The Diva Arrives
Rainbow Dash was reading when Rarity knocked on their hotel room door.
After dinner the previous night, Nutmeg suggested they visit one of Fillydelphia’s famed bookstores. For this they had options – cluttered mom and pop shops overflowing with secondhand prints and comic books; high-class depositories more like a private club in their character than a store, with thick upholstered chairs surrounding a tall fireplace; a college bookstore, with long rows of textbooks and supplies of all kinds; and finally the one Rainbow Dash selected: a warehouse-sized book emporium, two floors, with countless shelves of mass-produced paperbacks, their innumerable titles and colorful covers stretching from wall to wall.
Yeah, she could do this. There was even a coffee store inside the bookstore.
Nutmeg made a bee-line for the new fiction section as soon as they passed through the doors, but Rainbow had another target in mind. In the back, next to the foals’ section, comic books filled an entire wall. A special display held hundreds of copies of the new Daring Do comic book adaptation: Daring Do and the Temple of Terror. She ran her hoof over the glossy cover with a quiet “Oooh,” then snatched it up and zipped through the air over to the reading benches.
Nutmeg found her a half an hour later, a short stack of books balanced on his back between his wings. “You know, you’re not supposed to read them in the store. That’s why they’re wrapped in plastic.”
She glanced at the crumpled plastic wrapper she had discarded to the side, then shrugged and stood. “Eh, whatever. I’m buying it. You find what you wanted?”
“I did. Shall we?”
“Yes, let’s shall,” she said. Nutmeg blinked at that, but followed her to the register nevertheless. Perhaps he didn’t expect to her using such fancy language.
One of his books turned out to be Pawn Takes Queen: An Everymare’s Guide to Chess, and it was a gift for her. She accepted it with reverent hooves and held it for a full minute before daring to turn the first page. She’d owned books before, of course – a respectable collection of Daring Do novels and textbooks on flight and weather, but this was her first actual grown-up book. Not assigned by a school, or written with foals in mind. A real book for big ponies.
Rainbow smiled all the way back to the hotel. She devoured the first three chapters that night, and was reading them again when Rarity arrived. Her ears flicked at the noise, and she saved her page with a bookmark (Twilight Sparkle had long-since trained her not to dog-ear a book’s pages) and went to open the door.
She was greeted by an enormous purple hat, with a brim as wide as a wagon wheel and a startling blue quill rising from a scarlet band like a wind-swept flag. The hat tilted back, revealing a white unicorn mare with a smile nearly as broad as her headgear.
“Darling!” Rarity exclaimed. And it was an exclamation – Dash could hear the point appending the word. “You are here!”
“Yeah, I got Twilight’s message.” Rainbow stepped back so Rarity could enter. Behind her followed a bellhop pushing a gold-railed luggage cart that creaked beneath the weight of four suitcases, two smaller valises and a single massive steamer trunk that could have held all of Rainbow Dash’s worldly possessions by itself.
Rarity swept past her into the suite’s bedroom, examining it with a critical eye. Finally, she nodded and turned back to Dash. “I figured you had, but we weren’t sure if you were anywhere near Fillydelphia. Oh, but I’m getting ahead of myself! Where is your beau?” She sidled up to Dash and draped a foreleg over her shoulders, concluding her remarks in a husky whisper.
“Huh?” Rainbow Dash glanced up at her mane. “I don’t wear bows.”
There was a quiet pause, followed by a quieter sigh. “Yes, of course. Silly of me. What about Nutmeg, then? I saw his airship outside.”
“He’s staying across the hall in 1404, but I think he’s up with the ship right now. You mind if he tags along for this friendship thing?”
“That should be fine,” Rarity said. “Though, unless he’s of a sartorial bent, he might be a bit bored. I suspect we’re here to solve another fashion-related friendship crisis, Rainbow, and frankly they aren’t as exciting as you’re used to. Just two mares arguing over how to put together a new line of summerwear, or something equally silly.”
“Joy. Can’t wait.” Rainbow attempted to snort to demonstrate how she felt about the whole thing, but ended up nearly inhaling a snout-full of snot and fell into a coughing fit.
