//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Enough // by MuddyHikoku //------------------------------// “Uh, Rarity, I’d like to return this suit” It had been 3 days since the incident with the Mare’s wedding dress, and it was clear that Rarity was only starting to feel worse. The quality of her work was beginning to slide, evident by the gentlecolt standing in her doorway holding a suit. “What do you mean darling? Is something wrong with your suit?” Rarity asked. She was starting to look worse for wear, her unkempt mane and the bags under her eyes indicating she hadn’t slept properly in days. “You completely forgot the inner lining of the suit. It’s practically unwearable, the material you used is so itchy on my skin!” “Oh I’m sorry darling, I’ll fix it up right away. Come back in around 2 hours and I’ll make it simply marvelous!” The gentlecolt said his thanks and left the suit with a very fatigued Rarity. Soon as he left the door, Rarity simply collapsed onto the floor. Opalescense walked up to her, snuggling next to her body. “Oh Opalescense, what is wrong with me?” She asked her cat, half-hoping to get an answer. The cat simply continued to snuggle next to her, seemingly ignoring her troubles. Rarity sighed, it was clear trying to vent to her cat wasn’t going to do anything. She picked herself up and began to work on the suit as per her customers request. “Alright, an inner lining? Should be pretty easy, just need some wool…” Rarity muttered to herself, searching her drawers for any wool she could use. She soon found out however that not only was she out of wool, but most of her materials as well. The constant stream of work had not left her with a lot of time to do anything, one of which being shopping. “Well, I guess this calls for a quick trot to the marketplace to grab some new materials.” Rarity sighed to herself. She did not have time for this, but it had to be done. She grabbed some money and galloped towards the market, not even closing the door behind her. Rarity made it to the market, panting after her mad dash to get there. It was bustling as usual, with the smell of fresh products complementing the cacophony of voices asking for cheaper prices and different products. Rarity was in no mood to enjoy the markets atmosphere however and quickly tried to find her usual material stand. As she pushed through the crowds to try and find her usual little corner of the market, she noticed she was attracting more attention than usual. Ponies all around her were staring at her, whispering to each other as they watched. Rarity suddenly slowed down, starting to feel self-conscious. “Why are they staring at me? Is it my mane? Is there mud on my hooves?” As Rarity began rapidly trying to fix her mane, she overheard 2 ladies behind her. One of them was a customer for Rarity only a few days prior. “She forgot to add laces to my dress when I requested them, I swear she’s losing her edge!” Rarity stopped completely, the comment hitting her hard. More comments began to drift towards Rarity, the noise of the marketplace seeming to grow quieter. “Did you know she used a completely different colour for my dress yesterday? That mare needs to get herself together.” “When I gave her my shirt to repair, she somehow made another tear! Why’d I even bother going to her?” As the comments began to grow, Rarity began to panic. She realised it now, all the ponies staring at her were customers from the past few days. All of them staring at her with disappointment and frustration. Hyperventilating, she began galloping home. She couldn’t bear it, the overwhelming sense of failure. She needed to go, needed to hide. She kept running, trying to get home and hide away for as long as she needed. She saw her boutique in sight and started making a mad dash towards her door. Then she saw him. She stopped right in her tracks, staring in complete disbelief at the pony currently waiting in her house. Hoity Toity was standing in her house, presumably looking around for the fashion designer that lived there. Under normal circumstances, Rarity would have been ecstatic to have such a high profile pony visit her humble abode. At that particular moment however, Rarity felt nothing but fear. Her chest began to squeeze as she began to breathe rather erratically. She couldn’t handle this right now, she didn’t want to. “Ah, there you are Rarity!” Hoity Toity had noticed her presence and started trotting towards her at an even pace. Rarity, realising it was too late to back out now, took a deep breath and tried to keep herself together. “Oh my goodness, Hoity Toity! What are you doing here?” Rarity exclaimed, trying her best to have a look of surprise on her face. “Why my fair Rarity, with fashion week coming to a close soon, I need to get my clothes line finished and ready to dazzle the world! However, the designer I hired has caught the flu and is unable to finish off my last batch of dresses, so I turn to you my dear! Your reputation does precede you after all.” Rarity forced a smile and said her thanks. “So how many orders need to be complete darling?” She questioned. “I was thinking 25 dresses from you my dear, I’ll need them by tomorrow.” Rarity froze up. She was overworked with customer requests already, she didn’t have the time to do an extra 25 dresses! Especially in such a short time frame. Rarity began to silently panic, somehow managing to keep her outward polite appearance intact. “So will you do the order Rarity?” Hoity asked. “Surely a mare with talents such as yourself will be able to complete this request easily!” In a state of panic, Rarity just said what came to her mind. “Of course, I can get those orders done!” She blurted out, a feeling of regret and panic as soon as she finished her sentence. “Excellent! I will see you tomorrow then, best of luck!” As Hoity began to trot away, Rarity politely waved and said her goodbye’s. As soon as he left eyesight, Rarity dashed into her home. The feelings of panic were beginning to become too much. “Oh, what have I done?” Rarity wailed. “I can’t do this, I don’t have the talent to do this! There’s so much to do and I don’t have the time to do it, and I keep failing