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=======Volume One: Not All Marks Are Cuties1 words
Dumb Fabric4,141 words
Un-sisters3,223 words
What's 'Uncouth'...?6,053 words
A Lady Doesn't Whine6,643 words
=======Volume Two: The Lilies of The Field1 words
Toast!9,989 words
Into Her Own Reflection She Stared8,710 words
The Horror5,179 words
Gal Pals8,695 words
=======Volume Three: corsi e ricorsi1 words
She Complains...! (pt .1)7,154 words
She Complains...! (pt. 2)9,648 words
She Complains...! (pt. 3)5,640 words
Silver Shoals6,275 words

Into Her Own Reflection She Stared

Having now missed the afternoon train, Rarity heaped herself onto her old large bed with an exhalation. She dismissed all of the morning affair by a little melody that she hummed with her hooves folded over her belly. Returning to Manehattan would be stress to come; at present, however, she enjoyed the oasis of having unknown whereabouts to the world which would soon impose on her. Sweetie Belle, observing, joined her close to her side, and would have made amends for the sleep she had missed the previous night, had not their mother, Cookie, announced her appearance with an unpleasant knock on the door frame.

“Oh, Rare! What are you still doing here?” she cried, toddling over to where the girls were laying. “I was sure you had already left!”

“No, Mother,” Rarity replied without opening her eyes, “Sweetie Belle and I were just talking. Did you think that I would leave without saying goodbye to you?”

“I was sure you did, darling,” said Cookie, “because I was just speaking with Winsome Weathervane outside, and she swears that she spotted you rushing through Ponyville Square. I didn’t have an answer for that. I assumed that you had gone to catch the line.”

“Oh…” grumbled Rarity, “You knew that couldn’t be true, and now Winsome thinks that I have the habit of snubbing my parents.”

“Now, it’s no big whoop. Winsome knows you’re a good girl.”

Cookie took a seat between her and Sweetie Belle on the bed; the mattress bent slightly to her weight, forcing her daughters to prop themselves up.

“And so do I, by the way,” she went on. “But, I have to tell you, I was so confused after our therapy session with Miss Starlight that you could have gone out in a kick line and I wouldn’t have noticed—ooh, love, love, love the hair.”

“Thanks,” said Sweetie Belle.

“Did your sister do that for you?”

Sweetie Belle itched her ear and answered casually, “No, I did it myself. Rarity threw rocks at me, the traitor. Lucky I don’t bruise easily.”

“Now’s not the time for that kind of talk,” Cookie replied. “I came to see you to give you a warning about going into town. You too, Rarity.” She motioned for both of them to come closer. “Winsome just came in from her late night shift. She says that there was a police squad at Sugar Cube Corner this morning… Ponies are nervous to go outside their shops and houses, and you can understand why!”

“Oh, my! How scary,” said Rarity. “Everything seems so different, here.”

“What happened?” asked Sweetie Belle.

“You know the old saying, that you should never argue cannoli with cakes,” said Cookie, retrieving a kerchief from her pocket and patting the line of her forehead. “It sounds like there was some kind of violent dispute in the store—not a candy cane left uncrooked, nor a gingerbread house left standing, according to Winsome. A young staffer was found unconscious in the storage closet!”

“Heavens! And all of this happened this morning, you say?” asked Rarity.

“In broad daylight! A customer walked in to a ransacked bakery. And I’ll tell you what I think. It’s very curious that the boy staffer was left by himself to begin with. Isn’t it, Sweetie Belle? Did they ever give you the keys when you worked there?”

“Mr. Cake wouldn’t trust me with a frosting bag by myself,” she averred. “Maybe this will teach him a lesson about favoring colts over fillies, hmm.”

“So you’re the mastermind,” Rarity joked. “No need to worry, Mother. Detective Rarity has cracked the case.”

Cookie gave her a side glance. “Don’t be so dismissive, for once. The word is the Cakes have been having a little trouble in paradise.”

“Oh, It can’t be!” said Rarity. “Of what sort?”

“Well, I imagine that with the twins going off they’ve been under stress about how to pay for university. And there are rumors that Mrs. Cake has started becoming a bit too friendly with the ‘help’…”

Rarity gasped. “No way!”

Sweetie Belle groaned. “Hoh, boy… Celesita, save us all.” She slid off the bed and plunked herself in front of the vanity. “I’ll be here when you’re finished,” she said, plucking and posing with her coiffure.

“Who would have thought Mrs. Cake would be filled with such cunning,” Rarity continued.

“Well,” said Cookie, “I’ve heard—"

“Heard what?”

“Well, between you and I, I’ve seen Mr. Cake, making more than a warranted share of ‘business trips’ to Sybarite Sweet’s Meringue Mill.”

“Oh, indeed!”

“So my thinking,” Cookie went on, “is that the whole fiasco this morning must have been planned by one of the two of them. Either Carrot, getting revenge on his wife, or Chiffon, getting it on her husband. It is sad to see a good marriages go this way, isn’t it?”

The words ‘good marriages’ made Rarity uneasy.

“But how else,” Cookie asked her, “would it have happened so smoothly, at that time of day, with no suspects?”

“Why, I have no idea what it could be about, if you’re looking for an answer from me. Mother, may I…?” Rarity said, taking the kerchief to dab her own forehead.

“What’s the matter, darling? Are you hot?”

“No, no,” Rarity answered through a bit of nervous laughter. “I get the sweats sometimes, that’s all.”

