//------------------------------//
// Prologue : One faithful night in Ponyville  
// Story: Sweet Belles and Bitter Berries 
// by keam 
//------------------------------//

Sweetie Belle made  her way up the streets of Ponyville, dragging her hooves behind her. Rarity would be mad at her for showing up so late, without warning. But not only would she be mad at  Sweetie Belle, but with mom and dad, too, for just dumping her at Rarity , as usual. Like they would care. They never cared for their children.

She stopped and looked across the street. Inside the big window, a filly her age was fast asleep. Sweetie Belle recognised the filly from school. Berry Pinch, she was pretty sure she was named. Berry Pinch always stayed in school after the bell rung out, as if she were waiting for someone, even though the only one left would Cheerilee. Turning away from the window, she continued through town, contempling what she had seen. Berry Pinch had been happy and safe in her bed, indicating that her parents weren't as bad as Sweeties, yet she had never seen them, because, like she said, they never picked up Pinch after school.


Caught up in trying to remember more about Berry Pinch, Sweetie Belle didn't even notice that she had reached her destination, Carousel Botique. She automatically opened the door and stepped inside, her mind still elsewhere.


"Sweetie! What are you doing here?!" Rarity's shrill exclamation quickly brought Sweetie back to reality. Standing in front of her was her sister. Rarity's normally well-kept mane was frazzled and her glasses, which she preferred not to admit that she needed, where balancing unsafely on the brink of her muzzle. Based off of her apppearances, Sweetie Belle guessed that she was  pulling an all nighter to finish some  big order.


"Rarity!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed, throwing herself into her sisters warm embrace. "Mom and dad left me off in town. They said they bought some last-minute vacation thing and will be back in a week!"


Rarity embraced her little sister, silently cursing their parents for being so reckless and uncaring.
"Schhh, everything's alright Sweetie, I'm right here. I'll take care of you, no need to worry." She said, doing her best to comfort her little sister.


"Sister?" Sweetie Belle suddenly asked, breaking the embrace and looking up at her sister. Rarity immediately understood that something was going on. Sweetie Belle almost never called her sister.


"Yes?" She whispered.


"Why don't mom and dad care about me? About us?"


There it came, the question she waited for Sweetie Belle to ask since their parents let her down the first time.


Rarity took a deep breath and once more embraced her sister, making herself ready to tell some kind of comforting lie. she had invented hundreds. many of which she told herself over and over again growing up. But then she saw her sister's eyes. so innocent and ununderstanding, yet they shared her pain. Those made her make a decision that would change her little sister's life forever, hopefully for the better.


"I don't know why, Sweetie, but I do know one thing. I am through with this. From now on, your living with me." It felt so good to say it. She was never going to allow her parents to let Sweetie Belle down again. never.


Sweetie Belle gasped. Rarity couldn’t mean that she was going to live with her in Ponyville now, could she? But what would mom and dad say? What would they think about that Rarity was taking care of her now?


“Sweetie. Sweetie Belle.” Rarity’s exclamation snapped Sweetie out of her thoughts and she saw that Rarity was looking worridly at her.


“yes Rarity? what do you want Rarity?” She asked in her sweetest, most innocent voice.


“You should go to bed.” Rarity stated flatly, chasing Sweetie Belle up the stairs.


As she reached the top of the stairs, Sweetie Belle looked back down into the bottom floor of Carosel botique. What she saw made her regret her decision. On the floor, Rarity was sitting, quietly crying into a piece of fabric that she held in her hooves. What she saw broke Sweetie's heart, but she was too broken herself from all that Rarity told her to do anything. Instead, she went to bed, hoping this Nightmare would be over once she woke up.