Ponyville’s finest drinking establishment was Wine and Carpets, located just across the street from Sugarcube Corner. Their business model of “you stain it, you bought it” produced robust revenue, and nopony could deny they had the finest selection of drinks and the best live entertainment to be found in Ponyville. They had standup comedy, performance art, and consistently good music, and several of the Elements of Harmony were regular customers.
Rarity generally only went as part of a group; in her mind, drinking was a pleasant distraction with friends, a vice alone. Her feelings about standup comedy were much the same. Yet, one particular evening in the fall, she arrived at the door of Wine and Carpets unattended. Once inside, she sat, ordered a small glass of mild wine, and left it untouched as she sat alone at her table.
Anypony could tell she was waiting for something. Her eyes lingered on the stage, and it wasn’t long before the evening’s scheduled show began.
“Hello, everypony.” The band that walked on stage had five members: a dragon on drums, a griffon on the saxophone, a unicorn on the piano, an earth pony on the guitar, and a pegasus singer in front. “I’m Prior Art,” said the pegasus, “and we are They Sing Cover Songs.”
And they did, with grace and distinction. They sang Smells Like Horse Spirit with such passion Neighvana themselves could not have done better. They sang Birds of a Feather, an old griffon song, though they changed some of the raunchier lyrics to be more suitable to pony culture. And, in response to request from the audience, they sang the Winter Wrapup song, just like Ponyville would in a few months.
Their performance won them applause and a good quantity of tips, and Rarity suspected it also won them a second booking at the same venue. But she did not applaud and no sooner had the show ended than she strode towards the stage with purpose, arriving before the band members had even finished removing their instruments.
“Which one of you is Novelty?” she asked.
A moment of silence followed. None of them ratted another out. Eventually, the griffon raised a talon. Rarity experienced a moment of incongruity, trying to associate the slight, quiet, grey unicore mare who knocked on her door with the bulky, intimidating, male griffon before her. But she had overcome greater challenges before, and did not show her discomfort on her face.
“I’d like to speak with you now.” The words came out cold and snappish, and Rarity had to force herself to amend, “If that’s okay,” in a noticeably softer tone.
“Sure,” said Novelty, said the griffon, and he did not follow his bandmates backstage, but hopped from the stage to the floor, and followed Rarity back to her table. A waitress asked if he wanted anything, and he ordered a glass of water. When Rarity failed to speak, he tried to start the conversation on his own. “Did you like the show?”
“The dress you gave me,” Rarity said. “It’s good. It’s very good. It’s…” She lifted and released her hoof from the table several times. “It’s in my style. So much in my style I feel like I made it, only I hit my head and somehow forgot about it. There’s so much artistry in the design, the technique is…”
Several times, Rarity tried to speak and failed, but Novelty did not interrupt, and after a moment to steady herself, Rarity was able to finish: “You might be the greatest dressmaker of our generation.”
Novelty laughed. The sound gave Rarity momentary pause, much like she’d experienced near the stage; it was very much the laugh of the archetypal male griffon, a boisterous, loud, assertive sound. “I’m not. And this isn’t how I expected this conversation to go.”
“If you made that dress yourself, I think you are.”
“You’re flattering a mirror,” Novelty said, his tone light. “That’s a copy of your work.”
Rarity pulled back her lip. “That isn’t one of my dresses.”
“No, it’s every one of your dresses.” With the tip of a talon, Novelty gestured in the air. “The floating chest plate and geometric shoulder wraps are from the princess dress. I know they look different because they’re in orange instead of teal, and because they’re broken up into hexagons instead of triangles, but if you put those two dresses side by side, you’ll see it. The wither wrap is from Twilight’s backup coronation dress, again, I just changed the color and added a geometric pattern. The dock rest and train are from your ‘pegasus week’ display at Rarity For You. The hock wrap is from Rainbow Dash’s second gala dress.”
Rarity hesitated for a moment, her expression turning to a frown. “Still, there is talent in knowing which elements to combine for the best result.”
“I used trial and error.” For a moment, Novelty hesitated. “I don’t want to attract a lot of attention by transforming in the middle of the club, but.” He extended his talons, and there was a small rush of green fire, after which the digits in question were painted an ugly yellow. “I look at that and go, mmm. That color palette doesn’t work.” Another flash, an ugly purple. “Oh, and that doesn’t. And then I do this all day until I find one that looks good.”
He shrugged and sat back. “It was like that, but with dresses. I must have tried a thousand combinations before I landed on that one.”
“Oh.” The frown on Rarity’s face only depend, and with it appeared lines below her eyes. “I thought… it was beautiful, you understand.”
“Yes, it is. But that’s because your work is beautiful, Rarity.” Novelty leaned over the table, lowering his voice. “It’s because you’re creative and talented and… you’re the sort of pony who’s good enough that even their cheap knockoffs stand out from the crowd.”
Rarity lapsed into silence and met Novelty’s eyes across the table, and Novelty again spoke: “I uh… I picked a name, like yours, because I admire you. And I’m sorry, if that was too much. But after Chrysalis’s downfall, I didn’t have a lot of figures to look up to. And I knew you well.”
“I’m not mad, Novelty.” Rarity’s voice was stiff. “I’m… upset about what happened. But as long as you keep your word about not revealing my secrets, I’ll just be upset that it happened. Not mad at you.” Then she added. “The stitchwork is excellent.”
“Well I’m good at sewing.”
“You want a job?” Rarity asked, her expression suddenly animating.
“What?” Novelty pulled away from the table, and his expression was quite taken aback.
