//------------------------------// // Bare // Story: The Unicorn and the Stranger // by PhycoKrusk //------------------------------// Shortly after she stepped outside, Rarity followed Driftwood back into his bungalow, the extinguished lantern shining with acid green magic as it drifted through the air before coming to a rest just inside the front door. While he made his way into the kitchen, she made sure the door was shut behind them, and then looked to the changeling and gave voice to a question that had been turning over in her head: “Why?” Just past the table, Driftwood and looked back over his shoulder to her. “Why what?” he asked. “Why do changelings hide? Why not approach ponies and tell them of your plight? Why not go to the Princesses? You confided in me. Surely there are other who’ve thought to do the same.” Driftwood sighed. “I took a big risk telling you, Rarity,” he said. “This is your land. This is your home, and I’m just a stranger here. All of us are. Our lies go back further than any of us can remember and the land reminds us constantly. The windigos nearly ended us. Discord nearly ended us. It’s not hard to believe that ponies, or griffons, or any creature that isn’t a changeling will finally succeed where everything else has failed.” “But why not ask ponies to help?” Rarity asked. “Everything you’ve told me, if you told the Princesses, they would help. There are special circumstances, they wouldn’t hold Canterlot against you.” “Spoken like a pony, of course,” Driftwood replied, opening the icebox. The pitcher of iced tea deftly slid out, sheathed in magic. “And just what is that supposed to mean?” Rarity asked with an edge of more than just irritation in her voice. “It means what it sounds like,” Driftwood said in response. With the pitcher gripped in his magic, he carefully poured two glasses of iced tea before returning the larger vessel to the icebox. “You suggested that even with everything changelings have done, ponies would forgive all of it and help us. Of course a pony would suggest forgiveness. Ponies believe in forgiveness. Changelings believe in guilt.” Rarity turned her attention down to the table, sitting in quiet thought as one glass came to rest in front of her. “You’ll all just suffer in silence, then?” She idly watched her tea. “It’s what we’ve always done,” Driftwood replied. Silence fell over the conversation, Rarity watching her drink, and Driftwood watching Rarity. “Driftwood?” she said at last, looking up from her tea. “May I touch you?” The admittedly odd request left Driftwood momentarily off-guard, but just momentarily. “You may, if you want to,” he answered. With no more than a shallow nod, Rarity rose from her seat — the action copied by the changeling across from her — and walked around the table to Driftwood’s side. It felt as though a moth was fluttering around in her stomach, and for what reason? She had just been laying next to him only a few minutes earlier and hadn’t felt a thing! With a deep breath, the moth disappeared, and she focused on Driftwood once again. Although he was watching her, it was with curiosity at what she meant to do. He stood very still, waiting. With another breath, Rarity lifted a hoof and laid it gently on Driftwood’s shoulder. “Oh,” said Rarity. He had felt hard earlier, but then, they were laying down, and she had been pressed against the carapace on his back. Shifting from her hoof to her fetlock — trained to be very sensitive and best for testing fabrics — she observed something very important. “This isn’t what I expected. I thought there would be plates, but you feel…,” She paused for a moment. “Almost scaly. You feel very firm, but not hard, and your skin is rough.” Her touch drifted further down his body, to the shiny, indigo carapace of his back. “This feels like plates, though. Is to protect you?” “It might be,” Driftwood remarked, still standing stock still as if he were being fitted for a suit. “I’ve heard that it does well enough against spears and griffon talons. I’ve never been keen to find out for myself.” “And your wings?” “You may touch them. You probably won’t hurt them, but please be careful.” Gingerly, Rarity ran her fetlock over the top of Driftwood’s translucent wing. “Oh my, it’s not gossamer at all,” she observed. “It’s quite rigid.” “It needs to hold its shape while we fly and glide,” Driftwood explained. Rarity made only a low sound of acknowledgement as she slid her arm back to Driftwood’s shoulder. “May I see your hoof?” she asked. “Tarsus,” Driftwood corrected, nevertheless lifting his arm and offering the end to her. “Ponies