking. Apparently, Pinkie had forgotten to lock up when she had hastily closed.
“Well…” Rarity mumbled to herself, “I’m already in this deep.”
Taking a breath to steel herself, Rarity pushed the door further and strode into the other shop. The front room was dark, being closed and all, but Rarity could hear the distinct hum of a sewing machine and see a light spilling out from further in the building.
“Pinkie?” She called, stepping carefully towards the light. She could hear Pinkie’s voice now, muttering something under the machine. The machine itself wasn’t the consistent whirr that Rarity was used to when she was sewing. Instead, it was jolting. Starting and stopping seemingly at random, with even more aggressive muttering after every stop.
Rarity stepped into the doorway and peered into the light. The room she saw was a mess, but that didn’t surprise her much. Her own inspiration room was in such a state, disorganized to the point of genius.
No, what surprised her was Pinkie Pie standing in the middle of the room, leaning over a sewing machine. Her characteristic dress was thrown to a heap at her hooves and the piece of fabrics she was working on looked no better. With her back hoof, Pinkie pushed the peddle and the machine sprang to life again, only to screech to an unpleasant sounding halt as it caught and protested.
“No no no!” Pinkie said, no longer mumbling at all, “Not again! Work you stupid-”
“Pinkie Pie?” The question tumbled from Rarity’s mouth against her will.
Said pony shrieked, a valid response to someone sneaking up on you, and reared back in shock. Her hoof pressed on the peddle again and, groaning, the machine desperately continued to sew.
Unfortunately, that sent the fabric Pinkie had stumbled onto to surge forward, knocking her off of her hooves.
In a comedy of errors, Rarity could only watch slacked-jawed as the Earth Pony rolled across the room and impacted a dresser. The force sent a bucket, which had been perched much too precariously on top of the dresser, careening down to land squarely on Pinkie Pie’s head, bathing her in the glitter that had been contained within and making an unpleasant clang type noise as the metal impacted the poor pony’s skull.
There was silence for a moment, Rarity too frozen to even breathe, before the tiniest of whimpers punctured the air like a cannon shot.
“Oh, darling!” Rarity called, rushing over to help her poor friend, “Are you alright? I am so so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you but the door was open and…”
She trailed off as Pinkie slowly tilted the bucket off of her head.
If the Earth Pony had looked frazzled from the back, actually looking into her eyes she now appeared heartbreakingly close to tears. Besides the glitter now sticking to every part of her mane and tail, her blue eyes were bloodshot and she had a few colorful bandages on her hooves. The darling looked to have not slept in days.
“Rarity?” Pinkie asked in a shaky breath, her bottom lip wobbling just a bit, “W-what… what are you doing here?”
Rarity felt like a foal with her hoof caught in the cookie jar. But worse. Like a bully suddenly called out for their behavior. What was she doing here? Spying? She broke into her neighbor’s home and maybe even hurt her for Pony’s Sake! What had she been thinking?
“I’m sorry,” she said again, gently reaching out to remove the bucket fully from Pinkie’s head, not trusting her magic not to waver and give away her own emotional distress, “It doesn’t matter. What matters is if you’re alright? That was a nasty tumble and… oh darling what happened to your hooves? We need to get you looked at right away.”
Pinkie pulled her front hooves into her body, making herself even smaller than she already was. “I-I’m fine. Really! I’m just… pretty clumsy sometimes. But I’ll be okay, you can go home now.”
Rarity swallowed a lump in her throat and shook her head. “No, I caused this mess. It's the least I can do to help you clean up. That glitter will never go away if we don’t deal with it now.”
Pinkie sighed, a downtrodden kind of sound that twisted Rarity’s heart further. “Yeah, okay. I’ll go get a broom.”
She stood up, massaging her head where the bucket hit it, but seemingly no worse for wear, and trotted out of the room.
While she was gone, Rarity glanced around at anything she could help with in the meantime. Her eyes fell upon the still jammed sewing machine, and she trotted over to it curiously. It seemed like a fine model, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it to cause it to jam so aggressively.
