Rarity Industries

by Blue Cloud Blues

Chapter 1: Ponyville Routine

The sky seemed a darker gray than it ought to have been on a decent day of any weather. The street stretched without a soul both ways, with the houses dead-eyed, windows just as gray as the sky. A few were deserted - even after the roundups had gotten underway, a few ponies had found it best for their peace of mind that they settle somewhere, anywhere, further from Tartarus than Ponyville. And all three of the dresses Rarity had posted in front of the boutique days ago – beautiful dresses with ribbons and pleats and tags bearing modest, repeatedly slashed-through prices flapping out from the lapels, turned-over old hats on the ground for each in case somepony in a flash of charity or pity felt obliged to actually pay the price – were still untouched.

In the previous weeks, as her sales had dropped, she had sunk through and past levels of impatience, indignation, desperation, and solid disappointment. By now she had slid into clean and tired hopelessness, and could not seem to feel surprised.

She inhaled, long and deep enough to air herself out whatever little buzzing haze of stress her system still had not quite given up on producing. Then she pulled the tags off the dresses to mark down one last time and returned inside. Her hooves on the flooring still jarred her groggy and unbecomingly irritable mind. Of all ponies to have left to fight with Celestia, Twilight could've and would have measured and accounted for all the time Canterlot had lost attempting to push the sun and moon into motion without the princess’ magic, and drawn up a schedule in loving faithfulness to her teacher’s. Twilight had left before any such action was called for, and now Rarity – everypony, probably – slept restless, broken, misplaced hours that were inevitably, by some standard, the wrong ones. Wrong amount of light, wrong space between periods of sleep, or all the worst of both.

It was easy enough to do something unproductive in an unproductive mode. She set the tags down to let them wait and watched the blank in her mind, and from a cramped and gone-stuffy place inside her, in dropped the idea to make another unsellable dress.

There was more point in keeping her trade sharp than doing more tidying up. Though she was the only pony to enjoy it, the inside of the boutique was flawless - spotless, stainless, Rarity’s image in each of the mirrors greeting her across the main room was smudgeless, catching and copying every step she made as she crossed the room as a perfect Rarity in Glass. Hardly a one of her mannequins was undressed, and every presentable one was coordinated in its position in the windows. Tools were stored. Fabric was shelved - she drew two sheets.

Her hooves continued their strangely noisy clacking across the floor.

Her inspiration room, quite contrastingly, was fertile, in the same ungainly, filthy way as rotting mulch and mossy slush-mud, and she had worked as hard here as she had elsewhere on the opposite to ensure that nothing was in place. Once, she had even danced, improvising use of any string of beads or box of paper she caught in a spontaneous telekinetic grab as a prop, and sworn Opalescence to secrecy afterwards.

She flapped her cloth, a pale yellow sheet and a baby blue, down at the sewing machine, richly surrounded in the middle of the back wall. In the flash of her horn she felt another short, plunging pang of sleepiness, which faded as the machine revved. She guided with her forehooves and the needle worked and weaved in a measured pattern, behind its punching and pulling leaving a tail of uniform and straight-line stitches at five times the rate of the most perfectionist and practiced horn work.

She had written a report on the inventor of the Equestrian sewing machine once as a filly, with a picture of the severe white-coated and strawberry-maned Fine Eye secured at the top and perfect center with a border of tape. This had been months after discovering her affinity for clothes-making but before she’d gotten her cutie mark, and she’d privately pouted at a picture of Fine Eye’s, a thread looping through a silver needle. Rarity was one of the ponies who'd tried on figurative hats of every kind as a foal – not the everything Sweetie Belle dabbled in now with her foal friends and hopefully kept herself pleasantly distracted with in Manehattan with their parents, but crafting: she’d taken turns sculpting, gardening, and painting, and then aborted before one of the stains on her lovely white coat could refuse to clean; cooking, which she had also shied away from while she was ahead with a hint of hard-forgotten guilt as she’d watched what had gone into her first cheesecake, even with her immature understanding of nutrition; and a bit of splashing her hooves into poetry, which had just been wrong, too quiet, and passive, and vague, waiting to be read and folding to a pony’s interpretation, not bold enough to hold, exist, and flirt, though she wouldn’t have put it that way then. Anyhow, she had gotten to know a passing phase when she fell under the influence of one, somewhere inside. Design and dressmaking hadn’t been one. When a whole school play's costumes hadn't brought out her cutie mark, she'd wondered with exasperation what possibly could.

