Aether Express

by MagnetBolt

Fifth Stop: It's Snowing On Mt. Fuji

“Snow!” Rarity gasped, as she watched it falling outside the train windows. They’d exited a tunnel and found themselves riding the rails along a mountainside, and the fog and depressing atmosphere of their last stop fell away to be replaced with crisp and clean air that made Rarity all too aware of the state of her mane and coat.

“Unless I’m greatly mistaken, it does also snow in Ponyville,” Diana joked.

“Yes, but it was the middle of the summer when we left! Has it really been that long? It doesn’t feel like we’ve been gone for months…” It was actually rather difficult to keep track of the days. There was a constant countdown to the next stop, but even when hours went past the days seemed to flow into each other.

“Each Realm has its own seasons,” Diana said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were places where it was always winter. Perhaps that’s the case at our next stop.”

“I hope there will be a chance to get warmer clothing,” Rarity said. “You might have your warm cloak, but I don’t have anything appropriate!”

“I am sure that no matter what, you’ll find a way to make a grand entrance in style,” Diana assured her. “Think of it as an opportunity to explore what the locals wear. Whatever that will end up being.”

“Hm.” Rarity rubbed her chin, thinking. “Perhaps something like the yaks? Layers of finely made blankets in all sorts of colors?”

“You should consider more exotic options,” Diana said. “What if they use spellcraft to keep warm? Perhaps they cloak themselves in living flame.”

“I should hope not,” Rarity said, her mood souring. “It’s difficult enough to understand ponies who think formalwear is when they put on a hat. If the locals here are running around au natural in a snowstorm I might well stay on the train!”

Diana giggled lightly. “If that’s the case, you can bring civilization to them in the form of skiwear and scarves.”

“Truly a terrible burden,” Rarity sighed.

---

Rarity stepped out onto the train station with a little shiver and a happy hop in her step.

“Look at all this, Diana!” Rarity gasped. Her breath fogged the air like dragon’s smoke, but she forgot the cold for a moment while she looked at the wonder around her. The station was a long, low building framed with dark wood and decorated with carvings of birds and nature in simple abstract swirls of texture. Multicolored paper lanterns hung from the rafters, casting everything in soft light.

Even the trees were decorated, lights hanging to them in small twists of wire around jars containing fireflies that flashed in a rainbow of pastel blinking. A pathway had been carefully cleared leading away from the station and into a picturesque town that looked perfect for a real vacation.

A pony in robes greeted them as they stepped out. They bowed, and Rarity returned the gesture.

“Hello!” Rarity smiled. “I must say, everything here looks wonderful. Are you an official greeter?”

The pony said something in a language Rarity didn’t speak. It had the tone of a pleasant greeting, but Rarity didn’t know the words. Actually, she wasn’t sure of a few things. The pony’s robes were thick and looked quite warm, with at least three layers she could see, the outermost decorated with a pattern of small squares and triangles. It was the kind of clothing that would work equally well for a mare or stallion.

It would have been nice, actually, if Rarity could tell if they were a mare or stallion. They were beautiful either way, and it only further made Rarity feel a need for a shower and some proper clothing.

“I don’t suppose you speak the local language?” Rarity asked Diana.

“I’m afraid not,” Diana said softly. “But this pony seems friendly. Perhaps we should just go with them? They went to the trouble of being here to greet us.”

“You’re right of course, anything else would be intolerably rude,” Rarity agreed.

The robed pony motioned for them to follow, making the gesture big and obvious, clearly aware there was a barrier in understanding. Given that nothing was bleeding, obviously haunted, or on fire (aside from the candles in the lanterns, which were supposed to be in fire), Rarity was willing to take things on trust and followed the pony down the clear path, past several shops set up next to the station.

She slowed to look, and their guide stopped to give her a moment to see. The shops had their goods displayed outside under brightly colored awnings, wide and low tables angled just a little to ensure that ponies could see everything they offered. Rarity couldn’t even begin to name half of the fruits and vegetables she saw, but she forgot about them entirely when she saw the next stand.