“Like mother, like daughter. I know a good specialist, if you need one—"

“Ugh, write down their address for me,” Rarity said distractedly. “It’s getting to be a little embarrassing…”

Cookie turned to Sweetie Belle. “But I wanted to tell you, especially, Sweetie Belle—sorry, I wanted to advise you, that I think you should avoid going into town until this whole thing blows over.”

Sweetie Belle frowned. “Why? Do you think Mr. and Mrs. Cake want revenge on me, too?”

“Don’t give that look. If Sugar Cube Corner can be burgled, you can be burgled, too. I think it’s just better this way—who knows what could be going on.”

Cookie paused, allowing the gravity of her command to be felt. Sweetie Belle looked like a glowering portrait, face to face with itself in the vanity mirror reflection; upon observing which, Rarity, with a chill of recollection, thought of the Mirror Pool cave—the way the water had touched her, and even the sound of droplets pocking the smooth stone of its natural lanai.

Lanai.

Then there was the natural boudoir. But was it natural? She had made it herself, projected herself onto it, as Sweetie Belle projected herself onto the little mirror in the bedroom. Rarity tried, without success, to remember whether she had used the coconut water to correct her appearance. If she had—would that have activated the cloning magic?

“That’s all well and good, Mother,” Rarity said, stirring dizzily to her hooves, “but we have one errand which we absolutely must fulfill—you remember. We must be get back to Sweet Apple Acres, and see to it that we make peace with the Apples.”

Cookie puckered her lips at the suggestion. “Young mares travelling the post roads at night? On this night? For goodness’ sake, Miss Starlight didn’t say she had to talk to them today. There could be highway ponies out there! I’m sure she would agree that it would be just as effective to write a letter of apology, instead.”

Sweetie Belle scratched her head. “Well, maybe—”

“Oh, no, no, no!” Rarity strolled over to where her sister was sitting and placed a hoof on her shoulder opposite Cookie. “What if we took Yona with us on our trip? You’d have nothing to worry about with three strong ladies looking out for each other. I think that sounds like splendid idea.”

“I thought you were intent on traveling back to Manehattan,” said Cookie. “Don’t you have plans? What time is your train?”

“Trains can wait,” Rarity replied, “and besides, the store will be fine without me for another day. If Starlight considers that it is best for Sweetie Belle’s mental health to maintain her friendship with Applejack, and Sweetie Belle herself is feeling pangs within her very soul to adhere to that prescription, then why shouldn’t we do all we can to facilitate such rare therapeutic serendipity? Do you know, Mother, that half the difficulty of a transformation is simply for one level of understanding to be able to communicate to a lower one? The fulfillment of this interaction may be the very key to my dear sister’s psychological self-sufficiency, her rite of passage into adulthood, and I for one am willing to stay around to see that it happens.”

Cookie dithered a bit, as uncertain as a housecat adrift on a hazy lake. “I suppose I can’t say ‘no’ to that. Hmm. Maybe she can get some kind of credit from the local community council for this.”

“We’ll look into it,” said Rarity, pressing down on Sweetie Belle’s shoulder.

Cookie got up, letting the bed rebound to its original state. “That poor boy. Can you imagine? Why, just the thought of that happening to one of you makes my stomach churn. Just be careful, okay?”

She took Rarity by the cheek and gave her a wet, smothering kiss, then another of the same to Sweetie Belle. “Just look out for each other, is all that I ask.”

“Will do, Mother!” said Rarity, making a royal’s wave. “No worries!”

Cookie closed the door behind her as she left. At the first moment Sweetie Belle had a chance to speak, she shot her a glare, and said “What the heck? What’s gotten into you, all of a sudden?”

“Do you remember,” Rarity began, “out in the meadow, when I tried to warn you about the dangers of traipsing through enchanted places, and how we convinced ourselves that I was deaf to the melodies of legend in order to safely repossess ourselves of that old warehouse key?”

“You mean when you went to poop in the Mirror Pool cave?” asked Sweetie Belle.

Rarity winced. “Yes, that. All my heroic confidence turned out to be earthly bravado, Sweetie Belle. Being in the glow of that place altered my senses. My memories seemed to take on their own life, and I was absorbed. I felt as though I belonged to an ancient sort—but yet, at the same time, I found myself chanting rhymes with a carefree ease I have not known since I was a filly.

“In short, I fear at several points that I may have gotten too close to the water.” She began to pace. “You heard what Mom just said. Winsome has spotted me in town. And now, Mr. and Mrs. Cake are in marital troubles, just like Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Oh, I knew this was a bad idea…”

Sweetie Belle felt her throat go dry as she watched the churn of her sister’s dark intuitions. She did not ascribe them to the course of real events; but rather, to her admission of the difficulty she was having in Manehattan, which had reached her heart—her impending return there, and, perhaps, a missed train ride.

“Let’s slow down,” she said. “I think you’re getting carried away. You remember that there was an invasion of Pinkies—right? If you had really activated the Mirror Pool, don’t you think we’d see an army of… er, you? Wouldn’t that be hard to miss?”

“I suppose so.” She stopped moving and fell into thought.

“Then,” Sweetie Belle went on, “how long was it exactly before the duplicates appeared after Pinkie returned to Ponyville? Was she able to tell you where she had been before they showed up?”

“No,” said Rarity. She let out a sigh. “They followed her home. They came in like a squall. None of us had any preparation for it.”

“Nobody followed us home, Rare.”

“That’s true.”