But as she got closer the answer jumped out at her immediately. While sewing, the needle had come into contact with a pin that had been hazardly left in the fabric. No wonder it had made such a terrible noise, that metal-on-metal mistake had cost Rarity a few machines entirely back in her early days of sewing.
Thankfully, that also meant she had plenty of experience getting it unjammed. Her magic flared to life and she got lost in the delicate process of fixing the machine. So particular was the taste that she didn't even notice Pinkie coming back into the room until she was practically breathing over her shoulder.
"Oh wow, did you fix it?"
Rarity did not jump. She wanted to, certainly, but when one worked with needles so often one learned to not be jumpy. "Yes, you simply got a pin stuck in there. Really wrecks the machine if you're not careful. I made the mistake a few times myself when I was first starting out."
“I didn’t even know you had to take them out. I thought the fancy machine just sewed them into the dress.”
Carefully, Rarity put down the pieces she had been working with and turned to Pinkie with an incredulous expression.
Pinkie’s eyes immediately widened, but the panic was gone in a moment, replaced by resignation as she fiddled with the broom. “Oops, guess I kind of let that one slip out, huh? Yeah, I… uh… I don’t really… um… know how to sew.”
Rarity stared at her. “You own a boutique.”
“I design the clothes!” Pinkie quickly reassured her, “I do all the drawing and stuff. I'm just not so good at the actual making part. Fluttershy usually sews them for me, that’s why I moved here, but with her out of town so long I thought I should try myself again.” She grimaced and looked around the chaotic room and the scraps of fabric that were scattered everywhere. “I guess you can see how well that turned out.”
Once again, Rarity found her eyes drifting to Pinkie’s flank. One couldn’t judge another by their mark, she knew that well. After all, diamonds often didn’t have much to do with dress-making either. But still… balloons…
Pinkie Pie must have noticed her looking, or was just generally self-conscious, for her tail curled around her side protectively as she turned back towards the giant pile of glitter on the floor. “Anyway! Cleaning, we gotta do that.”
Rarity shook her head and cleared her thoughts, there was no need to speculate on such affairs she wasn’t invited to. What she needed to do now was fix her mistakes. “Here, allow me.” Using a combination of her magic and Pinkie’s broom, the two had the floor swept of all specs of shiny paper in record time. Even so, it took a good hour to finish. It was glitter.
“I think that’s the last of it,” Rarity said once she had dumped a few stray pieces into the trash can. A waste, but they were too covered in dust to be of use to anyone now. “Well, except for what’s on you.”
Indeed, Pinkie Pie was still covered hoof to hock in confetti. And with the wild tangles her mane was always in the glitter would mostly stay there forever if they let it.
Pinkie grimaced as she looked herself over. “Yeah, a bath is definitely the next thing to do. Do you wanna help? I don’t think I’ll be able to reach most of what’s in my mane.”
At another time, Rarity might reject such a request, but she still felt horrible about causing the mess in the first place. She didn’t feel like she had the right to refuse anything Pinkie asked of her at the moment. “Of course, simply lead the way.”
Pinkie did just that and Rarity was treated to an unintentional tour of her living space.
While the front of the store was glamorous and well put together Rarity was surprised to find that the back wasn’t in the slightest.
Boxes stacked high covered the area, no decorations were hung anywhere and, while peeking into an open doorway that they passed, Rarity could see there was little furniture besides a frame and mattress in the bedroom.
When they entered the bathroom it was more lived in. Not obsessively organized like Rarity’s was but more a cluttered mess of someone barely hanging together.
Not that it was dirty. Good heavens, Rarity wouldn’t know what to do if that was the case. No, the tub was scrubbed clean but there were about three about-empty shampoo bottles just lying in it as well as-
“Your mane is dyed?” Rarity found herself asking.
“Uh, yep,” Pinkie answered with false casualness, running a hoof through said mane. It came out absolutely covered in glitter. “It’s naturally just all pink but I thought the black streak would help with my, um, my image.”
The last bit came out almost as a question, as if Pinkie was unsure about her own reasoning. She tapped her hoof on the tile with barely contained agitation as she glanced at Rarity while biting her lip. “Can you not tell anyone? Pretty please?”