“Oh! Diana, look at this~!” Rarity gasped, swooning. There was fabric on display, some of the finest bolts Rarity had ever seen. She looked to the shopkeeper for permission and the pony nodded, this one obviously a mare and wearing a surprisingly simple robe in earth tones - Rarity understood at once, of course. It wouldn’t do to wear something finer than what she had on display.

“I suppose this means you’ll be doing some shopping?” Diana asked. Rarity held up a length of fabric dyed to look like the sea, with a subtle gradient and a pattern like the sun shining on waves.

“It would be a nice way to spend the time,” Rarity said. She put the silk down and picked up some thick, fuzzy wool in light grey. “I don’t see anything finished, but heavens knows I can do my own tailoring if I have the materials. I should see about getting a sewing kit while we’re here.”

“I’m looking forward to warming up with a hot shower,” Diana said. “Perhaps a meal that didn’t come from the train’s teatray.”

She gave the shopkeeper a small, polite bow and excused herself, sensing that Diana wasn’t entirely enthused with the idea of looking at fabric.

“No offense to Miss Kyanite, but there are only so many small salads and bags of nuts that a pony can eat before they want something with more substance,” Rarity agreed. “She does make a wonderful cup of coffee, though.”

The path wound on, clearly the kind of road that had once been a simple trail and had been smoothed and worked by hooves and not industry. It had a hoof-crafted feeling to it, going around trees that were centuries old and decorated with braided rope and ornaments, leading through decorative arches that would have showed the way even in a new snowfall and finally leading to a wide, low building up against the rocks of the mountain.

“I believe this is our hotel,” Diana said.

They followed the pony inside, through several sets of sliding doors, and ended up in a warm, welcoming room. More ponies were there, and they were quickly escorted to a private room, ponies taking their luggage for them, arranging pillows on the floor for them to sit on, and finally putting warm cups of tea in their hooves.

“These must be some of the friendliest ponies I’ve ever met,” Rarity noted. “It’s all so…” she tried to think of the right word. She was a pony who noticed details, even very small ones. There had been a flurry of activity but it had been purposeful, with no confusion or even need for discussion. Every pony had done exactly one thing - sliding a door aside, arranging the pillows, pouring the tea - and then stepped back. It had been coordinated like a ballet dance, each pony playing a part.

“Not mechanical,” Diana agreed. She took a small, slow slip of the tea. Rarity mirrored her and found it to be somewhat vegetal and herbaceous, more of an infusion of medicinal herbs than real tea, but perhaps that was perfect against the winter’s chill. “Very practiced, though.”

It didn’t feel sinister. It felt like the busy purpose of art, when things were going just right and Rarity got into a flow.

Rarity shifted on her seat. She felt uncomfortable, not because the surroundings were unpleasant, but because she felt barbaric and uncouth, a wild animal being pampered in a salon. She delicately sniffed at herself.

“Do you think we can find a way to ask for a shower?” she asked.

---

“Oh this is infinitely better than a shower,” Rarity groaned. She leaned back in the hot water. It turned out that the inn had been built around a hot spring, and there were a number of pools out back, tended and treated and decorated. She lounged in one of the warmest, letting the natural mineral water wash away the dust of the road and the muck that had worked into her coat.

She’d been in the water for only a few minutes and felt like she could spend hours simply steeping like pony tea. There was a gentle burbling to the water that brought to mind a soft, ethereal massage across her entire body. Behind them, one of the attendants had settled down with an odd instrument somewhere between a harp and a kaleidoscope. It made pure tones, fading in and out as her hooves played on crystalline strands.

“Isn’t that pool a little warm?” Diana asked.

The warm baths varied in size and temperature. Rarity had picked the hottest of the lot without hesitation. After some of the things that had happened to her coat and mane, she would have been halfway tempted to jump in even if it had been boiling instead of merely bubbling. It had stung a bit to get in and Rarity was sure she would be as pink as a party pony when she got out, but it felt wonderfully cleansing and purifying.

