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// One Sunset Two Hearts 
// Story: Sewing Sunset Serenity 
// by brandygang 
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Your name is Rarity Belle. And you are just so tired.

A week of orders came in for you this week. The usual crop of course, fabulous new couture trends and talk of the week fashions. Fashion is everything to you of course, fashion is your life! You've dabbled in fashion, from sewing handbags to the most elite and elaborate gowns for rich clients and even Princesses (Your best friend, Twilight Sparkle a magical unicorn withstanding) across the land. This had always been your passion, you make a business out of it, a good living. It's not a bad job, it pays the bills, provides a service, and makes yourself a role model to your beloved sister, Sweetie Belle. You would never give up fashion, not in a thousand lifetimes could you ever imagine giving it up. But sometimes it just gets so tiring. It's sundown, the setting of the evening sun from the delivery of Luna's own workings would soon be at hand. You still have over 30 orders to carry out, and that's just for tonight, not counting the new orders that will arrive for tomorrow. You put the needle down, yawn painstakingly, and go take a walk out the porch of your Boutique. You'll atleast watch the sunset for the next twenty minutes before devoting yourself to your life's solemn sworn craft.

As it begins to set, you begin to reflect back on your own life. The lovely successes and beautiful clothes, and all the fame they bring attracts you to your career. On the other hand, the endless workload, the constant mistakes and mess-ups... it weighs heavy on your conscience. You watch the sun slowly begin to dip into the horizon as your horn starts to swirl a candycorn orange. You thought about how you tried to sew a perfect dress for your best friend's sister-in-law, Princess Cadence, for her baby shower only to massively overestimate the size- a bold insult if there ever was one. Your own fur starts to fill with an ashen grey shade, and your hooves elongate.  It's bad enough to hear see and know how much of a fuck up you are despite how hard you try. It's even worse when your friends and most valuable peers who cannot but confirm how much of a fuck up you are and punish you for it in their own degrading, scornful, alienating way. Passively Aggressively. With smiles, excuses, treating you with an air of infallibility. Your hooves have split into hands and feet, and spine starts clutching you at the waist, pulling you up as you watch the stars begin to arise with the sun halfway set. The coiffed purple mane darkens and becomes spiky black atop your head. You think about that fearful, sort of pain-knowing that everyone hates you and that you are the weak link of the entire group- it's enough to have anyone go mad. Everyone has their talents, and you love fashion! You gain a pitch black T-shirt fit for a young woman and a bright red pleated skirt. But sometimes, what if fashion isn't enough, what do you do when that passion fails? Especially if you have the emotional fragility of a child. The shape of your eyes becomes slits with yellow sclera  as your face flattens and shrinks, gaining anthropomorphic features, and finely tuned, sleek feminine ones at that.

When you've reached your breaking point, when you can't absorb anything anymore, when you are completely and utterly alone, you go inward into yourself. The sun is almost two-thirds set, and you begin developing breasts, although they serve no functional purpose to your people, just like you. When you've got nothing higher, no substance inwards, not from threads or dresses or superficial material gain, you stop feeling everything, and your capacity to connect with another person is gone. You recall all the times your friends have been there for you, whether it's Fluttershys ever-giving kindness, or Dash and AJ's hearty companionship. You cannot even imagine ever sharing the times Twilight has confided in you her struggles, the very burden she bares, whether it's simply a new magical equation, a breakthrough in Equine Astral Field Theory, or political woes and worries about the heart breaking decisions tasked onto her, to lead and aspire, to decide doctrines that affect so many lives and the world in a way that your pretty dresses couldn't even begin to compare to. Your horn has split into two and moved across opposite sides of your head, curving on one half inwards from the tip-in.

You've always tried to smile and bare it during those moments, much less feel entitled to complain about having too many orders or ruining a stitch, anything from a spoiled primadonna like yourself. As you think of your situation and hinge on your own defensiveness, you lose your fur completely and it becomes shiny gray rubber skin, truly alien. the yellow of your eyes spreads to your nails and Jade Green wax now matches the color of your new envious blood, you are a jade blood afterall. But you suppose putting your problems aside isn't always out of any true respectable empathy for your friends concerns. This state of mind is born out of self defense and preservation- the brains last resort to surviving whatever trauma it has going on against them. Like the trauma of existing under a blistering sun only you and your caste can survive, or trying endlessly to sort quarrels among friends as bloodthirsty as your race will allow.

That's just what it's like being you, Rarity. You think of that name some more with increasing numbness, realizing how that name, that identity isn’t you anymore.  An empty calm chases away any glee left in your system. You feel yourself sit back against the porch and watch the lovely sunset with increasing romantic inclinations. You completely retreat back into your mind. Retreat so far that it seems to disappear for a moment, and when it returns it plays a mellow hymn quite different. An entirely new tune for your soul.


The tail and cutiemark once belonging to you fades into thin air, returning to nothingness like the remainders of your equine features. With a curt glance up at the setting sun and an uneasy smile, you sit down and watch the star fade from view. Everything you formerly knew doesn't seem so important anymore, gone from your mind completely. In it's place new, equally placid troubles plague you. You can see it now, with how each of them improves as a person after each conflict with the party, another life risking endeavor for some clandestine event once more,more self-destructive acts kept under wraps, but in the long run deteriorates each of them, and everyone mentally. Passes out and returns at a loss, be it ethically, spiritually, even physically in most cases. But that's why you're here, it's why you need to continue to live and bother, to fuss and help. The sun finally sets giving way to nightfall, the rest of the trolls will be out soon. Nighttime isn't really your cup of tea, you're more of a Daytime Hoot-beast. It may seem grating to some, to have you forcefully aide them, to be an auxiliary force in their lives whether they liked it or not at every turn, but that's just what you do. If they don't want to be smothered, they should take care of themselves before you'll compelled to do it for them. 

You sigh and start to walk back from top of your hive's Tower. Unfinished clothes in bright and colorful fabric sits everywhere. You have so much to do, so much Fashion to finish, it's not so bad. At the very least it takes your mind off your friends for a while.

Your name is Kanaya, and you've decided to get busy.