Rarity nodded as Pinkie busied herself with setting the water running and dunking her head in it. Some glitter came out, as well as some dye, but it was far from completely removing the problem.
“Of course,” Rarity emphasized, picking up a brush and gently running it through Pinkie’s mane, getting out knots and glitter alike, “but, if you don’t mind me asking, why? There’s nothing wrong with dying your mane. I know for a fact the mayor does it for the exact same reason you do.”
Pinkie shifted uncomfortably. Or maybe she was just getting at a better angle to scrap glitter out of her coat. “I know. But lots of ponies have naturally colorful manes too. And it’s really cool to have a stripy mane or a solid colored mane! I just feel like mine needs to be stripy or no ones gonna take me seriously. And if they find out it’s not naturally stripy they might think I’ve been lying to them on purpose and take me even less seriously cause I’ve only been pretending to have a stripy mane and I actually just have a boring solid mane but no one likes it when I have a boring solid mane so I gotta buy the mane dye and pretend it’s stripped or ponies won’t like me at all!”
Pinkie Pie had rambled the entire rant in one breath, her voice getting constantly high-pitched and strained the longer she went on until she eventually stopped to take erratic breaths.
Rarity was frozen, for a moment. While the content of the rant seemed petty, and perhaps a little insulting as Rarity herself had a solid mane, she got the distinct impression that they weren’t actually talking about mane colors at all. Rarity found her eyes, once again, drifting down Pinkie’s back and to her cutie mark.
Balloons. Always covered up.
It wasn’t odd for some ponies to wear clothing but even those that did regularly, like the business stallion up in Canterlot, usually positioned their outfit in a way that their mark was fully visible.
Had Rarity ever seen Pinkie’s mark before today? Had any pony in Ponyville?
“Pinkie, darling,” Rarity began slowly. She wasn’t sure if she should be prying like this but in for a penny in for a pound as the saying went, “what is your cutie mark for?”
Pinkie flinched and her tail instantly curled around her legs in a habit Rarity had seen her perform a few times before in her observations.
For a moment, Rarity was worried Pinkie wasn’t going to answer and their already awkward session of de-glittering Pinkie’s mane would get unbearable.
But then Pinkie sighed, as if the tension simply drained out of her. “Parties. It’s… it’s for throwing parties.”
“Ah,” Rarity said simply, digesting this information, “You know, my mark is for finding gems. I love to incorporate them into all of my work, which I’m sure you’ve noticed. Do you enjoy making party dresses?”
“No,” Pinkie said, her voice barely a whisper and yet still echoing off of the bathroom walls, “No, I don’t like making dresses at all.”
Rarity froze and the bathroom descended into a weighted silence with only the running of the water to drown out their thoughts.
Pinkie was hunched down, potentially to better get water flowing through her mane but to Rarity it felt more as if the Earth Pony was physically trying to shield away from her. “I’m sorry,” Pinkie said before Rarity could think of any kind of response, “It’s not that making dresses is bad or anything! You make such pretty ones and it seems like you have a super fun time doing it to! I just don’t have a super fun time doing it and I don’t-“
“Then why?” Rarity found herself saying, cutting off the rambling apology. It wasn’t that doing something you didn’t enjoy was completely unheard of in Equestria. Cutie marks certainly made the situation easier to avoid but not every pony with a music mark could be Sapphire Shores or sometimes it was simply preferable to have a steady, consistent job in something you didn’t love while doing your talent as a stress-free hobby. But in this case… “Fashion design is a ruthless industry, darling, and while I assure you I know nothing of the party planning scene I’m sure anything would be less taxing then trying to design ensembles when you don’t care to I-“ she let out a shaky laugh, “so why are you doing this to yourself if you’re getting absolutely nothing out of it?”
Pinkie traced the bottom of the bathtub with her hoof, swirling the water around in a mini whirlpool. “I’m not getting nothing out of it… I mean I’m really good at it! That’s what every pony always says.” She turned around sharply, causing Rarity to draw back, and looked at the Unicorn with big, almost pleading eyes. “You… you think I’m good at it, right? Cause you’re really super good! And you can sew! And I can’t sew but ponies buy the clothes and they say the design is real good and I do that so it is good right?”