“It’s hot enough to poach an egg,” Rarity agreed. “If I pass out, be a dear and have somepony pull me out before I drown?”

“Mm,” Diana said. “On reflection, I’ve decided this Realm is decidedly not sinister. It is a wonderful change of pace.”

Rarity opened her eyes and looked around the hot springs. The warmth of the volcanic pools had created an oasis where things were green despite the winter chill in the air outside, and the ponies running the inn had built walls to trap the heat and steam. A garden was blooming, and it was so beautiful and precise that Rarity still wasn’t entirely sure if it was real or a sculpture. Every flower was perfect, not a single leaf was blemished.

“The language barrier is worrying,” Rarity said. “I’ve always considered myself to be quite cultured, but I don’t even know where to start!”

“It’s something I should have anticipated as well,” Diana agreed. “The further we get from your native Realm, the more things will change.”

“Thank goodness they’ve been kind enough to forgive whatever faux pas we’re making,” Rarity sighed. “I hope we don’t come across as being demanding or too terribly rude.”

Rarity was a mare of two worlds, in a way. First and foremost, she considered herself a member of the upper class. She deserved the best in life and she had good enough taste to tell when she was getting it. Rarity was also a mare who worked something that was ultimately a combination of retail work and commission and had the stress of both worlds. Demanding clients were the stuff of nightmares.

No, that wasn’t true. Nightmare Moon had been a force of evil and darkness that tried to plunge Equestria into endless night. She was nowhere near as bad as the average client. Rarity would have considered serving the ancient evil if she’d offered Rarity the power to force demanding noblemares to listen to reason about deadlines and alterations.

“Ah well,” Rarity sighed. She’d nearly drifted off to sleep. She stretched and felt her sore joints pop softly. She felt loose and comfortable, and when she rose out of the steaming pool of springwater she felt like a brand new mare. She reached for the towel that had been next to her, but found that a young mare had already taken it and was assisting her with drying off.

“I think this is beginning to verge on spoiling us,” Diana noted. She was receiving the same treatment, though with her taller frame the mare assisting her was having a bit of trouble reaching the high spots on her back.

“Yes, this is a bit unnecessary,” Rarity tried to assure them. “I actually do know a few spells that can assist with this.”

“You do?” Diana asked.

“A lady doesn’t cut corners but she does learn to be efficient. In lieu of having the proper tools and products, one must still be able to take care of their mane.”

Rarity focused her magic, and her aura washed backwards through her mane, gently drying and heating it, tightening the natural curls into her usual style.

“I could do your mane as well,” Rarity offered. “I did learn the spell by rote, so I can’t change it too much, but you’d look simply divine with curls.”

“Thank you for the offer, but I’m fine the way I am,” Diana assured her. “Perhaps I’ll try something more daring later.”

“Of course,” Rarity said. “Now, we should--”

More ponies came out of the inn, these carrying bundles of cloth. Rarity wasn’t sure what was happening until they were already halfway through dressing her, and it took until they’d secured the outermost layer of robes for her to recognize something else.

“This cloth-- it’s what I was looking at in the market!” she realized. “But those were just raw bolts! It can’t have been more than an hour, and they didn’t even have my measurements!”

“Very skilled indeed,” Diana noted. They’d found clothing for her as well, in dark colors similar to the black cloak she’d been wearing and had, in fact, almost completely worn out after only a few adventures. Few items of clothing were hardy enough to survive the action-filled life of a traveler on the Aether Express.

“They must have tailored these while we were bathing,” Rarity said. “Do you know how much this would cost in Equestria?”

“I’m beginning to worry about how much it will cost here and now,” Diana mumbled.

“There’s no need to worry,” somepony said, the first time they’d heard words they understood.

The ponies attending to Rarity and Diana took a step back and bowed deeply as a pony stepped out of the inn, and it was very clear why.

She was a tall mare, colored like coffee with cream and with the placid, worldly aura of a princess. Also she had the horn and wings of a princess. She was, in short, very princess-like and Rarity very quickly found herself bowing along with the ponies who had been dressing her.

