//------------------------------//
// Prompt #16: Storage 
// Story: Ponywatching 
// by ThunderTempest 
//------------------------------//

On the days when Rarity was feeling particularly uninspired, she liked to go through her old designs-after all, one never knew where inspiration might come from. Rarity also liked to look at where she’d been, creatively. This served as both inspiration, for what wonder she would unleash upon the fashion world next, and as warning in some cases. 

Today was one of those days, and Rarity was much farther back in her attic than she had been in a while. 

“Oh dear,” she muttered to herself, “I shall need such a bath after this.” However, no matter how she complained, she kept moving around her dusty attic, occasionally pulling out what she would deem a travesty of design, to look at them, and try and figure out where she went wrong, or in the rare few cases that passed Rarity’s discerning eye, what she had done so right.

Eventually, she came across an unlabelled box, unusual for her normally meticulous system. It was packed away, right near the outer wall, behind several boxes of dresses that she had made to practice a lace pattern with. The box was light, much lighter than most of the others. Perhaps she had forgotten to fill it up before putting it away. It also lacked the standard moth-repelling spell that Rarity placed on all of her storage.

Now fully curious, she extracted the box from its pile, and levitated it towards the light. Placing it on the floor, she pulled open the top.

“Oh my,” tittered Rarity, as she pulled out the tight purple fabric, “I had almost forgotten about these things.” She twisted the costume around, her critical eye floating over the seams. The costumes were in remarkable shape, much more so than Rarity’s usual dresses. A minute later, Rarity found out why; the entire costume had been made for durability.  She remembered talking the design of the costume over with Twilight, how the unicorn had been so adamant about the look of the costume. The hat, though, had been entirely Rarity’s idea.

After that whole debacle with Rainbow Dash had been sorted out, and some semblance of normal life had gotten back into their lives, Rarity had been only mildly surprised when Fluttershy returned hers. Poor Fluttershy had never really been entirely on board with the whole plan to take Rainbow’s head down a notch or seven, so to Rarity, it was no real surprise that Fluttershy had passed her costume back to Rarity.

A little surprising was Applejack passing hers back. Though she had not given a real reason to Rarity beyond ‘just don’t see any point in keepin’ it’, Rarity suspected it was to stop Apple Bloom from pestering her about it. More surprising still was Pinkie Pie giving her costume to Rarity, though from the caked-on flour and encrusted drool, Rarity suspected that Pinkie Pie had been using it to entertain the Cake’s twins, and simply got tired of having it around. 

But Rarity had never expected Twilight Sparkle to return hers. Given how adamant the then-unicorn had been about her plan, Rarity was sure that she would never get Twilight’s costume back. But get it back she had, and a confession that though she still didn’t think she was wrong, she admitted that it hadn’t been the best way to go about it. 

****Time****

But that had still left Rarity with four costumes, sitting up in her attic. So evidently, she had boxed them up, and forgotten about them.  She considered for a moment, taking the costumes out and burning them-the others clearly never wanted to see them again, and Rarity knew that Rainbow Dash would never want to see them. But Rarity was loath to throw anything away, so she simply boxed them back up, and put them back in her attic, this time right at the very back, underneath some of her earliest creations, and there they could stay.