//------------------------------//
// Sozmioi's "Upon Reflection" (Cold in Gardez's "The Glass Blower") 
// Story: Never The Final Word (Vol. 1) 
// by horizon 
//------------------------------//

The glass blower worked long into the evening. He worked as the tallow candles around him guttered and went out. He worked until the moon, high overhead, was the only motion in the night.

Sticks found him in the morning, staring into the corner; there lay the gathered shards of the mirror, its magic gone.

The glassblower looked up. "I have been an idiot."

Sticks nodded.

"Not merely a love-struck fool. An outright idiot."

Sticks nodded.

The glass blower looked down to the shards. His eyes furrowed.

Sticks sat, waiting for him to come out of it. The stare lasted for ten minutes.

Very slowly, the glass blower repeated himself: "I am not a love-struck fool. I am an idiot. I have been from the very beginning. Aagh! How could I have been so stupid?"

And with that, he threw on a coat and ran out the door. There was no work to be done, no more glass to blow. No time to waste.

Two hours later, he knocked on the door of Rarity's home, at the rear of the boutique.

It was a minute before she responded. Her bagged eyes regarded him with confusion, framed by a frazzled mane. Not even the cuts on her legs had been tended.

"The mirror was wrong."

Recognition dawned, and she remained baffled. He had said perhaps the one thing that could keep her from slamming the door in his face.

"I know it was wrong. You are beautiful, you are honest, and you are a good pony."

"You don't know me."

"That is just how I know it was wrong."

She stared. Then, trembling, she stepped back from the open door. "It's chilly out there."

The glass blower thoroughly cleaned the mud off his hooves on her mat before walking in.

She gestured him to one of the seats in the entry room and sat nervously in the other.

He opened, "I'm sorry about the bird."

She blinked rapidly. "What? It was beautiful."

"But what could you do? It was a trap. If you accepted it, how could you say 'Very good! Let's go to lunch and get to know each other'?"

Rarity managed a rueful chuckle.

He continued, "Maybe if I'd just shown it to you and without mentioning any tests or promises you made, asked if you'd like to get to know each other better, that might have worked. Even if it hadn't, it wouldn't have put you on the spot with an impossible choice like that. I admired your grace, and then squeezed it right out."

She shook her head, and looked down to the ground. "I... had certain requirements. Oh all right, I'll say it. You're not a unicorn. It mattered."

The glassblower could not help but notice the past tense, but tempered his enthusiasm. It had not served him well up to this point.

She, wrapped in her own thoughts, shook her head. "So, how do you think you know me so well?"

"Because you're not the only one who looked in the mirror. And when I looked in the mirror, I saw a lovestruck fool, pining after unattainable grace. I didn't see an idiot who hurt and trapped the one he admired, so she had little choice but to reject him, the only other alternative being to bind herself to a rather scary individual she didn't know."

After a moment's pause, he said, "I thought it reflected who you really are. It reflects who you are afraid you are. That's why it rang so true, and hurt so much, while also being completely wrong."

She stared, reinterpreting, for a minute.

He softly added, "If you're afraid of being dishonest and a bad pony... you probably aren't. Well, not too much."

She shook her head. "I promised to love you."

"Only because I trapped you, misused your challenge."

Her eyes widened. "Misused?"

"Yes. Your challenge didn't promise that you would love the first great craftsman who came along. But that's how I treated it, denied you the rest of your judgement."

He got up. "Well, now that I've hopefully undone what I can of the harm I caused you, good day."

"Wait!"