//------------------------------// // 02: An Expected Concourse // Story: Gilded Lilies // by Overlord Pony //------------------------------// The quill scratches against parchment, creating swooping calligraphy with the gentle guidance of my magic. The words birthed from the ink are nothing more than a pseudo-emotional contract renewal for the state. Ancestral landlords measured the cycle of time by fifteen years: bestowing new taxes and fees onto their tenants after reevaluating the value of a property. This fifteen-year timeframe is formally known as an indiction, and is largely antiquated by modern standards; however, nobleponies are nothing if not slaves to tradition. This contract renewal is something all married nobleponies do at every indiction; modern ponies and those nobles who do not falsify their emotions for the bloodline would consider the document I am writing to be "renewing marriage vows." It is absurd to consider something "renewed" when the original vows have been broken countless times, yet to acknowledge any imperfection would tarnish both our families' names. There is a knock on my door. My ears swivel toward the noise. "Yes?" I say, finishing a flourish with the quill and replacing it into its inkwell. The door opens and Ivory says, "Missus, Miss Rarity is here to see you." I glance out the window to my left. The sun is still rising, but the sky has resolved itself to a still blue. I did not anticipate Rarity arriving so early, but I am happy to have her company at any hour. "Send her in, please," I say after I turn to face my hoofmaiden. Ivory bows and steps out, leaving the door slightly ajar. Her hoofsteps echo in the hall outside my quarters, the only noise in the silence that often overtakes my home. I glance back at my parchment, then cover the calligraphy with a thin coating of sand to prevent the ink from bleeding. The action causes my mind to wander astray, and I imagine myself elsewhere, in another circumstance where my life is as warm and inviting as my manners were taught to be. I see myself as a regular pony, settled in a quaint town on the edge of a forest in full fall foliage, interacting with others as neighbors and friends rather than tokens of diplomacy. In others' lives, there is a true warmth toward others; a platonic intimacy shared between ponies that I simply am not accredited as a living exhibit of pre-wendigo unicorn relations. My ears swivel toward hoofsteps and Rarity's sweet voice conversing with Ivory's quieter tones, reminding me that I am forbidden the kind of life I live within my daydreams. Meetings with Rarity always seem to incite these reveries in the blank spaces of time before and after our conversations. As I rise to my hooves and walk toward the door, I do thank my status and fortune for one thing: the ability to brush flanks with such admirable members of the community such as herself. The door is wholly enveloped in a light blue aura, and it opens after a mumbled sentence by Ivory. "Fleur, Darling!" Rarity says as she steps into the room. Ivory is a shadow behind her, although her smile and lax stance speak to the casual socialite nature of the Element of Generosity. "Miss Rarity!" I say. Rarity is radiance in pony form: small with an earth pony frame, long legs and royally colored, purple curls. She trots over to me, her porcelain hooves tapping against the marble as her curls bounce. I reach out a hoof in greeting, but she rises onto her hind hooves instead, wrapping her foreleg around the base of my neck. I bow my head from the weight, my mane falling into hers, and return the embrace, one slender limb draped across the silken, sheer fabric along her shoulders. The purple capelet adorning her withers is made of a fabric that accentuates the gentle slope of her back and sides, and it ends just before her cutie mark, allowing all to see the diamonds gracing her smooth flank. Her muzzle touches my skin, soft and delicate, her breath warm against my neck for only the briefest of moments before her leg slides from my back as she again settles onto her hooves. "How have you been?" she asks. Her eyes, ever-inquisitive, have every eyelash defined by mascara and are accentuated by sky blue eyeshadow. "Busy," I say, a smile gracing my lips. "How about yourself? I hear you have moved back to Canterlot." She smiles, but it is only polite. Rarity once told me she has a façade much better than my own; yet, her eyes, like broken sapphire, show a pain so raw that I touch my hoof to her shoulder for comfort. Her lips quiver, and she dips her head slightly to the side, her mane falling across her face. I glance up from her for a brief moment, noting Ivory's polite presence in the doorway. "Thank you, Miss Ivory," I say. "Could you please close the door? You may take leisure time during Miss Rarity's visit." Ivory says her pleasantries, then the door closes with a quiet click. I return my attention to Rarity, who has moved to the center of the room and is now looking out my balcony doors toward the mountains grayed by the distance. "What happened?" I ask, moving toward her. Her ears pin back, and she turns her head toward me, her eyes still fixated on the outside. "How do you and Fancy do it?" she asks. "It isn't always easy," I say, "but we manage through communication and date nights." Typically, I would not allude to any sort of marital issues whatsoever, but Rarity and I are close enough that I know she would not believe the impossibly perfect relationship that Fancy and I supposedly have. "You manage, yes," she says, "but is that how you continue to love somepony? Through management?" There is no immediate, easy answer to that line of questioning with somepony as perceptive as Rarity. Before I can politely deflect the questioning back to what happened to her, she turns to me, sorrow mostly abolished from her expression, and