“Please, there’s no need for that,” the alicorn assured her, waving her hoof dismissively. “You are my guests. I hope that you’ve been comfortable so far?”

“Yes, of course,” Rarity said, very quickly agreeing. “I apologize, I had no idea about you or this and we went and took a bath when--”

“When you needed one after a long journey,” the alicorn finished for her. She smiled. “Don’t apologize. As I said, both of you are my guests. It’s my responsibility to ensure that you are taken care of, not that you bow before me.”

“Even so, thank you,” Diana said, nodding politely.

“You are also a wonderful test for the ponies here,” the alicorn said. “I should introduce myself. I am Kaolin. This Realm is my home, a place for ponies to seek perfection in themselves and their art.”

“They do certainly seem skilled,” Rarity agreed.

“That’s because they’re motivated by more than money or fame,” Kaolin said. “In this place, those who achieve the pinnacle of excellence can ascend.”

---

That had been more than enough to make Rarity want to ask several dozen questions all at once, realize it was extremely rude to start belting inquiries rapid-fire at an alicorn while literally just out of the bath, and find the restraint to hold herself back until a more appropriate venue could be found.

They’d been invited to a meal, which had seemed like it would be perfect for conversation but there was some small amount of difficulty. Or maybe small was the wrong word, and the right word was something like ‘muscular’ or ‘toned’.

“And he is…” Rarity hesitated.

“The serving dish,” Kaolin said again. A stallion was lying on the floor between them. Small morsels of food had been placed on his broad back, and they were expected to eat off of him.

“Customs change from place to place,” Diana reminded Rarity.

“Yes, it just seems a bit…” Rarity blushed.

“If he’s not to your taste, I can find another stallion or mare,” Kaolin offered.

Rarity knew without even being prompted that it would have hurt the dignity of the pony that was a combination of centerpiece and entertainment. She certainly didn’t want to offend him, and he wasn’t hard on the eyes.

“No, no, he’s quite stunning!” Rarity smiled at him and took another one of the bite-sized portions from the small of his back. The food reminded her of the gourmet fare from Canterlot’s best restaurants, small and controlled portions involving only a few elements, each one offering a perfect bite.

This one in particular was seasoned rice along with a strip of strongly pickled radish. It had a clean, sharp flavor.

“I believe Miss Rarity wanted to ask about alicorns,” Diana said. She was considerably less perturbed, barely even seeming to notice the stallion she was eating off of.

“Ah,” Kaolin nodded. “I expected as much. Almost all ponies who come here ask the same question. Is it possible for me to become an alicorn? Can a pony really ascend?”

“They can,” Rarity said. “I’ve seen it happen.”

The room went quiet.

“She’s telling the truth,” Diana confirmed. “It’s happened twice within living memory.”

Kaolin smiled. “That is good. To see others excel is to give us all something to aspire to!”

“Yes, something like that,” Rarity agreed. She very nearly meant it. In the abstract she certainly did. As a designer she’d seen great works from others and taken inspiration from it. “I left on this journey to, ah, find myself.”

It felt like an excuse because it was.

“I understand,” Kaolin said. “I was merely an earth pony, not long ago by immortal standards. I remember the distance that opened up between myself and the ponies around me.”

“Perhaps you can offer some insight for Miss Rarity?” Diana suggested.

“If I could grant every pony here the wisdom to ascend, I would do so in an instant. For some ponies it is the work of a lifetime, coming by inches after endless work and toil towards a single grand task. For others it comes in a moment of inspiration.”

“That sounds like how a pony gets their cutie mark,” Diana noted mildly.

“Yes. I would agree with that.” Kaolin nodded slowly. “It’s something like a second puberty. But a cruel one.”

“Cruel?” Rarity asked.

Kaolin nodded. She turned slightly to look outside into the snow, past the trees at something only she could see. “A world where only a chosen few are allowed to grow to be adults. How awful is a universe that sees all but one in a million die as a child.”