“You still sound uncertain.”

“I don’t know, Sweetie Belle,” said Rarity, working up a nerve. “I was so carried away in thought when I was down by the pool. I may as well have been on the moon.”

“But you’re not crazy. Like Pinkie.”

Rarity let out another long sigh.

“And what about the pining wish?” asked Sweetie Belle. “You said to me that magic has a price. Something that burns inside you. If you weren’t wishing anything when you were around that water, then you have nothing to worry about.”

She yawned and let herself fall back on the bed.

“It sounds to me like you had a grand old time,” she continued, “just singing songs and being one of the trees.”

I look up to her, too, thought Rarity, watching her sister lounge on the sheets. She dismissed the thought and gently took a seat on the vanity stool. Something that burns inside you. I need something from her. Unconditioned.

“Don’t worry about being too cavalier, Sweetie Belle,” she said.

Sweetie Belle turned her head to look at her. “I do feel bad about Applejack. I overheard you and Starlight talking while I was in the kitchen. Not everything. But it sounds like things really got messed up.”

Rarity waved it away. “Not your fault. What are you guilty of? Your only offense is youthful overzealousness, and they will love you more for it. You’ll see.”

“Black Box Theater comes from the heart, Rarity,” Sweetie Belle replied. “I think it could resonate with a pony like Applejack. It spoils everything for me if I made someone feel split-off by it, instead, like she and Rainbow seem to be. Even if a hundred princesses turned out.”

“All is not lost. We can talk to her and make things right, of course.” Rarity turned to the vanity mirror and began to preen herself with quick, precise motions.

“Of course…?” asked Sweetie Belle.

“Yes, everything in due time,” said Rarity. “We are mature mares, Applejack and I, understanding of each other’s imperfections and sensible to the vagaries of life. Our simpatico for one another has been refined through cooperative struggle, like cosmo-agents who have traveled outer space, who share a bond which no one who walks on this planet could comprehend. A mere incident or indiscretion will not crack the foundation of our trust, and maudlin exchanges will not suit us. No, rather, our friendship will run deeper, will be richer for us having crossed such boundaries in good faith, like gold traces discovered in a sieve.”

“Are you sure?” said Sweetie Belle. “You seemed pretty eager to go see her a few minutes ago.”

Rarity set down the comb. “Quite sure, yes. Oh, we’re not going to see the Apples, darling. We’re going to see Twilight, who is the only pony I know who has experience in eradicating doppelgangers and who, luckily for us, happens to be staying in town this weekend.”

Sweetie Belle rolled in bed for a moment, then replied to the ceiling, “So we’re going to lie. We’re going to lie to Mom, and lie to Applejack.”

“You know how Mother is,” Rarity said. “I’m doing you a favor by getting you out of the house. And as far as Applejack is concerned… Look, Sweetie Belle, there is a reason we go about these sorts things in a certain way. Applejack may have hurt feelings—for now—but we have learned something from our mistake. The best thing for us to do is to clean up our mess, the best we can, and things will sort themselves out of their own accord.”

“All this talk about ‘duplicates’ and whatnot is just anxiety about your reputation, Rare,” Sweetie Belle said, capitulating, and turning up at her again. “And I mean that lovingly. You were just talking about it. I say the right thing to do is to give Applejack a full, honest account of what was going on with us yesterday. Why not?”

“Why not? Because—Applejack neither wants nor is prepared to receive such an account, with all its messy details. And why should we want to suffer through giving one? Don’t think me dishonest—it is better off this way. So much interest has gone into your theatrical debut in Ponyville amongst our friends that to import such scandal involving… accidentally eaten things and planned egress… into the memory of it, would be a stain upon your efforts, if you will forgive such an unfortunate metaphor. A conventional apology will best serve all concerned, rather than something hysterical.”

“The word you’re looking for is confessional,” Sweetie Belle replied, smoothing the bedsheets underneath her. “Confession is important for psychic trauma. Seemingly small trespasses can have long-lasting, even permanent impact. That’s not a character defect—it’s just how it is with us ponies.”

“And you think that it is our responsibility to go digging through other ponies’ inner workings?” said Rarity.

“It’s part of accepting others as they are, and treating them in kind. Angst takes the form of small things. Little receptacles, like the clinking sound of a spoon against a ceramic bowl your mom makes when she mixes her oats every morning. That’s why relationships seem illogical when you’re outside of them. Everything needs to be acknowledged in the right way. Besides, I think Applejack will see the poetry of our predicament.”

“Poetry?” Rarity chafed like a bank manager confronted with a bullish loan request. “The mind must be quickened by poetry, Sweetie Belle. It should be the tall sunlight which fills the old maid’s chamber anon the drapes are cast down. You are just like the old folk from that church—you believe that the quest for truth is easy and universal, that anything will do. And when you encounter privation, you say it must be pony nature. Hmph! You would venerate a hag, rather than draw her curtain somewhat to let in the sun, and you expect others to do the same. If we are going to reach Applejack, I say, we will do better to lift her up in the old spirit, with distilled experience, rather than to feed her the cobwebbed apples of W.B. Wheats.”

Sweetie Belle propped herself up on her elbows. “Why do you assume that even if such ‘sun’ did exist, that you’d be able to recognize it, and make use of it? I’d like to buy your salve, Rarity. Give me a whole pallet. What a flimflam—‘herein is the light, shining’, and, ‘herein are your moldy apples’. You’re totally, painfully ignorant of your own belief, that the devil is the Great Deceiver.”