everything!” Rarity ran up to her room, the feelings of panic making way for feelings of despair. She burst into the room, the bottle of cider entering her view. She stared at it, a sense of calm suddenly overtaking her. “I”ll just have a drink, Applejack said it’s good for calming people down, it’ll be good for me!” Rarity exclaimed to herself. She walked up to the bottle, opening the bottle up with her magic. It looked as delicious as ever, the sunlight filtering through the window giving the bottle an orange glow. She sat on the floor, staring at the levitating open bottle. She moved bottle towards her, closing her eyes as the rim of the bottle began to meet her lips… “NO!” Rarity screamed, throwing the bottle away. It smashed onto a wall, spraying cider and broken glass all over the floor. “I can’t be weak! I gotta stay strong! I have to, I have to…” Rarity burst into tears, curling up on the floor. It was all becoming too much and she didn’t know what to do. “Rarity?” Rarity looked up, making out Pinkie through her watery eyes. “Oh, hello darling. I’m sorry you have to see me in such a deplorable state.” Rarity sat up, trying to get herself somewhat back together. Pinkie beckoned behind her and suddenly the rest of Rarity’s friends walked into the room with her. Fluttershy, Applejack, Twilight, Rainbow Dash. All of them were here with Pinkie. Rarity was rather taken aback by her friend's sudden entrance. Twilight stepped forward. “Rarity, Pinkie told us how you were feeling and we figured the comments that were being made around town probably were making you feel worse. We all agreed to meet you, so we came to your house. The door was open and we heard a smash upstairs, so we let ourselves in” she remarked. Applejack was the next to speak “Sugarcube, we know you’re not holdin’ up well. What’s wrong?” Rarity began to panic again. She didn’t want this to happen. She loved her friends dearly, the last thing she wanted was them to worry about her. Trying to think of an excuse, Pinkie spoke up and cut her train of thought. “It’s ok to tell us Rarity, we’re here for you” Pinkie stated, a look of calm on her face. Seeing Pinkie in such a state, Rarity finally broke down. “Oh I’m so sorry!” Rarity wailed. “I didn’t want to make you worry about me! I just can’t handle this, there is so much going on and I keep making mistakes! I keep failing everyone, and there is so much I have to do and Hoity Toity came and gave me 25 dresses to do by tomorrow and I still have to repair all those clothes and a bunch more requests and I keep messing it all up and...and…” Rarity burst into tears, falling to the floor once again. Fluttershy walked up to her, sitting next to her and placing a wing on her body. “Rarity, it’s ok to make mistakes! Nobody can be perfect and you simply just got a bigger workload than you thought you could handle” Fluttershy remarked. “You aren’t a failure, you just need some help with your work” Rainbow Dash cut in “That’s why all of us are going to help you get your work done! We’re going to work real hard and make it soooo awesome!” Rarity sat up again, Fluttershy’s wing still wrapped around her body. “I can’t ask for you girls to do that for me, you’re all so busy with your own work!” Applejack chirped up “Sugarcube, we all care fo’ you very much and just want you to be happy! We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you get back on track.” Everyone nodded in agreement. “So where do you need us Rarity! Oh oh oh, can I do decorations? I loooove decorations” Pinkie chirped. Rarity, touched that her friends would go to such lengths for her, took a deep breath and stood back up. “Alright girls, we got a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it, so let's get started!” It took them all night and all day to do it, but the girls were finally finished. All the customer requests had been complete, both new and re-do’s, and Hoity’s twenty five dresses were complete and collected, he himself remarking at how beautiful they were. Even though the girls weren’t trained tailors and a couple of incidents occurred (including Pinkie getting a dress stuck on the ceiling), they managed to produce the best dresses Rarity had ever designed. With all the work finally complete, the girls heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank you so much girls, I don’t think I could have done it without you” said Rarity. “No problem Rarity, we’re just glad to help” Twilight remarked. “At least you’re feeling better now, right?” Rarity opened her mouth to speak. She wanted to say yes, that she felt a lot better. She wanted to say that now that the work was over, she could get back to her usual self. She wanted to say that it was all ok now. But it wasn’t ok. She still felt terrible. The work being finished didn’t change the fact she still failed to do the customers requests properly to begin with. It didn’t change the fact she had a complete mental breakdown and destroyed one of her friends memorabilias practically right in front of her friend. It didn’t change the fact she was so hopeless her friends needed to bail her out, sacrificing their own time just to fix her mistakes. Her friends had tried so hard to make her feel better and all it did was just make her feel hopeless. She couldn’t tell them though. She couldn’t crush their hopes after all the hard work they put in. It would be cruel of her. So what left her mouth was “yes, thank you girls!” The girls cheered at the remark, taking pride in their apparent victory. Rarity played along, if only for the sake of her friends. As they all got up and began leaving, Pinkie turned to Rarity. “We should do this again sometime, I’ll bring cake!” She exclaimed. “Sure Pinkie, anytime” Rarity sighed. As her friends finally left her home, Rarity shut the door and slid down onto the floor. She began to silently cry, not even upset or distressed anymore. She just hurt, there was no other way to describe it. She had failed, made mistakes that she felt had cost her so much. She felt hopeless, angry and alone. As the sun set and the moon began to rise, Rarity continued to cry, letting her sounds of anguish echo throughout the quiet night.