10 Months Later
The Canterlot Independent Art Gallery had seen bigger crowds, but it had certainly seen smaller ones, too.
All in all, Rarity thought, a delightfully cozy turnout. Ponies of all walks of life strolled in from the bright, gas-lit streets of Canterlot, though most were aficionados of obscure art or oil painting. They huffed as they came into the warm air, brushed the light Hearth’s Warming snow from their coats and hats, then headed over to a table to sign the guestbook. Rachcoltinov played gently on a huge gramophone in one corner of the studio, and two ponies in white dinner jackets served hot spiced wine and fine cheese atop hard, crisp crackers. The little hall was filled with hushed conversation as ponies wandered aimlessly from display to display, their reactions mixed but decidedly contemplative.
All through the hall, mounted on pristine white walls, Toola Roola’s paintings hung in the glow of carefully positioned and metered lamplight, the gentle pulse of mantle fires washing over the oily ripples and strokes with a warmth the canvases hadn’t known in decades. It made for a startling contrast, those surreal and twisted paintings set before the bright, curious, and introspective of Canterlot’s elite. Rather than take offense at the juxtaposition, however, many of the visitors seemed at least intrigued by the strange and bizarre display.
“Excuse me,” one older stallion said, striding up to Rarity and peering at her curiously. “Am I correct that you are the sponsor of this exhibition?”
“I am indeed,” she replied, smiling brightly at him. She wore a pale blue sweater with a matching beret, and she had toned down the curls in her mane into gentle, shimmering purple waves. “How are you finding the art so far?”
“Well, it’s... curious, to say the least,” the stallion said, choosing his words carefully. “If I’m to be fully honest, though, I’m not sure that I care for it myself. It really seems a touch unpleasant, particularly at this time of year. I was hoping for something a touch more festive.”
“Well, I can certainly appreciate that. As it happens though, that’s precisely why I chose to sponsor during the holiday season,” Rarity explained, following as the stallion moved towards one the paintings. “There’s a larger story told by these paintings, and I felt it was a good time for ponies to explore it.”
“A story, you say? And what might that be?”
“Well, these works were painted by the artist near the end of her life. It’s my interpretation that she used the fantastic and the strange to portray emotions she didn’t know how to deal with, emotions that many of us try to shut down or hide away.”
Rarity stopped in front of the painting where a merry-go-round with the rotting words “Le Carrousel de Temps” painted on it presided over ruinous fairgrounds. “Whether she knew what she was doing is debatable, but I believe she infused these paintings with all the despair and hatred she had begun to trap herself in. The tragedy is that I don’t think they brought her any peace. They only served to amplify her misery, feeding into a self-destructive cycle that ultimately cost her life.”
“So why display them?” the stallion sniffed, raising an eyebrow at the apocalyptic scene. “Art should make ponies feel good, no? It should be inspirational, challenging, encouraging to growth, that sort of thing.”
“Art can certainly do that,” Rarity countered. “But we cannot deny that anger, frustration, even hatred and malice are a part of us also. Toola Roola’s legacy showed me that we’re too easily repulsed by these things, so we shun them, shut them out, and try to pretend we don’t see them. When we do that, though, we lose part of ourselves. This art forces us to acknowledge things we would rather didn’t exist. Sometimes, we need to be led to understand our darker sides, not hide from them.”
Rarity glanced at him to see if he was tiring of her explanation. He didn’t seem to be, so she carried on carefully. “There’s a little bit of magic in these paintings, I feel. I think if we can get just a little bit better at understanding our darker selves, learning to deal with pain and vehemence rather than hide it, we’ll get that much better at understanding others and helping them to work past their own pain. Toola Roola died alone, but with the help of others, we can dilute and dispel these darker things. That’s what I take from her life, anyway.”
“Well, that sounds a touch idealistic, but I can appreciate the sentiment. I would argue that such feelings are nothing more than passing fancies ponies should learn to control. Emotions don’t have any intrinsic power by themselves.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Rarity looked over her shoulder and smiled as she saw Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie wander into the gallery. “I think things like kindness and lightheartedness have a power all their own. Not all magic comes from spells and incantations.”
“Perhaps,” the stallion said, also glancing back. “Well, thank you for sharing your feelings with me. I think I can understand why the pieces have significance to you, at least.”