says, "I apologize, I don't mean to be so drab. Why don't we have a look at your dress?" Her professional exterior never ceases to both amaze and alienate me. "Of course," I say. "It is this way." I turn from her, walking toward the door next to my desk. As I push it open with my magic, I wonder if Rarity and I are as close as I believe, or if I am just so deprived of true kinship that I consider professional acquaintances to be "friends" if they speak to me casually. A few ponies come to mind that could fit in such a category, yet none of them make me feel as comfortable as Rarity, nor do any share the same type of history she and I have. As she trots in front of me toward the dress form displaying my wedding gown, I think back to the times we had worked together. She has always been an open book, yet that trait extended to others beyond myself. Perhaps it is simply part of her professional charm; artistic types do tend to seem more overt about their experiences than others. She calls me over as she pulls her sewing kit from one of the wooden niches in the shelving of my closet. She levitates a hair tie to me as she pulls a red pair of cat-eye reading glasses from the kit. I take the hair tie in my magic, although I find myself entranced by the seamstress's movements as she sets up her workspace. In moments like these, where she levitates tools of her trade with such precision, I feel that there is a new facet of her personality bared for all around her to see. She hums, the pain lost from her eyes as she settles measuring tape and pincushions into place along the window ledge behind her without drawing her gaze from the dress. Her levitation is so casual—her brow shows no strain as she simultaneously adjusts the dress upon the mannequin and deftly places pins into the fabric in a method that seems color-coordinated. "You always seem so surprised to see me work!" she says. My heart leaps, and I am suddenly reminded that I should have been using the hair tie levitating near my nose. "I envy your grace," I say, punctuating the statement with a giggle. She laughs with me, and my heart leaps again as I savor the sound. I begin to move my mane back with my magic, pulling it into what feels like a uniform mass behind my ears. "It's funny you say that, because I have always envied yours." I smile at the compliment, then focus on pulling my mane into a bun. "Nobleponies are all so graceful." "We are bred to uphold such an ideal." The tools in her magic pause, and she turns her body toward me. For a moment, I believe I have said something incorrect, then her face lights up and a peal of laughter escapes her. "What?" I ask. Despite my confusion, the joy in her expression leaks into me. "Your mane, Darling!" I turn to look in the mirror behind me. It looks as though a filly just learning to do her mane had practiced on my head. My mane is grossly uneven, strands hanging down along my neck and the bun hanging in a huge, limp mass drooping behind my jaw. The disheveled mare in the mirror is far from myself, and I cannot help but laugh at the absurdity of the look. "Miss Rarity, you only need my measurements," I say, glancing at her reflection behind me. "My mane need not be flawless... but I do look absurd." "I was going to ask you to brunch," she says, "but I can't possibly take you out with that mane!" My eyebrows raise in my reflection. Brunch? It is not abnormal for her to show off her generosity, although it has been moons since we have gone out for any sort of meal. She has always been busy with Element of Harmony business or getting her new fashion line in order; our time to be together in a non-professional setting in the past few years has been fleeting, although she has always been apologetic when our get-together plans fail. The other ponies who fall into the "casual professional" category of creatures I am acquainted with have never shown a similar amount of concern for missing events together. I suppose Rarity and I really have been friendly with each other beyond professionalism; we do share casual letters and attempt to dine together when she is in Canterlot. Some of the paranoia that settled into my mind earlier is released, followed by tension in my limbs that I had failed to notice. "Do you have other plans?" she asks, her voice sweet as ever. "No," I say. "I am pleasantly surprised; you are typically a very busy mare." "Yes, well, my schedule has gotten lighter with the current events in my life." She looks up at me in the mirror and smiles, although the pain she displayed earlier is rapt in her expression. "We also haven't eaten out in awhile! It will be good to catch up." "It will!" I find myself grinning despite myself; it is good to know that she was not neglecting my line of questioning, although, behind my smile, I am worried for her. She beckons me over, and I stand where she indicates. One of her measuring tapes floats in her magic and she begins the process of taking my measurements by wrapping the tape around the base of my neck. After measuring from my withers to my chest, around my forelegs and waist, she pulls her glasses from the tip of her nose with her magic and looks at me. "Besides the routine maintenance—attending to loose beads, replacing the roses and fixing the tear in the sleeve—I am going to need to take in the collar and waist for the dress to fit as it did before," she says, then draws down her eyebrows. "Is everything alright with you? It is very uncommon for a mare as petite as yourself to become smaller over the years, especially after having a foal." There is a brief moment of silence, then her eyes widen and she quickly says, "No offense, of course! You are radiant as ever; it is just such an odd occurrence! I would hate for you to be ill and not know it." A small noise escapes my throat, part of a predetermined response for nosy nobles, then I