Chapter Six
The atmosphere on Eventide changed after that.
Not just from the addition of the trees, though that was at least a pleasant change. And not from the new scents introduced by the work—the construction of a laboratory, Pinkie’s diligent tending of the trees, and Rainbow’s introduction of rain all brought depth and nuance to the once one-note bouquet of the new planet.
In a word, the atmosphere had become professional.
There’s nothing strictly wrong with professionalism. In fact, most ponies would argue that a professional atmosphere is the most appropriate type for the sort of goals this group had. But ‘most appropriate’ was by no means ‘best’, and this all but proved the rule.
Rarity had been giving Twilight an understandable cold shoulder. Twilight had given Rarity an equally understandable cold shoulder in return. Both mares were, however, incredibly stubborn, and so refused to discuss their friction with the other members of the research team, leading to more friction.
“Did something happen between you and Twilight?” Pinkie had hissed to Rarity one lazy Eventide afternoon. “I noticed you girls are talking about sixty-two percent less often than usual.”
Rarity had given Pinkie an odd look. “There’s no chance you’ve actually measured it.”
“Don’t doubt my abilities!” Pinkie had snapped back. “And… are you saying something did happen?”
Likewise, Rainbow had been putting on the pressure. Always begging for updates on the education, asking Rarity for pointed pieces of advice, hiding her suspicion in every conversation the pair had. Chipping at the wall with a sewing needle, and just annoying enough to shut Rarity down completely.
“What was Twilight like when you were younger?”
“Is Twilight doing okay? She looks pale.”
“Why don’t you go work with Twilight in the lab today?”
More and more dismissive answers faded to harsh looks, which then faded to total neglect of the questions entirely.
Less and less questions. Less and less talking. Less and less Twilight.
Until, at long last, all that remained on Eventide was the work.
It was easy enough to keep on without the friendship and camaraderie. Each member of the crew continually invented new tasks to complete—Rainbow pushed for a complete weather cycle, Pinkie tried grafting fruit branches onto her trees so the crew could have 'native fruits', and Rarity and Twilight threw themselves into chemical and magical analysis of the asteroid itself, while doing their best to avoid each other’s shifts.
It became a sort of dance. A twisted tango by which Twilight and Rarity dodged one another at every turn, an excuse for leaving always on the tip of their tongues.
“I need to collect more crust samples from the pole.”
“Pinkie needs help training saplings.”
“Rainbow Dash wants to consult about the cloud layer.”
When one or both mares did find themselves in the laboratory, an almost dreamlike distance held the place at leg’s length from its inhabitants. Untouched, yet not in the way the asteroid had been. Rather than the wild blue yonder laden with possibility, the laboratory was willfully constrained. No matter how much work was done here, it wouldn't be home—wouldn't be comfortable in the least—until there was a warmth of friendship and shared misery built there.
But there wasn't.
And so it remained cold and empty.
This day was no different. In fact, as Rainbow Dash worked outside to perfect the acidic balance of Eventide's rain, the inside of the laboratory grew icier than ever before.
Rarity shuddered as a puff of steam rose from her snout. The rain pounded on the roof of the lab in concentrated bursts, a bit like lightning, as Rainbow made her careful changes and kicked new samples from the clouds.
Rat-a-tat.
Then silence.
Rat-a-tat.
Rarity wondered briefly if she should request that the testing occur elsewhere, but ultimately decided against it. The last thing she wanted was to go out in the cold. Instead, she pulled on an altogether unnecessary lab coat, in the vain hope that its cheap fabric would protect her from the cold.
"Not sure why you're wearing that," Twilight quipped as she came gliding into the room.
Rarity spared her only a momentary glance between precise drops of water on her crystalline subject. "It's rather cold in here."
Twilight hummed. "Someone should look into that,” she said.
Pointed.
My turn. Go busy yourself elsewhere.
Only Rarity wasn’t quite in the mood to play games today. "Yes," she agreed. "Someone should."
Twilight did not reply.