“Yes, yes,” Rarity said, interrupting the frantic rambling, “darling your designs are amazing. I…erm… I don’t know if you notice but I was feeling, well, intimidated by your work, in a way. It’s fantastic and so different from mine.”
Pinkie gasped like Rarity had just told her world-shattering information. “You? But you’re amazing! Your designs are so put together and lovely and and you can really tell you pour your heart and soul into everything you make!”
Rarity’s cheeks grew hot and she went back to combing Pinkie’s hair to avoid having to look her in the eye. “Why th-thank, you darling, that means a lot. I do put great effort into my designs. I love what I do and I always hope that’s communicated in what I create. Even before I got my cutie mark I’ve been making outfits,” she trailed off for a moment before continuing, “how did you get started? If you don’t have any interest in fashion design?”
Pinkie chewed on her lip and for a moment Rarity was worried that she wasn’t going to answer at all. But then she sighed and admitted, “My family… they wanted me to do it.”
Rarity’s eyes widened. “Your family are fashion designers?” Visions started swimming through Rarity’s head. An upper-class elite, feeling the pressure of such high-wedend places like Cantorlot, coming down to the lowly small town of Ponyville just to get away from it all… “but, wait, didn’t you say you grew up on a…farm of some kind?” Why would farmers pressure their daughter into being a fashion designer if she didn’t want it? Living her whole life in Ponyville, Rarity knew many farmers and usually if there was any pressure from the family it was to stay exactly where one was and carry on the tradition of farming.
“A Rock Farm,” Pinkie Pie explained, “and, yeah, my family would have loved it if I had been good at farming like them but,” she let out a sad little laugh, “it was pretty obvious since I was a teeny tiny filly that I was so bad at it the work actually went better if I didn’t try to help.”
“I’m sorry,” Rarity said sincerely. Celestia only knows how many times Rarity’s parents had tried to get her into their business while every word flew over her head. “That must have been hard.”
Pinkie shrugged noncommittally. “It was okay. They really encouraged me to find other hobbies, hoping something practical would stick and I’d get a cutie mark we could all be proud of.”
“But that’s not what happened?”
“They’re practical,” Pinkie emphasized, splashing water with her hoof, “Value to them is in making and growing real tangible things. Throwing parties and having fun isn’t important to them at all.”
“So they discouraged you from your mark but also didn’t want to shackle you to something you were obviously unsuited for,” Rarity mused, turning the story in her mind as her hooves subconsciously scrubbed at Pinkie’s mane, “How did you land on fashion as an alternative?”
“Maud, my older sister, she went to college for her rocktorate in the big city,” Pinkie said. Rarity chose to not question what a ‘rocktorate’ was. “She met a lot of friends at college and one of them got her into clothes. Maud doesn’t go anywhere without a dress on anymore. Since we already had an ‘in’ and I was good at designing things in general they enrolled me in fashion school in the same town Maud was attending hers.” She held her hooves up in an overemphasized shrug. “And I was good at it! I aced all my classes and my parents thought they had totally succeeded in giving me a practical career I could thrive in. I just always felt… I dunno… empty. I started to get more nervous around ponies, and more unsure on my hooves. I never felt like me unless I was attending a party but my parents insisted it was a waste of time. I guess I started resenting fashion for that.”
“But you didn’t quite?” Rarity asked. Her own parents had wanted her to go to college too, were incredibly insistent about it, but she had always found she was too impatient to sit in a classroom and learn the theories of her craft and so had dropped out after only a week. “Why ever not, darling? If it was making you so miserable?”
“I couldn’t do that!” Pinkie whirled around so the two were now facing each other in the cramped tub. “I’ve already been a disappointment to my family for so long. They’ve sacrificed so much just to make me happy. If I gave all this up now and switched to full time parties they’d think I hated them or something.”
Rarity frowned and her brow creased in a hard line. “That is no reason to make yourself miserable. Family is important, yes, but they aren’t you. You should do what will make yourself feel proud and fulfilled, not cater to how they feel about your life.”