“I could use another seamstress. And your stitchwork really was good. I’d certainly trust you to finish one of my dresses, with—”
“Rarity, I’m very sorry for what happened,” Novelty said. “And I’m very grateful for how forgiving you’ve been. And if you want to talk about it, I will. But I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to spend a lot of time together. I know the layout of Carousel Boutique too well. If you understand.”
“Oh… yes.” Rarity laughed, faintly. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I don’t even know what I was thinking.”
It was at that moment that the waitress returned with water for Novelty, and bread for the table. “You want anything else?” they asked.
“I was just leaving, actually,” Novelty got up and nodded to Rarity in what could be taken as a respectful gesture, but then left before she could reply, and at a pace that discouraged inquiry.
“Ouch,” the waitress said, in the face of sudden retreat. “Too bad. He was cute.”
Rarity sighed, and in a dramatic motion, dropped her head to the table. Her wine glass, untouched, wobbled and tipped over, spilling down over the side. She and the waitress both looked at the spill, their eyes tracking the drops of fluid.
“It was a white wine,” Rarity said, with as much dignity as she could muster.
“We put special dyes in the wine,” the waitress explained. “It makes white wine stain carpets just as well as red.”
Rarity went home without answers, and with one carpet, mildly damaged.
Very interesting.
I love this. please continue
I’m liking this, very much!
Great little story about Rarity and the changelings.
Interesting.
Is there a Changeling called Imposter Syndrome?
11034595
Don't get ahead of the class.
11034587
I wish I had thought of this!
Nice; thank you for writing. :)
And I note that it's marked Incomplete; I hope that that's not accidental? :D
Well this was quite good. More please.
11034525
Morph and the Magic Tones
"She caught the Katydid, and left me a mule to ride..."
11035041
the number of people who will get this is so small and I fucking applaud it
11035086
Twilight paroles a couple of villains that she thinks are reformable.
Chrysalis decides to get the old band back together.
"You can't lie to a Princess, Cozy. You gotta go in and talk to the Horsefly."
"No. Buckin'. Way."
"I hate FimFiction Nazis."
Woo! Changelings! Can't wait for the next one!
Very unique and creative premise for a fanfic, I very much enjoyed what you've written so far. I'll be watching this story with interest ^^
Why would they make white wine stain? Even if you make the customer pay for the rug, you still have to go out and find a new rug or have one made, instead of spending maybe 10 or 15 minutes cleaning up the one you have, that only got white on it.
I honestly dont see the problem with Novelty working at Rarity's shop.
I'm not sure if you planned on writing more of this or not but I love the premise. I want to ship them, though I understand that could end well or very poorly, or in some more complicated manner as you often write.
11035529
I'm not completely sure either, apart from Novelty clearly feeling very uncomfortable about it. Spying on Rarity in that shop was a significant portion of Novelty's life so far, and impersonating Rarity in that shop was a lively several weeks. Every part of the shop would bring up a memory of something Novelty regrets doing. That's my best guess.
11035739
Huh, I didn't think about that. Very good points indeed!"
11035745
There's probably more to it, though. GaPJaxie's characters have layers to their thoughts and feelings, like onions and ogres.
11035796
Ah, never mind, I read the next chapter. Turns out they're the cover band that this story is named after.
Interesting...I get the impression both Novelty and Rarity want to make amends to the other in some way--Novelty so to make up for all the wrongs they feel they've done for Rarity, and Rarity because she can sense Novelty's still beating themselves up about it more than is probably necessary and wants to help them move on--but they both have no idea how the heck to do it, sense deep down that it's probably always going to be insufficient anyway, and, worse of all, know deep down that the lingering tension between them isn't exactly unjustified.
I'm not totally sure what your intended endgame is with this, as it's still early enough that it could go in any number of ways...but I hope eventually these two figure it out and can become friends or at least acquaintances in the end. We'll have to see.
I'd say being able to so rapidly try out colour combinations is a valuable skill regardless, allows experimentation at a very high pace.
11035455
It's a rug store. Making customers pay to take away rugs so they can replace them with new ones is the entire point.
11036841
Why did a rug store bring them wine then?
This was a surprisingly good story.
11036886
Because they might spill it on the merchadise and damage it, forcing them to purchase it. It's basic business synergy, half of the merchadise helps boost sales of the other half.
11037110
I think that could be considered Entrapment.
Um, also should I mention the gestaltmacher in Phillip K. Dick's The Penultimate Truth or should I just go screw myself?
11036886
Why does a sofa shop sell quills?
Oh no, this is a GapJaxie, which means I know how the rest of it is going to go. Your worlds have a recurring pattern of being seemingly benign but horrifically crapsack in the end. I can't wait for everything to start going wrong
11037318
You don't KNOW?
I guess I could write the story explaining it...
11037397
They don't ALL end up being horribly crapsack worlds in the end! One could even make a case that GaPJaxie's "Intern" has a happy ending for just about everypony...more or less.
11038050
It was a rhetorical question for Fireeaters, explaining how a rung store that also sells wine doesn't actually seem that out of place in the MLP world, given past precedent.
11038289
Nice.
Oh very interesting so it looks like this is what novelty and the other changelings I've been doing lately they're just doing performance at a bar something and rarity was to talk with novelty admire the work that he did yeah he could be very awkward with everybody but maybe one of these days he'll open up he just needs some time to get used to this whole changes I wonder what's going to happen next guess we'll find out next time
that one I don't know it could be any birds of a feather song
11037123
I mean, as long as everypony knows up front that that’s just what part of their business model is, goes there of their own free will, and orders wine despite not actually having to (could always simply take a while to look around, pick and buy a carpet, and be done, right?)...it’s not exactly much of a trap, is it?