She crossed the room in just a few strides. Each carried her in a long, low arc, as if gravity were ignoring her more than usual today.
Without another word, Twilight set about her own analysis—rummaging through the variety of samples in the lab's drawers, pulling chunks of stone and crystal out into her workspace, and gathering a great variety of glass utensils from all directions at once.
There came another sheet of rain. A percussive rat-a-tat on the roof. Echoing through the room.
Rarity cleared her throat. “We should start thinking about bringing other researchers here fairly soon,” she said. “There’s only so much you and I can truly accomplish on our own.”
You want space so badly, I’ll just put someone else between us.
“We have Pinkie and Rainbow,” Twilight said simply. “Just train them on the instruments if you feel like you need the help.”
Sounds like you don’t know what you’re doing.
Rarity set her jaw. “Now, that isn’t what I said at all,” she said firmly. “I only mean that—well, there are only so many hours in the day. So much less here than anywhere else. We’d be on our way to a real scientific breakthrough so much faster if—”
“This is the work,” Twilight said stiffly. “This is the way it is.”
For once, that was almost precisely what she really meant.
She did not move. Her pipette hovered over her sample, ready to dispense once her mind caught up.
Rarity considered this the end of civil conversation and returned, still flushed in frustration, to her work.
The stone sample which sat on the lab bench before her seemed almost to leer up at her, mocking her for her ineptitude in dealing with difficult coworkers.
Memories were beginning to come back to Rarity, if she were honest. Less golden, sunshine-y times back in Canterlot. The way Twilight’s drive had mixed with her anxieties into an impenetrable mass of porcupine quills which she puffed up at any passerby. To call her ‘prickly’ would have been an understatement.
“Is this where you thought you’d be?” Rarity murmured.
Twilight furrowed her brow, and risked a glance up from her work. “What?” she asked, short and angry. “What’re you talking about?”
“This,” Rarity said, gesturing to the lab. “You know, all of it. Is this where you thought you’d be?”
“When?”
“When we knew each other before,” Rarity said. Her eyes remained focused on her work. “I don’t know. As driven as you were, I don’t feel like I ever knew your direction. I’m sure you had one.”
Twilight was quiet for a long moment, then scoffed. “Why does it matter? Why are you even asking?”
“Because,” Rarity replied. “I’m just trying to remember what we were like back then.”
“You mean what I was like back then” Twilight corrected. “I was jaded then, too. That’s what happens when you’re young and anxious.”
Rarity sucked in a small breath. “It doesn’t have to be.”
Twilight sighed. “Well, it is,” she said. “And… no. This isn’t where I thought I'd be. For a lot of reasons.”
Her wings seemed to shudder at her sides as she pulled them in a little closer.
“Where did you think you’d be?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, Twilight, you’re clearly unhappy,” Rarity said. “I’m not blind. I simply want to know what can be done to—”
“There’s nothing to be done!” Twilight shot back.
Her pipette dropped to the counter.
Rarity said nothing. Her legs trembled as she fought the urge to step away from the alicorn before her; Twilight had her wings flared and her head raised in defiance, though her own hooves seemed just as uncertain as her student’s.
“I mean—look, I get the romanticization of all of this, but it’s not how they make it look!” Twilight went on. “I know they load you onto those big ships and sail you out into space with this stupid promise that you’re gonna be some—some pioneer, but everyone wants to be a pioneer! And everyone can’t be a pioneer!”
Rarity stood her ground. She held her tongue.
There came another splatter of rain on the roof of the lab, followed by a great, wide nothing.
The silence closed in on Twilight. She seemed to take it to heart, and lowered her voice when she next spoke. “It’s tedious. And, when it’s not tedious, it’s dangerous,” she explained. “We’re in the ‘here be dragons’ part of the map.”
Silence, still.
Rarity held her gaze with Twilight as long as she could manage, until Twilight finally seemed to tire of its edge and turned mutely back to her work.
Only then, when Twilight had the pipette in her trembling magic once more, did Rarity say, “I don’t understand why you’re treating me this way.”