And yet her special talent was not in fact gems any more than Fluttershy’s was butterflies.

Not that selling gems would serve her any better than selling dresses under these conditions.

Something moved lightly outside. In the very top of her vision was a little breeze of color, pink and yellow. The fabric and machine stopped between her hooves as she looked up. Gone.

She was on her hooves and to the front again, heart having picked up some speed and a dizziness flushing in and out of her head.

However long or short she’d been sewing, the streets were no longer empty. A warm little charge began to pick up in her brain and her ears twitched at the clusters of ponies gathering along the sides. Two royal guards in full armor started to pick up passengers down the street and a few Pegasi started to lower themselves from overhead, each one picking a gathered party and clopping to the ground nearby.

Rarity quickened her trot. Along the way down the street, a trio of mares group-hugged a friend home. She caught a glance of Ditzy Doo and Dinky past the greetings and in the middle of talking with no sign of relief; Ditzy’s mailbags were as bulky as they had been when she had taken off. Rarity leaned her neck a bit toward them as she passed. Ditzy said, “They weren’t letting anypony in.” Then with a slight sad lilt, “Not even to deliver the Cloudsdale Pegasus ponies’ mail from their friends!”

Rarity felt her mouth twist and a crawling along her spine.

Around a bend, Fluttershy hovered over Applejack in her wagon, where the latter had a snake-faced, gremlin-like straggler from the roundup boxed behind her pinned with a hoof planted in its back and a rope around its waist. She caught Fluttershy shaking her head slowly and a grunt from the scowling Applejack through the rope in her teeth, giving it a sharp tug. Then the Pegasus’s ears perked and head turned and the other’s attention followed hers.

“A good afternoon to you both,” Rarity called.

“Oh – hello, Rarity.” Fluttershy floated a concerned look back down at the earth mare, who had begun hustling with the rope to secure her catch.

“And Applejack.”

“Howdy, Rarity.” The farm pony grunted again as she pulled a knot tight, wringing a yelp out of the gremlin. She tossed her head and scattered sweat off her forelock, and took a breath. “We got nothing on Rainbow.”

“No. I’m sorry. I asked and asked the guards, bu-but they turned everypony away because it was too dangerous to go inside the city.”

“Didja really, sugarcube?”

“Oh, I tried being assertive!" Fluttershy's eyes were huge and her legs were tucked tight. "I was there for our friend, after all...”

Cloudsdale had been dangerous. Rarity lashed her tail at invisible bugs – invisible, but apparently real enough to aggravate that crawling enough to have her twitching. “I did overhear a bit from the mailmare.” She leaned in, narrowing her eyes, checking their messenger for anything she hadn’t realized she’d brought back – tension, scuffs, wear and tear that Rarity probably couldn’t interpret even if she caught it. “Did you happen to... see anything?”

She softened when Fluttershy cringed just before she began mumbling her response. “N-no... Plenty of us asked what was going on, but they wouldn’t say anything. They must have wanted to avoid, um – causing a panic.”

Anypony would have noticed a phantom storm or some sort of weather factory catastrophe even from the ground near Cloudsdale, surely. A fresh monster infestation, then? She tried to imagine Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts outraced and outfought by Tartarus birds. When she succeeded, she instead tried to settle herself weighing its probability and stomping in her decision on preposterously bad – the Sonic Rainboom pony, caught and eaten?

“Hey, uh, Rare...” Her attention snapped back outward to the mare in the cart, who had put on a slightly taut, rather sympathetic smile. The dramatic wears her heart on her fetlock again! Applejack turned away and then back with a basket in her teeth. Rarity cocked her head when, as she realized in a snap, she should have been bracing herself as the basket slipped just out of the edge of her telekinetic focus, and out from the pink checked cloth cover spilled a dozen apples, rolling and scattering. Rarity squeaked and swiveled on her hind legs, righting the basket, lifting the cloth, catching, replacing and rearranging. Applejack chuckled. “Yer late, you know. Big Macintosh already left with the Chokago shipment, but we remembered to save y’all some of what we got.”

Rarity satisfied herself with the fold of the cloth and offered up a somewhat sheepish smile, tempered from crashing gratitude and embarrassment at the ungraceful scramble. “Well, I am most thankful. I hope you don’t mind if I return home for my coin purse...”