“A pleasure. Now, if you’ll excuse me...”
She left the stallion to his viewing and walked over to where Pinkie and Fluttershy stood waiting for her. As she walked, she took note of the various conversations she passed by. Most seemed to share the stallion’s confusion about why anyone would want to paint such things, but a few seemed to be speculating on the power the paintings seemed to have to stir up their emotions and what that could possibly mean. One Unicorn, a mare with a purple coat and a deep violet mane, seemed to be giving an impromptu lecture on the fantastique period and how deeply flawed the artist’s understanding of the movement must have been. Most ponies in her group seemed to be tuning her out.
Rarity didn’t mind. It wasn’t up to her how the art was received, or what ponies assumed about her for sponsoring it. It was out there, to impact or be forgotten by ponies however it happened to turn out.
Exactly as it should be.
“Hi Rarity,” Fluttershy said. “Are you ready to go?”
“I think so.” Rarity turned and surveyed the display one more time. “I’m positively famished. Are you still up to try that restaurant we saw on the way here?”
“You bet!” Pinkie said happily.
Rarity followed her friends out into the chilly mountain air and shivered, though she smiled as she took in the busy, festive streets around her.
“I do not feel like going back to Ponyville tomorrow,” she complained. “Canterlot winters are always so divine. After a week here, going back to old mare Hoarfrost’s idea of winter is going to kill me!”
“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Fluttershy asked. “She’s retiring. After the nine-day whiteout last year, I guess a lot more ponies have been saying maybe she ought to step down and let somepony else take over.”
“And she’s doing it?” Rarity asked, incredulous. “Thank goodness, I thought she would hold onto those clouds until she froze to them.”
“Well, I think she was getting tired of it herself,” Fluttershy chuckled. “Anyway, they actually hired one of my old friends from Cloudsdale to take over. She’s really nice, and I think she’ll want to run things a little more actively than just coating everything in snow all the time.”
“Oh, marvelous,” Rarity said, coming to the door of a brightly lit restaurant and holding it open for her friends. “You simply must introduce me to her when she arrives. I’m sure she’ll do a splendid job!”
* * *
“I am going to murder that weatherpony,” Rarity groused as she and Pinkie trudged up the muddy hill at the edge of Ponyville’s park.
“Aw, it’s not so bad!” Pinkie piped up, bouncing effortlessly next to Rarity. “Rain in winter can be fun!”
“Freezing rain?” Rarity snapped back, giving her bedraggled mane another shake. “Completely at random in the middle of town? If this Rainbow Dash is trying to one-up Hoarfrost for ‘worst winter manager ever,’ she’s off to a terrific start!”
“I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it,” Pinkie said, looking up to where several Pegasi were flitting about, trying to bring some order to the roiling, angry clouds that still lay overhead. “And at least they got it to stop. It’s a new town and new weather after all.”
“We’ll see,” Rarity allowed, walking through the low metal gate and in amongst the gravestones. There was a slight breeze, and while it chilled Rarity to the bone, the whispering sound it made as it blew through the dead grass and empty branches brought a nice serenity to the place. Any stronger and it would have sounded threatening, but it seemed that things were content to calm down now that the storm had faded.
A few rows in, Rarity turned aside and found the stone she was searching for. She placed one of the flower arrangements she carried at the base of a large, grey stone with battered, dog-eared book cutie mark carved on it.
They then walked a few rows farther back. Among the larger, better-tended burials was a small, city-funded marker of plain black granite. Toola Roola’s cutie mark—a brush with lines of paint swirling out from it—and her initials were carved there in shallow relief. Rarity bent down and arranged the small bundle of flowers she carried in the little vase built into the stone. Then she stepped back, nodding slightly in satisfaction.
“...Do you think she’s happy?” Pinkie asked. “Now that ponies are talking about her art again, I mean.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know, Pinkie,” Rarity replied with a sigh. “Even now, I don’t think I have any idea what she wanted to achieve when she set out to start painting. But it’s a different world today than the one she grew up in thirty years ago. Ponies today are much more appreciative of unconventional art, so I hope this would have given her some joy at least, if she had have lived to see it. “
“Yeah,” Pinkie said. For a moment, they just stood there together, two ponies with their manes gently tossed by the wind around them. Then Pinkie asked, “Why are you doing it, anyway? I thought you decided those paintings were full of all kinds of evil Earth Pony magic.”