Twilight drew in a quick deep breath and held it. “Treating you what way?”
“This way,” Rarity said, stomping lightly on the tiles beneath her hooves. “Like a foal who doesn’t know better. Like all of this is suddenly worthless.”
It was Twilight’s turn to stew in silence, though she kept her eyes glued to her work.
“When we first arrived, your eyes were just as starry as mine,” Rarity said, her words sharp-edged as they flew from he lips. “Even back then! All that time we spent dreaming of a voyage into space, all those hours crowded around the radio…”
One of those golden images.
It made Twilight falter.
“And now you act so above it all,” Rarity accused. “What changed? What makes you think you’re so much better than me?”
“I don’t think I’m better than you!” Twilight argued back, her voice close to breaking, her face twisted into a grimace. “I am you!”
Her expression held there for a moment, tears springing up in her eyes as she glared at her student. Then, as if suddenly realizing what words had tumbled out of her mouth, the anger melted to surprise.
Rarity clenched and unclenched her jaw. “Just what is that supposed to mean, Twilight?”
“Nothing,” Twilight said, turning back to her work. She sniffled lightly and rubbed the back of one foreleg under her eye. “Nothing. Forget it.”
“Are you saying I’m willfully ignorant?” Rarity pressed. “That I don’t understand the dangers of exploring deep space? Or does this all come back to my designs being too kitschy for you?”
Twilight shook her head. “No.”
“I hope this isn’t about Rainbow Dash and Pinkie.” Rarity stepped forward, and Twilight leaned away from her. “I understand they’re not exactly your type of pony, but they work hard! They’re intelligent! Don’t think I didn’t catch that veiled insult about teaching them the instruments, I—”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Twilight said through clenched teeth. “And that wasn’t a veiled insult. Just forget it.”
“I will not!” Rarity shouted, pounding her hoof on the tile. “You’re hiding something from me! You have been since practically the day we landed! And… and as mission leader, it is my duty to know—”
“You’re a pioneer!” Twilight blurted out.
Rarity barely managed to stop her frustrated rambling in time to hear her. “Excuse me?”
Twilight took a deep breath. “You’re a pioneer. That’s what we have in common. Leaving things behind to do…” She looked up, as if searching for a word, only to gesture vaguely to the ceiling. “This.”
Another splatter of rain on the roof.
Rat-a-tat-tat.
“Go on,” Rarity said.
“I…” Twilight grit her teeth, then at last set her pipette down beside her samples and turned to face Rarity. “Listen. You gave up fashion for this, didn’t you? Even though it was a perfectly viable career. You gave it up.”
Rarity gave a half-hearted shrug. “I suppose.”
“Why?”
Why?
Why, indeed?
Could it be explained?
Rarity scoffed and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Of course you do,” Twilight said. “You gave up a perfectly stable, lucrative career on your home planet to kick rocks around on a barren asteroid and live in an empty city. Why?”
“Why not?” Rarity muttered.
“That’s not what I meant,” Twilight said. “Why the risk? Why the danger? Are you just an adrenaline junkie or something? Why would you give up—”
“Because someone had to!”
Silence.
Then rain.
Then silence again.
Rarity bit her lip. “Someone had to, Twilight. You know that,” she said. “It’s not the sort of job we had ponies waiting in the wings for. Someone had to give something up.”
“And you decided it would be you,” Twilight finished.
Rarity cleared her throat lightly. “Yes.”
“That’s why we’re alike,” Twilight said. “Because I decided it would be me, too.”
She said it with weight. It was a heaviness that Rarity couldn’t quite place, and hesitated to apply a meaning to.
“Well,” Rarity said softly. “We’ll just have to be pioneers together, then. It can’t possibly be—”
“Rarity, I’m dying.”
Oh.
Oh, no.
An admission like that could stop the world itself. Could halt motion of the planets, could stop the wind from blowing, could turn out the sun and the stars and everything out there. Could plunge everything into darkness forever.
At least, that’s the way it feels to hear that someone you care for is dying.
