Twilight rolled up the scroll once she was sure that everypony present had finished reading. Rarity sat separately, sipping a cup of tea on her favorite fainting couch. They had all assembled at the Boutique at the seamstress' request and had been given a rather long roll of parchment to absorb.
"Well, if ah didn't know y'all any better, ah'd say you had a knack fer fiction, Rares..." Applejack said, tilting her hat a little more to the left. It wasn't hard to tell that Rarity had been telling the truth in her letter, and had only written it so she couldn't lose her nerve halfway through the telling.
"So, have you been lying to us your entire life then? To everypony you know?" Rainbow Dash, looking a little put out that one of her best friends, despite anything else the pegasus said, was something other than what she knew.
"Of course not, darling, and as I said, I am no Changeling. The spell Twilight cast on me halfway through her reading confirmed that. Until Discord came, I was only Rarity. Now I'm Rarity and Tamara."
The seamstress being a Changeling had become a genuine concern when they had started to read the letter and Twilight had taken it upon herself to cast the detection spell she'd developed with her brother shortly after the wedding, in case any of the creatures chose to return, or had not been evicted by the spell he and Cadence had cast.
"Do you know why you can suddenly remember any of this?" Twilight asked, honestly curious.
Rarity nodded, "I think it was the memory spell you cast on all of us to bring us back to who we really were. It broke the seal Celestia had put on my former life. Every time I see you perform a spell, I'm reminded why the Princess chose you."
"So, you never really went into it, but, do you know what happened to Tamara?"
The seamstress nodded and took a shaky breath, "It... hurts to remember, but yes, I do. I remember everything as if I hadn't lived for twenty years between then and now..."
The massive machines clanked, whined, and hissed as they wove fibers into strings and strings into sheets of fabric. A small woman, by any sense of the term, sat on an uncomfortable stool watching the string fly by inches from her face. It was her job, one of several she did daily in the factory, to make sure that the string did not fray or snap as it passed on its way to the looms. This particular task was her "break" for the day, halfway through her fourteen hour shift. The war had started less than three months ago and already her husband and son had gone far afield to fight the good fight. Johnathon was a strong man, and an excellent pilot, and his letters told his stories of fighting against the aces of the Luftwaffe. Her son Theodore was somewhere on the high seas of the Pacific, hunting for the ships of the Japanese Navy.
Tamara had taken the job in the factory to keep herself from worrying too much about her family and to make sure they and others like them had clothes to wear and tents to sleep in. She spent her long days here, and her nights exhausted in bed, too tired to worry. Her only solace came in the camaraderie of the other war wives who worked along with her. Seated behind her was one such woman, by the name of Claire, who had thrown herself into her work more furiously as the weeks went by with no word on her own husband. They had been a young couple, freshly married when the war came.
"... so then I told the officer that if they couldn't find him, I was going to be on the next ship over there and find him myself."
"Honestly, Claire, I'm sure your husband is fine! The new recruits are probably still filtering through the system over there." She said with a soft smile, not voicing her concern that her husband had most likely been killed or captured already. The only reason she still held hope was the regular letters from her own.
"I know, I know, but I can't help but worry... I-" she was interrupted by the shriek of metal from somewhere above, "Oh, please don't tell me the boiler is overheating again! You'd think they would have fixed that problem by now."
"Oh, you know those managers, can't spare a penny to save a dollar. I swear I could just..." Tamara felt something rumble through the floor and then something in her chest. She looked around and saw that all the machinery had stopped, "Well, looks like they broke it this time..." she said as she began to feel tired, "Well, maybe they'll let us cut out early today!"
"T-tamara... Your..." Claire stuttered, pointing at the other woman's chest, a look of total horror making the pale woman's face turn ever paler.
"My what?" She looked down and saw a ragged piece of metal, covered in something red, sticking out between her breasts. Only now did her brain register the pain signals associated with the puncture wound as something far away exploded, "Oh my..." was the only thing she could think to say as she fell forward. She could hear Claire's screaming fade away as the darkness slowly took over.
When she came to, she was standing in a white void, looking at a very regal woman standing in front of her in white robes. Her hair was flowing in some unseen wind and brought to mind the colors of a beautiful sunset. The figure smiled sadly, "Hello Tamara... I am sorry for what has happened..."
"I... I'm dead?"
"Yes, you are."
Tamara processed the information briefly, "Are you... God?"
The woman shook her head, "No, I am not. He and I aren't necessarily on speaking terms right now, given his treatment of your world. No, my name is Celestia, and I am here to offer you a great opportunity."