“Don’t you worry none about the price. That basket’s on the Apple family.”

“Really?” The unicorn stood stalk straight again. “Surely, you...”

“We don’t need anything from you – no offense a' course. You know how rough business is lately. Everypony’s gotten so tight with their bits that prices on everything else keep gettin’ lower and lower. But...” A shrug emphasized her brightened grin. “We all gotta eat, and though the orchard's been better, we’re gettin’ by on our sales.”

“Well, I’m delighted to hear so.” And Rarity was too tired and now in addition too soothed and swept-over with appreciation to challenge the Element of Stubbornness in charity. It had only occurred to her while Applejack spoke that she had hardly eaten since yesterday’s lunch. She smiled her sweetest and bowed her head once to each of the others “Thank you so much, Applejack. And you, too, Fluttershy – don’t you dare fret about Cloudsdale. It was entirely out of your hooves.”

They’d already increase their fretting about Rainbow Dash enough to compensate, after all. Still, Fluttershy’s polite smile outdid anypony’s in sweetness as was Fluttershy's manner. The very concept of fretting blew away for a just moment, and settled itself back in.

“And take care, both of you.”

“We ain’t had any accidents yet! By now, Cerberus’s gonna roll over for Fluttershy when he smells her coming. Anyway, see y’all later.”

Rarity leaned down to the basket handle and imagined herself biting down, her nose that close to those dozen fresh express gift apples, and her stomach growled, and she grimaced. She glanced up to see if either of the others had reacted, but Applejack was busy hitching herself to the cart, with Fluttershy offering her help, settling on the ground. With a conclusive “Farewell!” she turned herself away with the basket hovering in blue light next to her head.

The cart rolled away behind her, the rumble of the wheels and one strangely petulant, foal-like howl from one of the creatures in the cages. And there went Applejack and Fluttershy, along with Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash in cleaning the Tartarus mess.

She returned home and set the basket on the clear kitchen counter, then lifted up the cloth, and willfully lay herself into a trance on the apples. They had a hot-stone red glow and their smell rose off of them like a sweet heat wave. She hadn't needed the reminder that Sweet Apple Acres was hardly at its peak – at least the farm had survived the rush of alien pests and stampedes of fire-breathing, fire-hooved monsters. But the orchard had been in that state for some time. Rarity lifted her pick, pinched the skin to popping between her teeth, and sucked on the bit of applemeat in her mouth. It was the best she had had in recent memory, which was more than enough. She took another bite, and another, and another.

Everypony had to eat, indeed. That was why Pinkie Pie could be counted on not to disappear from Ponyville to the extent that the capricious pony could be counted on for anything. The town loved Mr. and Mrs. Cake and their baking, the couple had twin foals to raise, and they too received fairly regular donations and discounted offers of ingredients from Sweet Apple Acres. Sugarcube Corner remained where and as it always stood.

Rarity chipped a last nibble out of the core and dropped it into the garbage. Perhaps she would see Pinkie. And decide on the way whether it was better that she did or didn’t pass on the news from Cloudsdale.

Ah, but first –

She snatched the dress tags off the table in the main room and with a purple pen - she had already used pink and blue - slashed through the numbers and worked in halved ones underneath, and returned to the three dresses in the front, tucking each one's tag back into place.

“Ohh, wait! Two more, please!”

Rarity’s head whipped back to the street, where on the other side Berry Punch had waylaid a cabbie. She flipped him two bits and two more for her little sister and they boarded his wagon. He gawked on and the two other passengers had worked through their surprise enough to look at her with annoyance.

She hadn’t seen Berry Punch take one of the cabs out of Ponyville before – she knew most of the ponies who would have had reason to do so, and she and her sister had no luggage on them apart from saddlebags.

“Good afternoon, Berry Punch!”

The magenta mare started and looked up – at the sky.

“Over here!”

She leaned over the front of the wagon while the cabbie watched her with his head ducked in crushing secondhand embarrassment, then behind. One of the other passengers shook her head.

Rarity joined her – pity, not exasperation, dear, everypony has their moments – and cantered to the side of the cart. “I’m right here, darling.”

Berry Punch started again. A look of borderline intoxicated relief seeped over her when she finally looked down and locked eyes with, gripped, and recognized the owner of the voice that had called her out. “Hi, Rarity. I wasn’t sure you were still in town.”