Usually, though, the world spins on. Life goes on, even as the one pony you thought you could always count on being there is dying, because that is how the world works.
But here, on a new planet at the edge of the known universe, the wind did not blow anyway. The night sky was dark and still because it hadn’t started yet, not half of it. And, if Rarity had really wanted to, she could have brought this world to a screeching halt.
She didn’t.
Instead, she blew up all of the glass in the room.
There was a magnificent popping sound as all of the beakers exploded, all at once, followed by the steady, icy sound of glass tinkling down to the tile below, liquid pouring after it. All of it in slow motion. Like time was coming to a stop.
Twilight squeaked in terror and surprise.
“Oh,” was all Rarity said.
Twilight lifted one hoof gingerly away from the spill around her, and quickly found that there wasn’t a better place to put it. “Someone had to be the first artificial alicorn,” she said, hardly more than a whisper. “One without the lineage, without the bloodline. And I thought it should be me.”
“Oh,” Rarity said again.
“It’s—it wasn’t on p-purpose,” Twilight stuttered. “The process just isn’t right yet. And I feel it… whenever I use magic that wasn’t mine in the first place, I feel it. Just… I don’t know. Just—”
“Emptiness?”
Twilight hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”
“And sickness?”
“Yes. And sickness.”
“And you’re sure that—”
“It’s eating me up, Rarity,” Twilight said. “Whether I use the magic or not. Every day I just get a little bit… heavier.”
More rain.
“And I’m tracking it!” Twilight said, feigning cheer and positivity. “I’m taking down all of this data, so that no one else has to go through this. So that, someday, artificial alicorns will work.”
Rarity nodded.
“And I just… I’m not sentencing you to this,” she said. “I can’t. Not until it’s perfect, and I know you’re safe.”
Rarity breathed.
Just breathed.
“I’m sorry,” Twilight said. Her voice was thick with uncried tears. “I’m sorry I kept it from you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
The lab was silent.
Rarity wanted to be angry.
She wanted to be furious. So many lies. So much spite and vitriol covering for a special sort of condescending sympathy. How could Twilight not even attempt to explain this to her? How dare she suffer in silence, pushing off every offer of help and kindness given to her?
She wanted to think those things.
But she couldn’t.
Strangely enough, there was only one thought in Rarity’s mind at that moment:
I need time to stop.
And, when time kept marching on, when Twilight lurched towards her student in a clumsy offer of comfort, Rarity turned and ran.
Blueprints had a particular smell.
It was one Rarity had not smelled in a long time. One that took her back to the campus on Aurora, where the gravity wasn’t so unusual and the sky glowed orange and the city was just like home.
It wasn’t a bad smell. In fact, it made Rarity’s heart flutter with that same sort of excitement she had felt so long ago, standing under that streetlight, imagining the wealth of opportunity ahead of her.
“Uh… explain this to me again?” Rainbow asked, scratching her head with one hoof. “We’re building a planet on the edge of a black hole? Why?”
“Well, a black hole is many things,” Rarity mused. “But one of its more envied properties is time dilation.”
“Okay…” Rainbow squinted at the blueprint again. “Huh?”
“Black holes eat time!” Pinkie explained. “So you get less time per time, and time goes slower when you’re near one. C’mon, Dashie, keep up!”
“And why do we want that, exactly?” Rainbow asked, this time addressing Rarity directly. “I thought the point was to make time feel longer on the vacation planet. More time per… time, I guess. Why would you want to make it feel shorter?”
“You wouldn’t,” Rarity said. “Not for a vacation.”
Rarity ran her hoof over the list of coordinates on her plans, made a quick mental note, and allowed the blueprint to snap shut once more. She then lifted it in her magic and rolled it up as tight as she could, before slipping it back in its case and tucking it away.
“Was she always this cryptic?” Rainbow asked Pinkie.
Pinkie merely shrugged.
“Girls, I’m entering some coordinates into the nav system,” Rarity informed her team as she typed away on her televox. “We need to get moving, alright? No time like the present.”