A hush came over the room as Rarity went back and inspected her work in the mirror, and Sweetie Belle lay poised and thoughtful on the bed. The toy lights of the small vanity began to shine brighter as the afternoon glow faded, casting a yellowed aura over Rarity’s delicate, round face.

“So much for being be-YOU-tiful,” Sweetie Belle continued in her diatribe. “You know—‘evil’ being such as it is, makes it quite rational that the more bright the luster of the ‘light’, the more likely it is that a cosmic joke has been played on you. So you can either reject life altogether—get depressed, in other words—or you can find a ‘light’ in the darkness, united with the stuff of ordinary life, which you mistake for depression. It’s the same when it comes to Applejack. The truth must be brought out, however unpleasant it might seem to you—no—because it is unpleasant.” She pushed herself all the way up and tucked a stray hair behind her ear, with the swift calculation of a move on a chessboard.

Rarity, despite her poor position in the argument, was still convinced that the whole difficulty she and Sweetie Belle were in was magically-sourced, and therefore required an expert in magic to intervene. She considered what her sister had said for several moments, looking for an answer in the mirror; then, having found one, replied, “Cogent thinking. But does it not imply an exact greater dualistic trap than the one you are trying to eschew?”

“Do tell,” replied Sweetie Belle.

“You say that evil is deception—something that I am painfully ignorant of—and that if I have found some stepping stone toward happiness then it most portend the most insidious of all deceptions. Is that not correct?”

“That’s fair, I would say.”

“And do you doubt your own capacity to grasp the truth of what you say?”

“It’d be silly if I did.”

Rarity turned from her reflection to face Sweetie Belle. “Suppose, then, that you are taking a walk through town one day, and you encounter a very special cheese for sale—purple and pearly and pungent. It captivates you. Then you learn from the merchant that this special cheese has an additional charm with insects. You therefore decide to purchase a quantity to spread in your garden along the ledges of its many raised flower beds. This you do, and the next morning you discover that, thanks to its effect, just as the merchant alluded, a parade of ladybugs has rallied into a procession of gold, red, and green hues. It is a parade with rhythm and dancing and stridulating music, and you are so dazzled by It that you cannot tell one thing from another. And as you watch, Celestia herself lands beside you and shades you with her high pinions as she decrees in the voice of the Old Majesty, ‘Yes, Child, it is so!’.”

Rarity snatched a brush off the vanity and pointed it heavenward. “But at this very pronouncement, you have to excuse yourself for the bad weather you heard about, and go back inside and forget about the cheese and the ladybugs and the goddess, and put an egg on to boil. It was all for naught, for you have not begun to question your own mind—you have not said to yourself, ‘this too, I doubt—cogito ergo sum!’—but, on the contrary, you have waged your own ‘rational’ powers against those of the Deceptive Goddess. And now the paradox of omnipotence is no longer hers but yours—for how can you, the sensing subject and owner of your reasoning power, create for yourself the conditions of objectivity? Yet, as with the roiling of the egg, the will to possess that object accrues in you, to the very extent which you recuse yourself to the old-fixtured room of your egoism.

“What, indeed,” she queried her sister, “is the meaning of our being reasonable? Does not reasonability draw its own limits? What form shall the boundary take? This is of the essence of ‘mind’ as much as rationalism. What comes to us, in these moments of redress, is the jewel of commonality and convention, of lessons and letters, so suited to ‘pony nature’ as any confession into the void.”

“It’s getting dark,” said Sweetie Belle. The floorboards creaked. She and Rarity glanced at one another in the dim hum of the vanity lights.

“We ought to get going soon, then,” said Rarity.

Sweetie Belle shrugged. “Maybe Yona will be able to settle our dispute.”

The girls were quiet again.

“I see how it is,” said Rarity. “Well, then. Perhaps we should go our separate ways? I’ll go see Twilight, and if you want to get into the weeds with Applejack, I can’t stop you.”

“Hmm.”

Rarity put her hair behind her ears. “Where is she hiding, these days? Yona, that is?”

“I haven’t been there,” Sweetie Belle replied, “but I’ve sent her a few letters. She lives in a tiny duplex on the west end with a religious widow. Yona can stay there, free of rent, because she’s good at keeping moles out of the old lady’s carrot garden. At night they discuss theology, cramped by the hearth, and Yona indulges her with the patience of a saint. She’s got such a big heart.”

“Hmm, yes, not to mention the poor girl is probably quite used to encounters with other creatures’ faiths, having grown up in a place like Anadoelia,” Rarity said.

“You know, something you said reminded me of a poem by Feathered Thing,” Sweetie Belle said, bringing the conversation back. “One of the ones about time. She refers to an ancient king whose access to the greatest vaults of knowledge and power in world history caused him to doubt the sense of earthly pursuits. He built great temples, beautiful hanging gardens, brooked courtyards, all to ‘rival paradise’. He wanted to conquer time—you know, what time represents. In the end, he came to resent the lives of the slaves on whose backs his cities were built.”

“No wonder you get bad grades. Hopefully things will work out better for us than for him,” Rarity joked as she switched off the vanity light. Once she had gone, Sweetie Belle sighed to herself, rolled out of bed, and followed behind her sister.

A batch of autumn crocus, early bloomed, turned up its dozen faces toward a dangling and lit filament light bulb; it was heavy atop a shelved centerpiece of glass where it now rested in Roseluck’s little flower shop, and it had become a puzzle to her.