“That’s not it exactly,” Rarity said, eyeing Pinkie skeptically. “I believe she accidentally gave those paintings some kind of power, and that power is based in negative emotions, yes.”
“So why put them out there?” Pinkie asked. “Wouldn’t it be better to burn them or something?”
“I don’t think so,” Rarity sighed. “With Unicorn magic, at least, destroying something bound with magic only destroys a tether and sets the power loose. That’s how a lot of magical anomalies are created, actually. But there’s more to it than that.”
“How so?”
“I’ve come to think that if magic has a flaw, it’s that it makes us a little too quick to just try to obliterate anything negative we come across,” Rarity said. “It’s very tempting to just look for an instant fix, to destroy something or lock it away where we think we don’t have to look at it. And maybe sometimes that’s the appropriate response. But I decided it might be possible to take away the paintings’ powers by putting them out where everypony can see it and work to understand it. Some of the paintings might even be sold before they go back into storage, and I think that would also weaken it.”
Rarity turned and looked out over Ponyville. “I’ve learned that dark powers are strongest when we’re alone. Toola Roola made her own loneliness, trapping herself in a cycle of amplifying magic. She took it in, poured it out, and took it in all over again, and it killed her. She lived and died in her very own horror story. I was merely brushed with the aftermath, and you know what that did to me. Now that part of her isn’t alone anymore.”
“I hope you’re right,” Pinkie said. “And I hope this ends all that nasty magic for you.”
“I don’t think it will,” Rarity said, smiling sadly at Pinkie. “I don’t think it will ever be completely gone.”
“Why not?”
Rarity paused. Pinkie waited, head tilted curiously as Rarity turned back and looked down at the gravestone.
“...I still see her sometimes. Every now and then, I’ll be making something in my room, and the door will open. Then I’ll feel her watch me for a little while before fading away. Other times, I’ll be fitting a client in the mirror, and I’ll catch a glimpse of her, just at the edge of the glass before she vanishes. She and I are very alike. We nearly lived the same kind of life. But we’re different too, and I think she hated me for that. I know I’m not bound to repeat the same mistakes she did.”
“Isn’t there... isn’t there some way to get rid of her completely? Put her to rest or something?”
“If there is, I don’t know how. I’ve looked into it a little, but information on this sort of thing is vague and conflicting at the best of times. The most I’ve been able to piece together is that she isn’t really Toola Roola, not quite. It’s... more like an incomplete painting of her. I don’t know if it has enough real intelligence to want anything rational or be satisfied with anything. But as far as I can tell, we were able to come to some semblance of an understanding, all those months ago. And helping ponies understand what happened to her, giving her voice back in a way, seems to have weakened the power enough to give us the peace we have now. I’m content with that.”
“If you’re sure,” Pinkie said skeptically. “I don’t know that I could be.”
“That said, however.” Rarity turned a little and gave Pinkie a sidelong glance. “I’m afraid your promise about the boutique still stands. I don’t want anypony getting the idea that there’s something off about my shop. The last thing I need is for ponies to start coming to the shop for esoteric legends instead of dresses.”
“I’ve never said a word about it,” Pinkie affirmed. “And I never will.”
“Thank you, darling. I appreciate it, really.” Rarity smiled, but then she shivered and tugged her coat closer around her shoulders. “Ooh, it’s cold. I need to head back. Would you like to pop in for some tea?”
“Aw, thanks, but no thanks. I promised the Cakes I’d look after the bakery today.”
“Alright then,” Rarity said, heading towards the gate. “Thanks for coming with me. I’m sure she appreciates it.”
“Heh, no problemo,” Pinkie replied with a nervous chuckle.
Rarity parted ways from Pinkie in the park and made her way back home. The market was nearly deserted—thanks to the new featherbrain’s weather antics, she thought—and the few ponies she met passed with little more than a friendly greeting.
As she turned down the southern road, Carousel Boutique came into view at the bottom of the hill. It would be due for repainting in a few months; the brilliant white, purple and gold paint she had applied was already beginning to look a touch weathered. The circular windows she had ordered to replace the horrible rectangular ones greeted her warmly though, and the bright purple door seemed to beckon her home.
