Wonderful
I watch her every day. She’s beautiful. She makes me beautiful too, though I’ve never told her how much I appreciate it. I’m plain, you see. Plain and boring. Some might even call me ugly. She, however, sees the potential inside me. She sees the hidden beauty inside all of us. Moreover, she helps it emerge, time and again.
I don’t know if any of the others feel the same way I do. If they watch her move around the room, wishing she would lay a hoof on them and tell them they’re special, they’ve never said so.
It’s all I long for. My day starts when I see her and I’m happiest just watching her work. She has hooves that can thread the eye of a needle without magic, you know. That’s impressive for a unicorn. She learned how when she worked so many late nights last year that she exhausted her horn before she had finished an order. I wanted to jump to her rescue and finish it all for her, but my hooves can’t do what hers can. Her hooves are nimble things that create art. Mine can’t.
I wish I could tell her how much I love her. I wish I could make her understand how she brings me to life every time I’m near her.
She found me, you know. Rescued me. Not many ponies who know her could ever guess she would do something like that. Her friends might. They see some of what I see in her. Most, however, only see her as a drama queen who would rather die than touch something as rank and disgusting as I was back then. She literally found me as was being tossed from a building, no longer any use to anypony – or so I thought. I believed I was a washed up has-been but she brought me home with her, fixed me up and gave me a new purpose. I thought I was consigned to the garbage heap but she … she saw the potential in me that even I didn’t see.
She carried me under cover of darkness, of course, and hid me away at first, but I didn’t mind. I knew she was the reason I was being given a second chance. I knew she was my saviour. She never told anypony where I came from when she finally introduced me to them. As far as they’re all concerned, I’ve always been the way I am now – clean, scented and ready to help her at a moment’s notice. If she wants to keep to herself how many hours she spent scrubbing at my stains and sewing my stuffing back inside, I’m not going to spoil the illusion for her. She has a reputation to keep up, after all. She’s the best. She’s going places. She’s the pony everypony should know. Mares of her calibre don’t get on their knees and use a toothbrush to work out a grease spot on the undercarriage of an old thing like me.
I remember what she said to me when she was finished. She got up, let outa brisk sigh and told me I looked wonderful. I think that was the moment I fell in love with her. No-one had ever told me I was wonderful before. Useful, yes. Necessary, sure. Useless, old and unneeded, most definitely. But wonderful? Never.
“You’re going to look absolutely gorgeous in my latest creation,” she trills now, holding it up to me. “I just know you are, darling.”
The dress is a taffeta and silk confection in green and blue. It shimmers in the midday sun, truly a beautiful thing, but all I can focus on is her smile.
The smile aimed at me.
I wish I could tell her how much she means to me.
It would help if I had a mouth.