---

Rarity sat under the awning and looked out at the cold. Night had fallen after a while, and a moon hung in the sky, but not the one she knew from home. The moon here was blank and white, as polished as a marble.

She held a cup of tea in her hooves but she didn’t drink it. It served well enough to keep her hooves warm.

“What are you thinking about?” Diana asked, sitting down next to her.

“You can’t guess?” Rarity looked down at her tea. If she angled it just right she could see her own reflection in the surface, lit by moonlight.

“Unfortunately, I’m not a mind reader. Nor do I have any particular talent at all.”

Rarity flinched. Her eyes were irresistibly drawn to Diana’s flank. It was covered by at least three layers of fabric, but she could still see the blank coat in her mind’s eye, the empty space where a cutie mark should have been.

“I was thinking about the ponies here,” Rarity said. She motioned ahead of them to where a pony was slowly and carefully carving a block of ice. “All of the ponies here are true artists. They don’t even use money! I tried to pay the tailor who made these robes and utterly embarrassed myself. Apparently even the idea of trading art for mere wealth is beyond the pale.”

“How does she get the fabric, then?” Diana asked.

“The pony whose art is weaving gives it to her as a gift. And that pony gets the materials for their dye from farmers who pride themselves on their harvest, and so forth.”

“Ah,” Diana said. “So really not so different from Equestria, just with less accounting.”

“I suppose if there’s ever a pony who does have finance as their cutie mark they’ll have to invent banking,” Rarity muttered. “But even so, ponies here are sure to have a roof over their heads, and food on their table.”

“And some of the tables are ponies,” Diana noted.

“Did you know there was apparently quite an argument about which stallions were to be given that honor, to be our tableware for dinner with Kaolin? It seems their art is their own personal beauty and it’s extremely competitive.”

“I can’t imagine a pony with a special talent like that is particularly interesting to spend time with,” Diana said. The ice carving across the way was starting to take shape as some sort of fish.

“I suppose they’d have little to speak about except themselves,” Rarity agreed.

“And they’d be discouraged from doing anything else. A whole life spent worrying about that first wrinkle.” Diana shook her head. “Perhaps it’s not something I can understand. May I ask you a very personal question?”

Rarity smiled. “Of course you can, darling.”

“How did you get your cutie mark?”

“Ah, well…” Rarity sighed. “You know, I told my sister and her friends a rather simplified version of this story not long ago. I was quite a young foal and I’d volunteered to be the costume designer for our school play. I put my heart and soul into it but they just weren’t coming together. I’d followed basic patterns and they worked well enough, but I didn’t know enough about design or fashion to understand why things were done in certain ways, and so when I tried to alter them it was a disaster!”

“And you had a sudden flash of inspiration?” Diana suggested.

“Oh no. That would have been wonderful, but what happened was I got frustrated at myself and everything else in the world and had a screaming, crying temper tantrum.”

Diana chuckled. “That does sound a bit like you.”

“Yes, I suppose I am a touch dramatic when I’m overwhelmed. I ran away from the ruined costumes and everything else because I felt like a failure and I couldn’t face anypony. My magic flared up in my desperation to find a solution and led me right out of town and into the middle of nowhere!”

“Not the most useful spell I’ve heard of.”

“No, I didn’t think so either,” Rarity agreed. “I ended up finding a big, ugly rock and nothing else. I was working myself up to another panic attack when there was the most amazing thing! The entire sky lit up like a rainbow!”

“A rainbow?”

“Much later I’d find out where it came from, but in that moment I was entranced by the sight.” Rarity sighed. “I didn’t get a chance to look for long before the shockwave hit. That cracked open the rock, sent me flying, and gave me quite a bump on the head. I would have started crying all over again if that rock hadn’t ended up being a massive geode.”

“I see. So you got your cutie mark for finding the geode.”