Rarity set a hoof on her shoulder. “Oh dear, are you alright?”
“Yeah, just a cold.” She wiped her nose with her foreleg. “S’fine.”
Rarity removed her hoof.
“Ma’am, where would you like suitcases?” the bellhop asked, apparently having recovered his breath.
“Hm? Oh.” Rarity gave the room a little frown. “Just set them by the other bed, if you please. Anyway, Rainbow, how long have you two been in town?”
“Just the one night. You haven’t missed anything.” She hopped back up on her bed, then watched in silence as Rarity fussed over her luggage before discretely hoofing the bellhop a hoofful of bits. That earned her a deep bow, and shortly after they were alone.
Alone, which meant that any second now—
“So, darling.” Rarity climbed up on Dash’s bed, using her magic to brush away the litter of crumpled tissues that dotted it, then sat down so their sides were just barely brushing. “How is Nutmeg?”
And there it was. “He’s fine.”
Rarity leaned closer, her aversion to Dash’s illness apparently forgotten. “Yes, and how are things between you two?”
Time to nip this in the bud. “He’s my boss, Rarity, and my friend. That’s all.”
“Oh, of course, of course.” Rarity waved a hoof dismissively. “I never meant to suggest otherwise. Just because the two of you spend weeks at a time alone with each other in the cramped quarters of that tiny airship, sharing everything. Confiding in each other with your secrets, trusting each other with your lives as you stare death in the eyes! Oh, among weaker ponies it would be a terrible thing, I’m sure, to be compressed against another’s follies and vices, but for two strong and pure ponies with noble souls it must be a different experience entirely. Who can say what feelings might be kindled in those lonely dark nights, sharing a bunk and a blanket to stave off the cold? What might they discover in the tight spaces between them, where the hairs of their coat mingle and their breath mixes in foggy plumes that drift in the cold, high air? Why, who knows what two such ponies might get up to? So again I ask, how are things between you two?”
Rainbow Dash was silent for a bit. She hadn’t realized Rarity’s lungs could hold so much air. “Seriously, Rares, how long have you been thinking about that?”
Rarity sniffed. “It was a long train ride, thank you very much. A mare needs something to occupy her thoughts.”
“Right. Hey, you wanna go meet him?”
Rarity stood and hopped off the bed. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Cool. Leave your hat here.”
“What?” Rarity balked at the door. “Whyever for?”
* * *
“Isn’t this cool?” Rainbow Dash asked. She had to shout to be heard over the wind.
“It’s, ah…” Rarity shifted her grip on the metal stanchion that braced the airship platform to the side of the High Step Hotel’s roof. “Is it always this icy up here?”
“No, that’s because of the iceberg. I mean, I guess it’s icy in the winter, you know? But not, like, July.”
“Of course.” Rarity shuffled her hooves in the snow covering the grated walkway. Thirty stories beneath them, carriages like ants left dark trails in the streets. “It’s quite the view.”
Rainbow smiled up at the Orithyia. “Yeah.”
* * *
Nutmeg joined them a few minutes later. He slid down the cable anchoring the Orithyia to the Hotel’s mooring mast and fell the last few feet to land on the catwalk beside them. To Rainbow Dash he gave his usual guileless smile, and to Rarity he offered he offered a slight bow.
“Miss Rarity, it’s a pleasure to meet you again. Rainbow Dash has told me such wonderful things about you.”
“Oh, she couldn’t have.” Rarity tittered – yes, tittered, that was the word, Rainbow was sure – and flicked her hoof. “I am just a humble seamstress, Captain.”
“Please, just call me Nutmeg.”
“Very well, but only if you call me Rarity.”
“It would be my honor, Rarity.”
“And I assure you, darling, it is mine as—”
“Okay, I need you both to stop now,” Rainbow Dash said. “We have to solve this friendship thing before the sun burns out.”
Nutmeg grinned at her. Rarity sniffed and tossed her mane. “Always in a hurry, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I’m not in a hurry, I just have other things to do, like flying. Nutmeg, you could be hauling icebergs, and Rarity you could be making clothes. Instead that dumb map has us in Fillydelphia again to solve some silly clothes problem.”