A blindingly hot and yellow light flashed in the unicorn’s mind. She gritted her teeth when she smiled. “I’ve been spending most of my time in the boutique, I’m afraid.” The truth - bracingly embarrassing when used. “You have business elsewhere?”

She nodded once, neck-snappingly hard, pleased as punch in a way that showed all across her face. “Yeah. This wagon’s going to Chokago. There’s an apple cider place there that’s to – die – for, or, y’know, so I hear, and we’ve got to check it out at least once...”

Her two fellow passengers looked at each other with knowing, dreamy sparkles in their eyes. All of the ponies in the cab were bound for the exact same place. To buy the exact same thing. That hot light flickered back up to single-lightbulb level. The unicorn’s ear flicked. “Apple cider... in the middle of spring?”

“I know!” Berry Punch whinnied with laughter. “A place that cells cider year-round! What could be better? I guess I’m gonna have somewhere new to take the bits I’ve been saving up! I can’t wait!’

“And neither can I,” muttered the stallion behind her, his remark and the rapping of his hoof on his side of the wagon blowing around and past Berry’s ears.

Oh, everypony’s got to drink! flared through Rarity’s brain. And then, silently scoffing, Cider! She suppressed a shudder – and then wondered what was so terrible about cider.

The apple cider was being sold in Chokago – and then she remembered that was where Big Macintosh had sent the apples early. A buyer in Chokago was one of the places keeping Sweet Apple Acres healthy. It was logical that a cider seller would buy capital from a stable producer and ponies piggybacked on the profit of other ponies, naturally.

The yellow flash solidified itself into a spur and bit down.

“Forgive me, do you mind, sir?” she said to the cabbie with a token flutter of her eyelashes. “Just one more passenger.”

She was back in, then back out with her saddlebags fastened and the bits that she would have likely given to Applejack earlier otherwise at the ready. She paid the cabbie and boarded. The cabbie sweated as his legs churned and brought his two-mares-and-a-foal heavier cab back to rattling momentum.

Comments

[Trickquestion]

You have caught my interest. I'll track and see where this goes.

[Ponydora Prancypants]

What a strange thing I just read! The author is clearly a person of some education, but there are so many bizarre authorial choices here that I scarcely know where to begin. The word choice is very off-putting and visceral, which would be fine in many stories, but here it is just distracting. Rarity's inspiration room is fecund (and also fertile, which is redundant, and also filthy?)? I absolutely understand what the author is attempting to convey here, but it just discomfiting to read. Later, where Rarity is sucking on sweet "applemeat" I confess to feeling a bit sick to my stomach. Everything seems "off" and somewhat "gross." I know that the author is doing this on purpose, but it is just not working for me. There are also numerous non-sentences, such as "A little crash of embarrassment and gratitude, tempering into sheepishness" or "The somewhat embarrassing, useless truth." Again, perhaps this is a stylistic thing, but if it is it should fit better into the narrative. There are many more oddities - such as why Rarity "canters" only a few steps (a canter is nearly as fast as a gallop), and bizarre sentences like "There blew away thoughts of fretting for a moment, then back." I also recommend the author to find an accompanying artwork if he or she wants more readers. I clicked on this because I check out any Rarity story I see, but not many readers are so inclusive. Back to the beginning now: this was a very strange beginning to what is sure to be a very strange story. I do recommend editing or working with a pre-reader going forward.

[Blue Cloud Blues]

443805
I appreciate that greatly. I'll do my best not to waste your attention.

444026
When you began that way, for a moment I was terrified that your thoughts would be along the lines of "Hell did I just read?" XD But your comment is quite thoughtful and valuable, so thank you for your patience in reading and in saying all that you did. I'll make it more of a point to be absolutely sure I don't go leaving figurative raw material in the story that I let get by because it makes perfect sense to the one whose brain it came out of in the first place - assuming Twilight's "prologue" was a little cleaner and that the reason you didn't cite it for any examples for awkwardness wasn't just that it wasn't the chapter you'd just read, I suppose that may have been because I backtracked to it while working on the first chapter proper. And I suppose a cover image when possible is a given.

Thank you again, with a little extra thanks for saying anything about "going forward." XD

[Ponydora Prancypants]

446386

Strange as I found it, I do hope you keep writing, and I was certainly happy to give you a thumbs up!