“No. But my parents did find me shortly afterwards once they’d noticed I’d been missing instead of merely quiet. I tried to recapture some of the beauty of that rainbow in the costumes I created, using the gems I found. And since my mother decided to help me with some of the more technical aspects, they were much improved, largely by her skill rather than my own. My cutie mark came along with the pride of seeing my work being worn proudly in front of a crowd.”

Diana nodded in silence.

Across the field, the ice block that was slowly turning into a leaping salmon cracked, a single mistake ruining the entire thing. The pony who had been carving it froze in place.

“So your magic helped you find gems, and so you got a gem cutie mark?” Diana prompted.

“It’s been invaluable to being a designer. I might not know many spells, but finding diamonds at a moment’s notice can be an indirect solution to many of life’s problems.” Rarity stifled a small laugh.

“If you’d been born here, you’d be a miner,” Diana noted.

Rarity paused, looking over at her.

“Your talent is finding gems,” Diana explained. “Everypony here is trying to perfect their talent. I’m not sure if you’d be expected to find the most perfect gems, or find them more quickly, or the largest veins, but I suspect you wouldn’t be occupied by thinking of stylish headwear.”

“They have a shocking lack of hats here,” Rarity said quietly. “But darling, my calling is to design fashion of all sorts, not mining!”

“I don’t think that would matter. I’ve been watching the ponies around us. Each of them does exactly one thing. They don’t have time for hobbies or anything except mastering that single art, and all of them are doing only what their cutie mark tells them.”

“But…” Rarity frowned. “I suppose it makes sense, doesn’t it? They want to become alicorns. There has to be something to their methods.”

“I might be more convinced if there were more alicorns here,” Diana said.

They watched another block of ice be secured in place, and the pony started carving again.

---

“Sencha is very close to ascending,” Kaolin whispered.

The green stallion was twice as old as Rarity’s father, and was moving with slow, deliberate care as he poured steaming water into a cup, swirling it around the sides. He was seated alone in the center of a garden, surrounded by a few simple tools. Over the last hour he’d boiled water and crushed dry leaves into a fine powder.

Rarity was starting to think he might get around to actually brewing tea by some time next week.

“How long has he been practicing this?” Rarity asked.

“Every day for the last fifty-six years,” Kaolin said. "Before that, he was busy studying in the abstract."

“And it still isn’t perfect enough?” Diana asked. Her patience seemed more and more strained the longer they spent in the peaceful realm. It was as if there was some subtle personal mockery being leveled at her that Rarity couldn’t sense.

“It’s not for me to judge,” Kaolin said. “I can’t detect any mistake, but every day it is the same. He brews a single cup of tea, with the perfect temperature, the perfect blend of leaves, the perfect grind, the perfect technique. At least… all perfect as far as I can tell, but…”

The older stallion waited, taking a deep breath full of the steam coming from the steeping tea. He smiled, then shook his head and stood up, walking away from the cup.

“He didn’t even taste it!” Rarity scoffed as he left. Ponies started cleaning up what was left. Kaolin motioned to them, and they brought the full cup over.

“Would you like to try it?” she asked.

Rarity nodded, and she was given the small cup of tea. She took a sip, and the flavor was deep, rich, but at the same time full of life. It had the bright tones of a fresh flower and the earthiness of roasted roots, all in the same sip.

“It’s amazing!” Rarity gasped.

“To us,” Kaolin sighed. “I cannot hope to make tea even a fraction as well as he does, but at the same time he has learned to see flaws too small for anypony else to detect. Only he knows what he could do better, and there can be no harsher critic.”

Diana shook her head. “This is wrong.”

“Wrong?” Kaolin asked.

“Is this how you became an alicorn? Doing the same thing over and over again for decades until everything is aligned just so?” Diana asked.

“Diana, she’s our host!” Rarity hissed.

Kaolin held up a hoof. “And it isn’t taboo to ask. You want to know if these ponies are wasting their lives. I don’t think they are.”