“I think it’s exciting,” Nutmeg volunteered. “I never thought I’d get to help the Elements of Harmony fight evil.”
“Ugh, it’s not evil!” Rainbow stomped on the metal catwalk. “Friendship problems are boring. I guarantee you we’ll find two grown mares acting like fillies fighting over a bracelet, except they probably really will be fighting over a bracelet because this city is obsessed with silly stuff like that. Or maybe it will be a scarf or a hat or some fancy boot and now their friendship is in jeopardy unless we save them.
“As much as I disagree with Rainbow Dash that bracelets, scarves, hats or boots are silly, she is likely correct on the other counts,” Rarity said. “The mares in this city and their little tiffs… well, frankly, it’s a bit embarrassing. But I am nevertheless grateful to have you along, Nutmeg. Oh, and you too, Rainbow.”
“Yeah, yeah. Can we go now?” Dash jumped and flew a quick orbit around the two of them before landing beside the door. Eddies of snow swirled around her.
“Very well, let us be off, then.” So saying, Rarity carefully extended a hoof to the next stanchion, gripped it tightly, then slowly stepped over until she could hug it with her whole body. And then the next stanchion, and the next.
In time she reached the door, and they descended into Fillydelphia.
* * *
“So, Nutmeg, do you mind if I ask a personal question?” Rarity asked.
Rainbow Dash’s ears swiveled back to better hear this conversation. She never missed a step, though, breaking a trail for the three of them through Fillydelphia’s crowded lunch-hour sidewalks. Hundreds of ponies streamed past them, filling the air with their chatter and the melange scent of busy ponies: floral perfumes, sweat, feathers, snow and countless others teased Dash’s nose.
Also, it seemed she could breathe through her nose again. That was nice.
“Not at all, Rarity. Though whether or not I answer depends on how personal it is.”
She could smell Nutmeg easily enough. Years of work on the Orithyia had stained him with its odors – the sharp, fragrant pine tar that waterproofed the hull; the greasy, burned taste of engine oils; the earthen scent of the ship’s cedar planks. She probably smelled like those things herself now.
Rarity’s scent was there too, though fainter. Lilac and cotton, familiar from their years together. She wondered, absently, how they found her scent.
“Fair enough. I was wondering how a pegasus named Nutmeg came by a cutie mark like that.”
“Oh, it’s not much of a story, I’m afraid. My father was an airship mechanic, and when I was a foal he would sometimes bring me to the drydocks in Cloudsdale in the winter when work was light. He collected spare parts from various jobs, and when there was nothing else to do he and I would refurbish them for our own use, or for sale. One day after school, I was crawling around inside an engine and found a cracked fan blade. My father wasn’t around, so I disassembled it by myself and replaced it with a fresh blade. When I washed the grease off that night in the bath, there it was.”
Rainbow was a bit perturbed to realize she’d never asked Nutmeg that question herself – his four-bladed propeller cutie mark seemed like such a natural fit for an airship captain that it wasn’t even worth the question. And she couldn’t remember for the life of her if Nutmeg had ever asked about the tri-color lightning bolt on her flank.
“Not every cutie mark story has to be an epic event,” Rarity said. “It only has to be meaningful for one pony.”
“I thought it was pretty cool, Nutmeg,” Rainbow called over her shoulder.
“Thank you, Miss Dash.”
The next few blocks they walked in relative silence. The iceberg loomed over the city behind them, but they had long-since stepped out of its shadow, and summer returned to the air. Rainbow felt the first trickle of sweat running down her neck, and her wings fanned at her side unconsciously. What she wouldn’t give to be back in the cool sky.
“So, how does this work, Rarity?” Nutmeg finally asked when they stopped at an intersection. The streets around them had thinned, and the shopfronts were a mix of trendy coffee houses, antique shops and boutiques. A few feet away, a cinnamon mare was busy setting manequins on the sidewalk for display. “Do we just walk around until we find friends who are fighting?”