glance at the dress and allow the response to fully perish on my tongue. The gown was made by Rarity herself for my wedding, and I believe it was one of the first gowns she made from the Carousel Boutique. I ensured the care of the gown over the years, and the fabric is as white as the day it was woven. Rarity had taken such care with the beading along the bodice and sleeves, and the train—twenty-seven feet long due to a tradition in my family—is still unperturbed despite dragging against the ground all those years ago and how it had been folded for storage. The train wraps around the island in the middle of the room, only slightly crinkled from its years inside a closet. The white roses along its lace edges have long since dried out, but their off-white petals, tarnished like silver, still cling to their places on the train. Rarity makes her designs to last, and always has. "Let's have brunch," I say, aware that my voice turned into a monotone for the statement. I cannot keep my eyes from the gown now that I have looked upon it. It is an innocent evil; blissfully ignorant of the sins it has committed in the name of the de-Lis lineage, yet, despite the fact that it is but an object, what it symbolizes is deeply upsetting to me. "Not before we fix your mane," Rarity says from beside me, pulling on the hair tie in my mane. "Come lie here." From my despair, she brings a smile back to my muzzle. I obey her simple command, lowering myself onto my stomach with my forelegs folded politely in front of me. Our height difference makes my position comfortable for her, allowing her to see the crown of my head. Gingerly, she pulls the hair tie from my mane with her magic and my hair falls all to one side. After a moment, she begins to run a brush through it. I can only assume she found it on my main vanity; however, as she continues to brush my mane, I feel a mounting sense of discomfort. "I can do this myself," I say. "Nonsense, Darling," she says. "I've only had my own mane to style for so long, and everycreature expects it to be just this way– otherwise, I might as well not be Rarity!" She pulls a part of my mane to the other side of my neck, then begins brushing another section. "Doesn't this take you back?" "It... does." She makes an affirmative sound, then begins humming a song, solidly locking us in the moment. Once, in a life that now feels far distant, I was a model in Manehattan. It was in the years before I married Fancy, and was also where Rarity and I met. She was just beginning her career, and I was attempting to become a pony all of my own; somepony removed from the de-Lis name. Rarity had found me walking a street alone, and offered me lunch, then, over cheap hayburgers, a job as a runway model. For the next two years, I wore her high fashion designs on the catwalk during the most important fashion shows in Equestria, and, backstage, she pulled my mane into outrageous displays that matched the eccentricities of her early work. Back then, I almost feared the mare's hair dressing abilities, yet, today, her brush is more gentle than I have ever felt. The brushing falls into a rhythm, along with the melody she is humming, and I feel warm, as though sitting in the morning sun. I am lulled into a place without time as she does my mane, my eyes nearly shut as I revel in the sensation of the gentle tugs against my neck and scalp. The last strand of hair is combed, then she pulls my hair back to the correct side and begins braiding, pulling strands along to her song. The gentle pressure of her holding the hair taught, of focusing on keeping my head still, causes me to reflect upon my foal's formative years. Had I ever done Lin's mane? Or had I, in my melancholy, forgotten to show my own foal the same kind of affection Rarity is currently showing me? Mothers are supposed to teach their foals things so simple, and to occasionally use them as their own small models. My mother had treated me as such when I was small, yet I cannot remember treating Lin with such tenderness in her foalhood– her existence always saddened me; Fancy often cared for her in my stead. I hope she has friends of her own in school, that they can do what I never could—that they teach her how to be a pony, how to be herself; to show her that there is something beyond being a de-Lis. Perhaps I should speak to her more. "There!" Rarity says. "Take a look!" My legs are numb from my time on the floor, and the lack of stimulation along my scalp and neck is momentarily disconcerting. My mane is back into a bun, but, unlike the one I had placed it in before, this one feels secure and does not jostle around as I get to my hooves. My legs fill with the sensation of pins and needles, but I am facing a mirror, so there is no need to force them forward to look at what Rarity has done with my hair. From the front, my mane is simply pulled back as opposed to being down. I grasp a hoof mirror in my magic from the vanity and levitate it behind my head, allowing me a look at Rarity's handiwork. "You did a wonderful job," I say, admiring the braids wrapping around the symmetrical bun. One braid is of the lighter strip of pink in my mane and is layered on top of the others. "Thank you," she says. "I also do believe this outfit would go nicely, don't you think?" I place the mirror back onto the vanity, then turn to see what she has picked from the closet around her while I was distracted. In her magic, there is a sheer, white capelet similar to her own and a white blouse with a sunflower pattern. I take the clothing in my magic and begin putting it on, careful to not muss my mane. "You always know what looks best," I say. "You looked like you needed a little girl time," she says. I pull the capelet together with a silver brooch in the shape of my cutie mark, then turn toward Rarity with a smile. "I did," I say. "Where are we going for brunch?"