“Yessir!” Pinkie cried, leaping into her seat. “Next stop: black hole!”
“Not yet” Rarity corrected. “We’ll be passing a very small, cold system rather soon and nicking a small moon. No one will miss it.”
Rainbow gave Rarity a suspicious look, but strapped herself into the pilot’s seat anyway. “Alright, fine. We’re gonna throw a moon into a black hole,” Rainbow said. “How exactly do you plan on moving a moon? You still don’t have your wings.”
“I don’t need them,” Rarity said simply.
This was all she offered, and so the other mares in the cockpit merely traded a confused look and pressed ahead. In this rare moment of silence, Rarity allowed herself to drift backward, settling into a strictly observational position as the ship cut silently through the emptiness ahead.
It was difficult, for many reasons, not to think of Eventide.
It was difficult for Rarity not to ultimately consider it a failure, since its abandonment had little to do with the concept or her management ability. Other things had gotten in the way.
It was just as difficult not to dwell on the way she had left things, though there really wasn’t any other choice. Rarity had never been one for the Sirish goodbye… but a quick and painless departure was, in this case, the only option.
It was difficult to consider what might happen when her supervisors discovered that Eventide had been abandoned. Though, to be fair, Rarity wasn’t entirely certain who that was, and figured that it may be a few months before any such discovery was made.
And, of course, it was difficult to ignore the piece of her new planet that stuck with her.
She had noticed it slowly. Day by day, short as they were on Eventide, Rarity felt herself changing. A crushed tea kettle here. Spilled seeds there. Glass popping. Energy humming within her. A little at a time, unnoticeable even to her as she went about the monotonous little things that made up life on a research outpost.
But, every now and then, something would snap. Rarity would do something she’d never be able to do before.
The closest thing to it was gravity. Not gravity itself, but the effect it had on a pony—the way one couldn’t truly feel its strength without leaving it behind. There was always a lightness to leaving a planet behind as its gravitational grip finally released, and this felt just the same.
An impossible lightness.
A power and she hadn’t known until she’d left its source behind.
She was sure she could do it now. Move a moon, that is. Sure as she was that she would feel the heaviness of gravity tugging her down to its surface.
“Rarity?” Pinkie said, her torso twisted to look around the back of her seat.
It took Rarity a long moment to come out of her thoughts. “Yes?”
“We’re almost there,” she said. “Are you sure you—”
“I’m sure.” Rarity pulled herself forward, peering out the front window at the tiny moon before them. “Take us in. We have work to do.”
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Oh, wow. Given how critical the revelations and emotions in this chapter are, I feel like these scenes should've been longer, with more detail. They seem to rush by too quickly.
i have to say, the very unusually literal definition of "professional atmosphere" being used here, i absolutely love. that is just so fun!
perfectly Pinkie, perfectly Rarity reacting to Pinkie being Pinkie, auaugh
oof! the coldness, the passive-aggression, the cutting double meanings. the worst things for me to deal with, i would hate to be in this situation so much. i love it
auauagh, the recontextualization! first the wings and now the shared foalhood, all driven by revealed characterization. wonderful stuff
and yes, this payoff, too! the way you set up all your marks to hit them perfectly later. it is a privilege to see you at work
and a hint here of Rarity reading a bit too into things, if i'm reading this correctly. and that certainly not being the cause but rather the effect of the frigid air between them. love the subtlety, augh
just the beauty and poetry of this entire passage, augh. just all the feelings of wanting to stop the world combined with the setting of literally being able to do it, just augh. i can feel all of it. beautiful stuff
such a wonderfully Pinkie way to understand and explain it, haha!
it's interesting, it feels like Rainbow Dash ended up morphing into the character role that was taken up by Spitfire in the first chapter.
such a melancholy moment to have a silly horse pun translation of a cultural concept. i love the dedication and believe in it fully
yes, threading all the hints together! and augh, i feel like i'm retroactively getting some of the metaphors from previous chapters now. the shadow being the shape of what is obscured from the light. all of it just makes this feel like Literature