“Well, in the past the problems have all been fairly obvious. I suspect there’s some magic at work, but I’ll leave that question for Twilight.” Rarity paused to fish around in her saddlebags with her magic, and after a few seconds pulled out a folded pamphlet. “But this weekend just happens to be the Summer Sartorial Sensation, the biggest fashion show of the season. If we start searching there, I’m sure we’ll find the problem before we know it!”
“Wait.” Rainbow stopped and turned toward them. “Is this just an excuse for you to see a fashion show on the crown’s bit?”
Rarity huffed. “If you have any better ideas, Rainbow Dash, I’ll be glad to hear them.”
“Maybe we could just ask ponies,” Dash said. She turned to the nearest bystander, a tall grey earth pony stallion with a basket of pumpkins balanced on his back. “Hey, buddy, do you know of anypony with a friendship problem?”
The stallion stared at her in silence for a long moment. “Excuse me?”
“A, uh, you know. A problem with friendship.”
“I have friends!” he protested. An indignant look grew on his face, and the basket of pumpkins trembled ominously.
“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” Dash’s ears began to wilt, but she pressed forward. “Do you know any ponies who used to be friends but started arguing over some small, trifling item three days ago, the kind of thing that could be easily resolved with the help of strangers who bring a fresh perspective to their troubles?”
He stared at her again. Eventually the crosswalk sign turned green, and he walked away.
“Oh, yes, bravo darling,” Rarity said. “Just under a million ponies left. Between the three of us, we should finish by the time Sweetie Belle graduates from college.”
“Shut up,” Dash grumbled. “Just take us to this dumb fashion show.”
And so they went, Rarity smiling, Nutmeg smiling, Rainbow Dash stewing in discontent, until after a few minutes the warm summer sun on her coat lifted her spirits back.
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Rarity is a professional fashion cop.
This is the best way to (mis)use language.
Other best pony has the other best quote this chapter.
How much do you want to bet that Rarity rigged the map to only detect fashion related friendship problems?
This story deserves so much more love than it's getting. Another chapter in excellent form.
I wonder if the reason the map keeps sending Rarity to Fillydelphia is because she hasn't actually solved the problem she was sent to solve, she just solved a different, less important one. Or perhaps her solutions aren't lasting so the problem keeps cropping back up a few days later. In either case, this time the map is sending Rainbow too so she can set Rarity straight.
Just saw this, and I haven't read it. But, I've never been disappointed by anything you've written, so I give it a like and a fave so I can keep track and read it when I'm ready. Keep it up, Cold!
Something something giant hat!
And it's no wonder Rarity seems to have gained a fear of heights. Every time she goes up in Twilight's balloon, she seems to end up falling to her doom!
I know it's quite simple, but this is my favorite bit so far. Lovely pitch-perfect Rarity in this one.
Just wanted to say I really enjoy the characterisation, and the narrative is great. Looking forward to more!
This is the best characterization of Rarity I've read in a while.
6810929 Sunset Shimmer isn't in this chapter.
6812905
He managed to characterize freakin' rocks (cities), Rarity should be easy.
Also, love your interplay between the characters. It reminds me of how much I suck at it.
So, having stayed home sick today, I started reading this on a whim, thinking it might be an amusing distraction to kill a morning with. Instead, I've found myself rather engrossed with it and the tale it has woven. I think, like Rainbow, I've become taken with the life of an iceberg wrangler.
Hope we'll see more soon.
Well, shucks, lessee...
Rainbow Dash? Check.
Airships? Check.
CiG? Check.
Yeah, I think this is an easy fave.
Also, damn, you really know how to write Dash. You write good Dash in the same way that, say, xjuggernaughtx writes good Pinkie.
Yesterday I was a bit burned out from writing and started reading this.
Boy, am I glad those +3K words happened.
7108346
Man, I need to get back to writing this. It's just fun.
7109030
I think so too! It's just like how you described the iceberg: having the mass of a good story with well-written characters, but not being weighty thanks to the light-hearted optimism and humor throughout. Also with serious inertia: once you start reading, good luck putting the brakes on.
Ladies and gentlemen, inside the mind of a Chronic Shipper.