“Things change…” she reflected, searching for elaboration somewhere in the colors that filled her showroom floor. “A pensive note! It hangs over this solstice party like a sliver moon! Wine, music, swinging benches lilting you into the night air—but!—here is a reminder that all of it is on borrowed time, a chaser tasteless as old tonic water…”

Another thought came to her, along with a sigh.

“Tonight, though—just tonight—a lover might reach up and pick a rose from the lattice… To give to their nearest.”

She frowned. The crocus’s premature appearance seemed to warrant display; but she still couldn’t help feeling that it might be out of place amidst the zinnias of summer.

“Would they understand something like that? Maybe it should go on the front counter, instead. I could sell it faster that way. You can even use saffron in a recipe. Ponies are bound to be interested in something homey. Something that can stay indoors. Those caterpillars have eaten up everything this year. …But how often do you get to see a real flower arrangement in Ponyville, something which makes a statement about the passing of time? …Phooey.”

She fetched a brush for cleaning the front desk, where there was a cash register and a row of impulse goods. She ran one of her hooves along the divots of its lacquered surface, then folded an invisible paper tent in front of her, set it down, and imagined in chalky wording: ‘Get Autumn Cozy with Whispers of Saffron’.

Something was gnawing at her.

“Back on the high shelf, then? …Wait!”

There was a porcelain music box which she now remembered, sitting in an old hutch in the far corner. She grabbed it from its former landing place and dusted it off—it had an ornate golden latch and was decorated with faded impressions of ponies picnicking by wooded lakes. It was small and perfect to her, and she transferred it up to the second high shelf of the glass centerpiece, right below the crocus, which now resumed its former stature in her exhibition.

She smiled to herself—imagining that she was as gifted as a unicorn in the ways of magic, just looking at it. Of a sudden, she found that she had much to talk about with her clients.

“There’s something beautiful about the fall, too,” she said, making a disquisition in her mind with a solicitous purchaser. “The sun is different. The rain is different, too, the way the smell of wet leaves perfumes the air. Even the ground changes, how it crunches under your hooves when you walk. If you can’t appreciate the charms of autumn, friend, I’m afraid you’ll never appreciate what it means when the blossoms come out in the spring...”

She left it there. But then, another imaginary customer came in, who obliged her to continue:

“Do you remember reading Concord Grapes in school? He said—I forget where, now, but I remember the quote clearly—he said, ‘a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’. He meant that every day is different, and we are different every day, too. The ‘cutie mark’ is a far-off heaven which imprisons and blinds us to the here-and-now, where life is. What are you in such a hurry for, anyway…”

Then, spotting amidst the décor a tinseled casement of antique grammar books, she was outside on a snowy night, delivering a speech to a gathering of town officials:

“Which of you doesn’t remember being lulled to a night’s sleep with the help of a music box that belonged to some long-lost aunt of yours? Do you ever notice how the melody comes back to you, often when you are settling unrelated business, like the springing of a tea kettle in a nearby room? Does it still bring a tear to your eye?

“That box, you see, and that melody, to your child’s reasoning, was a beautiful object which appeared from nowhere. It had no origin, no direction in time forward or backward. It symbolizes absolute consistency for you—a thing not broken into parts, or phrases, or intentions, or movements.

“But something intrudes on all of that…”

She stepped back in the snow. Behind her a curtain fell, and her crocus display shimmered in the town lights, standing twenty feet high and garlanded in gold and silver tinsel.

“Ecce flos! Behold the flower, with all of its changes of mood, its delicate pleasures, its naked life and death on display—don’t you see, friends, that in this little juxtaposition I have made, you can find the essence of all religions? Your memory of permanence on one hoof, and the inexorable turns of time on the other—that, my dear ones, is the art of gardening.

“Incidentally, I can part with this crocus for a rather fair price of thirty-five-hundred bits…”

She came back to herself. There was another matter to be resolved: the music box was locked, and missing its key.

“Maybe somewhere in the back room,” she thought, making her way.

Rose’s shop, the Plumerium, was in a modest space which she rented near one of the corners of Ponyville Square. She had recently moved her business indoors, off the streets, where she had spent years as a runner and stand-owner. The new store was a sign of her success—but whether it was success in the art of sales, or the art of gardening, she couldn’t ever be sure.

Her parents had been noodle cooks from Dodge Junction, a railroad town in the long desert between Appalousa and Shyenne. As a filly, Rose liked to collect pamphlets from the literature racks at the train station, and it was there that she first learned about the Running of the Leaves. She pictured her friends playing on the hills and having adventures under the sunsets of lush autumn evenings. The time there, in Ponyville—unlike the long afternoon-time of desert life—blew away like gossamer, and showed the benevolent qualities of the turns of nature.

When she was still young, her family moved to Ponyville to live near a sick relative. Little Rose’s fancies regarding town life—and her modest means for profiting from them—combined to make it difficult for her to find her fall-weather friends. It would have been, ultimately, disheartening for her, were it not for the generosity of certain grown-up ponies around her neighborhood, with whom she always got along better than her young peers. She loved especially Mrs. Gables, the owner of Shoreham Accents. She was a tall mare who used to pretend to find conch shells for her in her bee hive mane, as a gift each time Rose would make a perspicacious remark.

“No, no, Mrs. Gables,” Rose had corrected her once, on a day when the sun was reflecting off the rubbery leaves of the magnolia trees outside Shoreham Accents. “Mom says you should never water plants in the afternoon. You’ll scorch them. It would be much more thoughtful of you if you came out to do it at night.”