“But I- I can’t just… I can’t throw it all away. I’ve worked so hard and, they’re right, parties aren’t practical. What if my life becomes even more miserable?” The pink pony hung her head, her wet mane now almost completely straight with black dye dripping out of it in a steady stream. “I don’t want… I don’t want to prove them right.”
Rarity pursed her lips. Part of her wanted to encourage Pinkie Pie to just throw caution to the wind. Buck whatever anyone else said and follow her passion as far as it would take her.
The other part of Rarity, the much more sensible part, admitted that Pinkie’s fears were justified. There was no guarantee things would work out if she tried to throw parties as a full-time profession. And it appeared she had already gone to years of school to become as good a fashion designer as she was. Tossing all of that out at the drop of a hat would just fill her with guilt and self-loathing.
Rarity knew one had to be practical sometimes. That was, after all, why she still lived in Ponyville and hadn’t headed out to Canterlot or Manehatten to try and make a name for herself from the ground up. It was what she wanted to do but she was sure if she had followed that impulse that she’d be penniless and crushed.
But being practical did not mean bowing to what others thought was best. Nor did it mean shoving your dreams in a closet to never see the light of day again.“What if…” Rarity ventured slowly as an idea took shape in her mind, “what if you could do both?”
Pinkie sniffed, whipped her snout with a soaked hoof, and looked up. “Wha-what?”
“I mean,” Rarity said, tapping her hoof and chewing on her lip, “it seems like you didn’t hate your college experience, the learning about fashion part I mean. No, your troubles came because you were barred from parties the whole time you were there, correct?”
Pinkie nodded, hesitantly. “But I can’t do both now. I have a whole store to run! And keep trying to learn how to sew, I won’t be able to rely on Fluttershy forever. I won’t have time to be throwing parties on top of all that.”
“True,” Rarity agreed, “having your own store would eat every moment of free time away. But your dream isn’t to own your own store now is it? That’s a large endeavor and if you simply worked under another designer, or even just with them, then you’d have the stability and ‘practicality’ your family wants from you but also enough time to go pursue your own ambitions.”
Pinkie blinked rapidly at her. “What are you saying?”
Rarity took a deep breath and, throwing caution to the wind, simply went for it. “Pinkie Pie, do you want to combine our stores?”
***
A Few Months Later
“Welcome!” Pinkie chirped to the latest person who entered the store. “Thank you for coming to the grand opening party of the joint owned Carousel Boutique. There’s punch and other snacks in that corner and lots of cool dresses in the other! Only the snacks are free but you can get a discount if you order an outfit at the party.”
Rarity took a long drink of her punch. She was standing by the dress display in case any pony wished to approach her about a sale but this was a party and so, by golly, she was going to enjoy herself too.
“This is really nice,” Fluttershy said. She had also been standing next to the dresses all night, pushed into a corner. Though Rarity suspected that was more to stay out of the crowd’s way than anything else.
“Yes,” Rarity agreed, smiling to herself, “Pinkie’s done an amazing job on this party. You can really see her talents.”
The pink mare bounced around the room as easy as a Pegasus flew, greeting each guest individually and making sure the refreshments were always fully stocked. The streaks in her hair were gone, leaving her natural pink-on-pink look. And while she had dressed up for the event it was only with a simple vest, leaving her cutie mark fully exposed.
She seemed to positively radiate joy.
“The party is very nice.” Fluttershy moved closer and gently nuzzled Rarity’s cheek. “But I was talking more about what you did. Offering to share ownership of your store? That was very generous of you Rarity.”
“Well, technically the store is still under my name,” Rarity said around a small blush, “Pinkie’s my partner, obviously, but I still own the building and most of the financial responsibility falls on my shoulders. We thought that’d be best for Pinkie to pursue her own dreams while also- what’s so funny, darling?”
Fluttershy was giggling softly into her hoof and looked up with a fond smile at Rarity’s question. “I’m just so glad this all worked out. Thank you Rarity, for helping her. Thank you.”
Rarity wanted to protest some more, to insist that it was nothing. But instead she just looked back at the happy Earth Pony, so completely in her element, and found herself smiling as well. “Believe me. It was my pleasure.”
THE END