have hooves. Changelings have tarsi.” “Oh?” Rarity paused at that. She considered Driftwood’s limb. “I think I’d heard that the tarsus was the end of a crab’s leg?” “It is, but it’s also the end of the leg for spiders and damselflies, and we have more in common with them than we do with crabs.” Rarity giggled. “The damselfly, I suppose I can see, but you don’t look at all like a spider, aside from your fangs, perhaps. And scaling walls like one, I suppose,” she said. “I suppose.” A companionable silence came and lasted several seconds while unicorn examined changeling, idly wondering if she might see the tiny claws that gripped to walls. “And your mane?” Rarity asked, releasing Driftwood’s tarsus back to him. “Go ahead.” Confidence growing every moment, Rarity’s hoof next went to Driftwood’s head, brushing along the seemingly delicate hair. “It’s so soft,” she said with some surprise. “Almost like silk.” “That’s what we call it. Like spider silk, I’m told, although I don’t think that’s correct,” Driftwood replied. “You’re the first I’ve seen with it, other than that dreadful…” The sentence was never finished, Driftwood seemingly unwilling to answer, and Rarity unwilling to ask again when she felt the changeling very noticeably tense at the implied identification. She had, she realized, touched upon a very sensitive topic. “I understand that pony soldiers often cut their manes very short,” Driftwood said after a moment. “To present an image of discipline and to reduce risk in battle and promote hygiene.” That was good enough for Rarity, her hoof slowly drifting down from Driftwood’s head to his shoulder, and then back to the floor. “Are your fangs envenomed?” she asked. “No,” Driftwood replied, shaking his head. Rarity stepped around to stand before Driftwood, their faces just inches apart. “May I kiss you?” she asked. “Yes,” Driftwood replied, nodding his head. In the blink of an eye, Rarity closed the gap between them and pressed her lips against Driftwood’s just as gingerly as she had earlier, and when he almost immediately leaned back into her, one kiss quickly turned to many before Rarity threw her arms around his neck and buried her face into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Driftwood,” she said with a shaky voice. “I was so, so awful to you.” “It’s alright, Rarity,” Driftwood replied, snaking his own arms around Rarity and holding her tightly. “I forgive you.” Rarity stifled a choking laugh and momentarily squeezed more tightly. “I thought changelings didn’t believe in forgiveness,” she said. “We don’t. But you do, and saying that I forgive you is the easiest way to say that I hold nothing against you.” Rarity waited several more seconds before saying, “I think I understand now,” as she pulled back from the embrace enough to look Driftwood in the eye. “You lied to me, and I don’t forgive you for it. But it’s already done, and you aren’t lying to me now, so I hold nothing against you.” The changeling smiled somewhat sadly. “That doesn’t sound like a pony at all,” he said. “But it sounds like a changeling, doesn’t it?” Rarity asked, raising a hoof to Driftwood’s face and gently rubbing her fetlock against his cheek. “You feel the guilt of others, don’t you? You know when they truly regret something they’ve done, and that’s why you don’t believe in forgiveness. I do believe in forgiveness, but I believe in trust, also, and I think that you do, too. You trusted me with a secret that could be your undoing. I trust you with my heart.” Driftwood kissed Rarity then, just as gently as she had kissed him, and pulled her into another embrace that she happily returned. “I will not hide from you ever again.” It was several more seconds before their embrace was broken, again by Rarity. “Darling, my heart is racing from all this, and I doubt very much that any tea, no matter how iced, will cool it off. Will you join me for a swim?” she said. “Rarity, I’d be delighted to join you for a swim,” Driftwood replied with a smile. “I imagine our bathing suits must be dry enough by now.” “Oh, that doesn’t matter. I was thinking that we may just do without,” Rarity responded in kind, earning a quirked brow from her companion. “Without your bathing suit?” Driftwood asked with a smirk. “Aren’t we adventurous all of a sudden?” “Darling, we’ve bared our secrets and souls to each other!” Rarity replied happily. “I should hardly think that we need be concerned about baring anything more.” With the smallest chuckle, Driftwood followed Rarity out the door and down to the water, both as bare as if they planned to walk into town.