“And will I see you out here?” the mare replied. “Will you be keeping me company, as I water by the moonlight, or will I look like a looney?”

Little Rose made an exaggerated groan. “If they say you’re a looney, just say that loonies are supposed to come out under the moonlight! It’s their job, and there’s nothing wrong with doing your job.”

Mrs. Gables concealed her laughter at being so instructed by her young friend. “You’ve made me so much smarter, Rosey, I think I feel something rattling around this big empty head of mine! Let me go check my mirror…” And she returned, as she did on many other occasions, with a bright, reticulated shell.

Roseluck kept these gifts on a shelf above her bed in her small room. They made her think of Silver Shoals, which she had never been to, but which she had heard about from some of the ladies who talked around Mrs. Gables in the market plaza. The shells themselves, like Rose’s daydreams, had different shapes and origins. They ranged from sand dollars, which she read were like little jewels found just under the surface near some lapping water, to large conches, galaxies to be sounded, with orange and pink nebulae drawn in all directions. Rose herself added a jar of lake sand to the display, to feel closer to the beach.

As she became older, she acquired a taste for working independently; she even forgot that her collection of shells had come from Mrs. Gables. She took a job with Running Bond, a patio recreation vendor with more vision than talent in his work. Rose’s first occupation had been to deliver singing telegrams for anniversaries and, just a commonly, singing apologies for “romance in arrears”; and, though she was not a trained vocalist, the earnest with which she attempted to mend a dispute between lovers turned out, in most cases, to be a suitable remedy for the grievance between them. She made a reputation for herself rushing through town with roses, on her way to another couple in peril.

Rose received her last shell one day when an order led her back to the rubber leaves of Shoreham Accents. She went in with a bouquet of carnations and found Mrs. Gables by herself, absorbed in cleaning out a window casing. Young Rose, however, was not the least intimidated in the fulfillment of her duty, and indeed, could hardly keep from smiling at the reunion, which had obviously been brought about at her old mentor’s intention.

She got down on a knee, and sang:

Happy Mother’s Day~
Happy Mother’s Day~
May your ankle joints cease stinging,
Happy Mother’s Day, to you~

She passed the carnations to Mrs. Gables, who, inspecting them, smiled, and said, “I really can’t live without the smell, but gosh if they aren’t expensive, Rosey. What a bargain it was to get you to bring them in, today! Of course, I had to order the telegram for myself.”

Rose was busy lingering on her old haunt, and agreed on the high price of flowers.

“I have a good friend who lives on the coast,” Mrs. Gables continued, “and he tells me that whenever he walks into a fragrant store he thinks of Shoreham Accents—can you believe it? It just goes to show you the power of the nose.” She dropped the carnations into a vase and started to look for something to snip the twine.

“How is Heath Cropper?” Rose asked, addressing the absent son.

Mrs. Gables levelled at her. “Hmph! You need to talk to him—you’ve got a good way of talking, Rosey. Ask him—who goes backpacking right out of secondary school? I told him that he can save those sorts of escapades for later, once he has better predilections about the world, but… You can never explain that sort of thing to a young pony. He says it will be for a year, but I’m worried he’s going to meet some girl. Ugh. You know how that goes.”

Rose, though an interloper in the romance of others, was not personally acquainted with matters of amour, and interpreted Mrs. Gables request as a spat of ironic humor—she returned a schmoozing smile.

Mrs. Gables found her scissors, and said, “These are the thanks one gets for years of making sacrifices, Rosey.” She cut the twine. The carnations rolled forward, bursting a scent in the window where she had been working. She invited her young companion’s professional opinion on the display.

“It looks good,” Rose said. “I like it a lot. Smells make me think of Shoreham Accents, too. Well, smells and shapes.”

She and Mrs. Gables were quiet for a while. The sound of the street billowed in through the open door. Then, with a melodramatic sigh, Mrs. Gables said, “Do yourself a favor—never have children. They make everything more difficult. Don’t think I’m serious? They will take everything you’ve ever worked for and blow it away like a kite. And then we’re supposed to be happy for you—well, I am happy for you, see?”

She smiled a schmoozing smile of her own, then let her face sink into a grimace.

Rose laughed. “Heh, well I’m not very sure about it, myself, to be honest with you.”

Mrs. Gables went back to working on the arrangement. “You’ve always been very smart, Roseluck,” she said.

Roseluck. Rose felt bolder.

“Thanks. You know, eventually, I’d like to open my own shop here in Ponyville. Maybe a few of them, actually. I’ve got some experience doing things for Mr. Running Bond and I think I could make it work—once I have the capital, of course.”

Her words flew out, quickly and softly as fireflies in the gloaming.

“So you’re looking for an investor,” Mrs. Gables asked dolorously.

“Well, I—”

“But why so many shops in Ponyville? This town is not so big a place.”

“Yes, yes—” Rose replied, sensing her heart quicken, “but listen. What makes Ponyville so different from Dodge Junction, or somewhere high up like Canterlot, is these wonderful, expressive seasons. Think about it—summers that swoon, unlike those in the desert—autumns more regal than an ancestral castle. I’d like to build on that, with the ponies who live it year after year—”

“And then what,” interrupted Mrs. Gables.

“Well, and then,” Rose answered with a stutter, “I would move that to the city, maybe Manehattan or Fillydelphia. The experience I gain here would help me there, and I think I could help make a name for Ponyville in different parts of Equestria. What do you think?”