“If you don’t want to tell us…” Rarity trailed off. It was terribly rude to ask the Royalty anything personal. They were supposed to be above that, without a real beginning or end. Something eternal. Even when Princess Cadance had arrived, her birthplace had been left a mystery, brought to Equestria from another land, only a foal a little older than Rarity. It was better not to know where she came from. It made the world seem bigger. Big enough for divinity.

“A long time ago there was a sculptor,” Kaolin said. “They mostly made pots and cups and plates, because those were the things ponies wanted and needed. It was simple and honest work and the sculptor took pride in it.”

She took the cup from Rarity and spun it slowly in her magic, examining it closely.

“The sculptor also made art, from time to time. It was what she truly wanted to do, but she only dared practice with the extra clay left over from her real work. One day, she found herself using her finest clay to sculpt her finest work. It was supposed to be used for a tea set for an emperor, but instead she had formed it into a pony. The most beautiful pony she had ever seen. So beautiful she fell in love. But…”

“But?” Rarity prompted.

Kaolin put the cup down carefully. “The clay was the very finest. To use it for anything other than her appointed task was to risk execution. Even if she dared fire it, the size of the sculpture virtually guaranteed that it would burst in her kiln. But if she did not, the beauty of it would melt away.”

“She fired it anyway,” Diana guessed.

“Of course,” Kaolin confirmed. “And there was a great explosion, a huge fire, and in the end I was what you see before you.”

Rarity tapped her hoof against her chin, thinking.

“This might seem like a silly question, darling,” she said. “But were you the sculptor, or the sculpture?”

Kaolin smiled. “Both, of course. We all create ourselves.”

---

Rarity bowed again. An entire crowd of ponies had gathered around the train platform. A half-dozen musicians played soft notes in a kind of freeform jazz, clearly not used to working with each other or out of isolation at all. Dancers tried to find graceful movements that matched the improvised notes. One pony was simply juggling knives and ignored the rest, while the others kept a wide berth.

“Thank you for seeing us off,” she said. “I imagine you must be busy taking care of all the little ponies of this realm.”

Kaolin’s eyes twinkled like gemstones. “What do you mean?”

“I thought about something when I was watching a pony carving ice blocks,” Rarity said. “He had all night to work, and as much ice as he could ever want. The pony who made my robes didn’t have to negotiate for fabric or needles. Everypony here is free to better themselves without worry because the small details all get smoothed over.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Kaolin said. “Mortal ponies only have one life. Such a short time. It’s my responsibility to make sure they can make the best of it.”

“You’re a good ruler,” Diana admitted.

“But you disagree with my ways anyway?” Kaolin guessed.

“I think ponies need adversity to grow,” Diana said. “Perhaps the reason so few ponies here can achieve perfection is because they’re never tested to find where they’re weakest.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Kaolin said. “I suppose I spoil them. I hope that wherever you go on your next stop you find inspiration for your art.”

Rarity nodded. “I will, and I appreciate the gifts. I don’t know if I can ever repay you.”

Her saddlebags were stuffed almost to bursting with bolts of fabric and sewing supplies, a wealth of silk and cotton and thread that would keep her busy for days just organizing it all.

“You don’t have to,” Kaolin said. “You gave my ponies a chance to display their art, and having seen it, you’ll carry it with you forever. That is all they, or I, could possibly ask.”

Kaolin bowed, and Rarity and Diana matched it. Behind them, the train whistle blew again, the engine of the Aether Express coming to full steam and just about ready to leave. Rarity gave the crowd a wave, and a few of the foals waved back. Rarity hoped that whenever they found their special talents, they’d enjoy them, since this was a Realm where those talents would be the sum of their fates.

Comments

[Diamond Sparkle]

I am loving this fanfic.

[Thought Prism]

No, that wasn’t true. Nightmare Moon had been a force of evil and darkness that tried to plunge Equestria into endless night. She was nowhere near as bad as the average client. Rarity would have considered serving the ancient evil if she’d offered Rarity the power to force demanding noblemares to listen to reason about deadlines and alterations.

Thus explaining the existence of one particular Rarity in an alternate timeline lmao.

[new55]

That was a good chapter.