As she walked inside, warm air washed over her. Bright racks stuffed with custom designs gleamed in the light from the skylights she had built into the wider sections of the roof. The clean, shining mirrors scattered throughout the room amplified the light, and it almost felt like spring inside.
As she pulled her boots off and wandered upstairs, she pondered the next spring line she would put together. Gemstones were definitely coming back into style, and there was so much she could do with pastels.
I’ll have to get Fluttershy to model again for me—she was practically made for spring colors.
Before she started on her work, however, she walked past the sewing table in her bedroom and over to the line of trunks set along the wall. She mainly used them for storage, and as she opened one, she dug out several half-finished designs and scraps, laying them aside as she dug deeper and deeper into the trunk. At the very bottom was a carefully folded mass of black and white cloth, and as she lifted it out, she opened it and ironed out the creases with her magic. The black dress she had made ten months ago hovered in the air, as pristine as when she had first sewed it.
Rarity contemplated the dress. Irrational melancholy welled up in her as she looked at its old-fashioned collar and veil. She knew now that there was technically nothing wrong with it. Every inch of fabric was perfectly cut and stitched, and it was a masterful replica of Gilded Age formal wear, though with a modern flair.
What was wrong was that it made her feel sad in the exact same way the paintings made her feel angry or disgusted. She didn’t think she had Toola Roola's power or had transferred her emotions into it when she made it; rather, she suspected that when she took over the boutique, whatever power Toola had left behind had started to infect Rarity’s own art as well. It still brought a chill to her to think of how she had begun to be trapped in it, let alone how close it had come to literally destroying her.
But she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of the dress either. The things it represented—her own, very real feelings of loneliness, fear, and regret at the time—would always be a part of her. She couldn’t get rid of the dress any more than she could forget those first few months in the Carousel Boutique. She had been changed.
She suspected Ms. Dog-Ear had bought one of the old mirrors from the gallery and kept it in the library for a similar reason. Rarity often wondered if it was simple sentiment, or if Ms. Dog-Ear had sometimes glimpsed her old friend in the mirror, the way Rarity occasionally would. If so, Rarity thought she could understand why Ms. Dog-Ear would hold onto it. Even if it would be better to purge such things from their lives, Rarity wasn’t sure it was possible.
And so she kept the dress tucked away where it didn’t bother her much, and on the days when she couldn’t help but take it out and look at it, she usually made plans to visit with Fluttershy or Pinkie Pie as soon as possible to counter its strange power.
It’s not ideal, but when is anything ever ideal? she mused, folding it up again and piling the rest of the trunk’s contents back on top of it. That done, she trotted back to the sewing table, brightly lit by the large, oval windows in front of it, and lit the lamp above it just for good measure. The incandescent mantles blazed to life as the lines hissed gently. Reaching across the room with her magic, she wound the crank on her gramophone and lowered a record onto it, setting the needle down gently as she picked up her quill.
Just as she was about to get to work, however, she looked out and spotted her parents walking slowly down the road, an unsteady Sweetie Belle toddling along between them. Rarity rolled her eyes and sighed. As long as she lived in the same town as them, they seemed quite content to pop in unannounced at least every other week.
Still, Winter Wrap Up is a ways off. I can afford to put off sketching for a little while longer. With a smile and a shake of her head, she shut the lamp off and lifted the lever from the record, though she didn’t bother shutting off the rotating drive before returning downstairs. This time, she took several heavy pieces of protective gear just in case the weatherponies decided another rogue storm was in order.
As she was about to open the door, however, she felt a slight prickle on the back of her neck, causing her to look back at the showroom. All she saw was a room filled with the fruits of her hard work and ambitions. There wasn’t another pony to be seen. Yet she could just feel, like the tiniest breeze had passed by, a slight hint of envy and longing. Then it was gone, and the showroom was just a showroom once more.
Rarity smiled sadly, then opened the door and left the room behind her.
We only get one turn on this merry-go-round, Rarity thought, smiling and returning her parents’ waves as they led Sweetie Belle to the front of the boutique. We shouldn’t ride it alone.
From upstairs, Rarity and her family could be seen through the window as they made their way towards the park. Rarity picked up Sweetie Belle and swung her about, and her sister giggled and fought her magical grip. As the sound of their laughter faded, the soft clicking and clanking of the gramophone grew quiet as the spring wound down and the carousel slowed, the record falling still as the spinning came to an end.