Mrs. Gables glowered. “So you’re going to take what’s been given to you here and try to sell it abroad?”

Rose didn’t offer an answer. She listened to the hoof steps outside, and knew that she wanted to be far away from Shoreham Accents.

“It’s unnecessary,” Mrs. Gables said, after a break. “I understand, of course, that my opinion isn’t important in all of this, but I will give it to you anyway. Ponyville is a place for ponies to come and raise their families—and that’s the end of the opera. That’s why your parents came here. It is not a place for you to crowbar your ambitions. I’m glad you enjoy the seasons. But you’re mixing things up. Ponies who want to grow a business get away from Ponyville.”

“I guess you’re saying I’ll have to let it go,” Rose said gloomily.

“I doubt you’ll do that. There’s much more to operating a business than you know. And I think that once you see the sacrifice involved, and just what it is you’ll be letting go, that you will sit and stay. I know you don’t think that way now, Rosey. But I see it in you. I hear it in your voice in all your nice talk about the seasons. It’s why you’re here. That’s your rose. Your heart is set on finding a home, not an enterprise.”

Rose fetched the invoice for the singing delivery. “It will be seventeen-hundred bits, please.”

Mrs. Gables paid for the carnations as though nothing had passed between them. She told Roseluck to wait before leaving; soon, she returned from the back room, beaming like a child, and carrying a large blue and green scallop shell.

“I bought it from a peddler at the flea market in Silver Shoals,” she said. “I’m looking at time-shares there—just looking. You can’t imagine how beautiful it is there. Just look at the colors on this shell… I love it. I thought of you right away, and bought this so you could have it.

“Whatever you do,” she added, “think of me, will you? You’d be doing more for me than my lousy son,” she laughed.

“Thanks. I’ll see you.”

Rose stepped out through the magnolia trees into the odorless afternoon air. She was impelled to examine Mrs. Gable’s gift more closely: it was large for its kind, measuring six inches tip-to-tip, and light in the hoof. The striations along the ridge were clean, and the dark colors of its interior side reminded her of the sunsets she used to imagine when she read about the Frozen Sea at the Dodge Station literature rack, the kind that would last days and weeks; it reminded her, indeed, of Shoreham Accents. Had it inspired some passerby, on a remote shore, to pick it up as an uncommon discovery?

She sniffed it—it had no smell, other than the overpowering floral aroma of the shop from which it had just been excised.

“A fake.”

She recoiled, as though she had discovered on her own rump a hideous pimple. Had her own Mrs. Gables been guilty of such cheapness of taste? The shells of her childhood room had been redolent of salt and brine. Had she done it to her on purpose, as a test? For her crustiness, her facetiousness, her incorrigibility, the core of Mrs. Gables resided in her discretion. How then could she be so pleased with a bargain, so much so to expect Rose to be pleased with it, too, as a token of her patient guidance?

Then, an even more terrifying thought came to her: was Mrs. Gables not aware, for all her hopes and planning, that Silver Shoals might not be so beautiful, after all?

The scallop, with its clean lines and soft, rouged surface, became loathsome to her in an instant. It was not until she got home in the evening that she was able to toss it out without guilt, for all the anguish and doubt it had put her through during the remainder of her errands that day.

“Existence is conflict,” Rose pontificated to the oohs and ahs of an imagined eight-year-old colt, as she was still searching the storage room for the missing music box key. “Philosophy has been misled by the in-itself. To exist is to be entwined with the clash of energetic forces where each and all of our activities form part of a total struggle against annihilation. And we can never extirpate ourselves from this total action. For that, the flower-in-bloom is the most elegant symbol. Such a figure appears to us withdrawn from strife—it seems, in fact, to be the very picture of simplicity itself—lithe and full of delicacy, come up to crane toward the light in the full magnitude of its soul’s hidden color. But the flower, in its yearning, cracks the earth—it abolishes the memory of the winter and of the generation which came before it. And soon enough, the brilliant godhead of its climbing bulb will be eaten by the doe, and its stem will become food for worms. The flower is a warrior, more brazen than you or me, and its striving gives a glimpse into the long process of evolution and spiritual realization, or perhaps instead—what’s not for us to decide—the thought-token of a cosmic demiurge, whose inconscient dream forms for us the mechanical scrap of reality.”

The little colt rubbed his nose. “That sounds pretty.”

“I think you’re right,” said Roseluck. “It is pretty. I heard it from a griffon, and griffons have a pretty way of talking. Think so?”

He smiled; there was a little bruise on the top of his cheek.

Rose sighed and stepped back from the old desk she was rummaging through. “Damn, I can’t see,” she said aloud to herself. The street lamps were being lit outside; they cast an orange glow against the outlines of the furniture of the store room.

“It’s getting dark,” she observed.

She glazed over the shadowed debris that surrounded her. She felt a heave of exhaustion pass through her, thinking of the unknown whereabouts of the tiny music box key, when she spotted something casting a silhouette under the light of the centerpiece in the showroom. It had the profile of a pony with a fantastically elaborate mane, like a folded quilt, but with a body even smaller than a foal’s. It held a plucked flower to its snout and inhaled, relishing the fragrance with a hum.

Rose squinted into the light to better make out what she was seeing, and rubbed her eyes; whatever it was had disappeared when she reoriented her sight. The showroom was empty.

