Finer Things: The Rarilight Collab

by Donraj

Skeleton by Drynwhyl

by Drynwhyl

Twilight, Rarity had found out on more occasions than she could possibly count, was a pony of rather odd interests and questionable proclivities. Not in any sort of immoral sense – the alicorn was a stickler for playing by the rules, no matter how convoluted they might be – but in the sense that she had, to put it in as ladylike a fashion as possible, a skeleton strung up in the middle of her study.

The thing was strung together by wire and screws, hung from a hollow metal frame which rocked precariously each time Twilight adjusted a bone, tightened a nut, or prodded the thing with the tip of her hoof with almost a clinical degree of caution. On occasion the bones would rattle, sounding out like a couple of hollowed-out lengths of wind chime wood battering each other in an errant breeze.

Clap, thump, clonk.

Rarity began to cross the distance between her and Twilight gingerly. Her eyes never left the morbid thing hung up like a criminal from a gibbet. It was almost something from one of the novels Sweetie seemed to like, the ones with scheming mad scientists and superheroes arriving just in the nick of time to thwart them. “Twilight,” she said, halfway across the floor, “why is there a skeleton hung up in the middle of the room?”

She began to reconsider volunteering a hoof to her friend without a briefing beforehand.

“Oh! Rarity, this is Dry Bones!” Twilight replied. She turned around, smiling infectiously as she wiped her brow with the back of a dust-matted hoof. She then wiped the sweaty, dirty limb off on her barrel. Rarity barely suppressed a shudder.

“Hello!” the skeleton then inexplicably greeted her. Its jaws flapped up and down, teeth clinking together like a ventriloquist’s doll. And its head turned to look at her with those empty sockets, fractures running through them like a thousand dry riverbeds.

To her credit, Rarity only screamed a little.

“Rarity. Rarity! Calm down, he can’t hurt you!” With a flash and a pop, Twilight appeared in front of her friend, breaking her line of sight. Taking Rarity’s shoulders, she shook her gently and leaned in close, close enough to feel the panicking unicorn’s breath play across her face. Some other time she might have enjoyed it, but not now.

“It’s true,” Dry Bones expounded. “I’m a bit tied up at the moment.”

“There’s… there’s a talking skeleton right in the middle of your castle, Twilight!”

“I know! His name is Dry Bones!”

“Why!?” Rarity tried to look over Twilight’s shoulder, but the alicorn wasn’t having any of it.

“Why what?”

“Why is a talking skeleton in the middle of your castle!”

“Because, Rarity – and you need to calm down! – Dry Bones recently landed himself a very, very prestigious job and he needs the best seamstress in Equestria to make him a suit for it!”

“Head curator of Canterlot Museum, in fact,” the skeleton supplied.

Rarity blinked. “H-head… head curator?”

The skeleton rattled, perhaps an approximation of a nod. “Once you’ve been on display in some of the biggest scientific establishments in Equestria over the last couple of centuries, you tend to become the most qualified pony for any job in a museum.”

“Please, Rarity,” Twilight pleaded. “He’s… well, I didn’t consider him one back then, but he’s an old friend of mine from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. He helped me out a lot in my Magical Medicine and Maladies class...” She trailed off, gesturing to the skeleton.

The skeleton shifted, those empty sockets and monstrous rictus directed straight at Rarity. “Please?” he asked.

Rarity smiled, careful to never let it touch her eyes. She leaned in to Twilight, gritting her teeth. “You owe me big time for this, Twilight,” she breathed, then, as if she’d never said anything at all, she took a deep breath and took her first hesitant step towards the… the thing.

She floated a measuring tape out of her saddlebags in her wavering aura and closed her eyes. Breathe in, breathe out.

Comments

[nemryn]

[Monochromatic]

omg this is great

The writing is very good, as are the characters, and is that a Mario Bros. reference? :P

[ValNitak Choas]

I would have thought it was twilight throw her voice