She decided that the vision must have been the side effect of a long day, and began to think of bubble baths and reveries of autumn afternoons which awaited her at her apartment. She wandered back to the sales floor and began to switch off lights—except for the hanging lamp above the centerpiece—and located a ring behind the counter, on which were beaded the assorted keys of the store; they made a welcome rattle as she snatched them up and felt them in her hoof as she readied herself to go.

As she slunk out into the moonlight, though, something tugged at her; then, resisting, she was yanked forcefully back inside the Plumerium. It was the key ring, opposing her—first requiring one, then two hooves to keep fast. She cursed through her breath that she might be the accidental owner of a magnetized or enchanted object, until she heard hooves scratching the floor—she gave a shriek and let go, spilling backwards onto her hind.

The fiend leaped from the shadows, into the halo of the single bobbing display light.

“Fashion!” squeaked the little creature.

“For goodness’ sake!” Rose cried out, “what are you now?”

It was a potato white, magnificently styled gremlin with azure eyes that twinkled back at the shop owner like two points in the town sky at night. With a squeal of delight, it snapped the ring and lobbed one of its keys into the air, which flickered as it descended back down to the devilish guest; there, in its jowls, the item was swallowed with terrible, sucking pleasure, and savored with a belch.

“I take it you’re one of the ‘locals’,” grumbled Roseluck.

“Fashion,” the visitor replied, smacking its lips with self-satisfaction.

Rose climbed to her hooves. “Wait here.”

She vanished behind the office door. The intruder, meanwhile, continued to toy with the ring under the dangling lamplight. It hummed to itself as it tried to paw another key for its appetite, as voluble as a bumblebee on a snapdragon, making wispy, playful crescendos. The key ring was nearly half the size of its body; the creature lolled onto its back to employ its legs in delightful conquest. With each kick, the keys flipped up and bounced off its pouch belly with a clinking sound that raised its rapture to a higher and higher pitch, and likewise its noteless singing to louder refrains.

“I don’t know how you got here, or why you’re here,” said Rose, re-entering above the racket of the creature’s exhibition, “but take this.”

She held a large black cone over where the creature was lounging and gave it a blast from a fire extinguisher, sending the fiend tumbling across the room with a noise resembling a tire with air being let out. It spun backward, leaving a foggy trail, until it knocked its noggin against the opposing wall.

“I’ll take these,” Rose said, snatching up the keys. “And now I’ll have to call a plumber, a ventilation specialist… who knows, to deal with your likes.” She remembered having availed herself of a service pony, sometime, at some late hour, and in similarly prodigious circumstances, and concluded that the name must have been listed in her contact cards.

She flipped through the pile of names she had collected under her desk in less than a year of operation—passing over weather proofers, carpenters, gutter dealers, sidewalk washers, and electricians; cards with red circles and earmarked corners, figures scribbled and spiraled in permanent marker, duplicates with rewritten names, and salvaged scraps—none of which recalled a face or a name she was trying to think of.

Then, as she was trying to jog her memory, certain that she had dealt with goblins in the past, she felt something breathing behind her.

Rose spun around and met the creature standing in front of her on the desk: its wafting purple mane was slopped over, and sagged on the counter like a soggy bathrobe. The fiend wailed at the sight of itself, then turned an acid glance up at Rose—a sneer curled its offended lips—the twinkling eyes became pointed. Its miserable appearance, for a moment, almost made the shop owner pity what she had done to her little visitor—but before she could say anything, it beat “Fashion!” in a tiny voice, and leapt upon her, wrapping its limbs around the back of Rose’s head, and seizing one of her graying locks in its maw.

Rose flailed about in a panic as the creature pulled her hair—she tried to throw it off before it tore what it had grabbed out by the roots. Her eyes watered; she could feel some of the fibers ripping—old bristles being torn from an old brush.

She swung around and pounded her head into the hard wood of the facing wall, giving the fiend enough of a blow to make it wheeze and let go.

For a moment she laid on the floor, listening quietly to the moans of her assailant a short distance away. In her periphery she spotted a heavy indoor decoration, a tall statue of an oriole poised to pick a branch berry. Rose got up and lumbered over to it, hoisting the statue over her shoulder, which tottered her stance with its weight before she found her hind hooves.

She sloshed over to where the creature was splayed on the ground. With a great windup, she heaved bird like a sledgehammer over her target—who, unfortunately for her, had gained enough time to appreciate Rose’s intentions, and thus jumped away to evade the attack. Rose missed her mark and, instead, drove her weapon between two floorboards.

The oriole was stuck; its berry-hunting beak was hewn into the wood where it had landed. Rose didn’t know what to do to free the statue, or what she would do with it once it was liberated from its entrapment in the planks of the Plumerium. But she kept at the effort of freeing it, as though nothing else mattered. Her mid-back had become sore. In her focus, she nearly forgot that an invader was terrorizing her shop and sticking its tongue out in indignation for how it had been received by her. Instead, she imagined Mrs. Gables, watching at the counter and smiling at her predicament, contemplating the scene with aloof interest as she made small adjustments to the counter display.

Suddenly, her grip slipped—she rebounded into the centerpiece, where the creature had been mocking her. She knocked the crocus pot off its perch, which broke the glass shelf below it.

“Fashion,” said the visitor, congratulating her on her determination.

Rose lost all restraint, and made a swing at the creature; but this time when she missed, she entirely lost her balance. She wove through the showroom and fell head-first into a pallet of flowers, spewing a cloud of white petals in the air, and slipping the prized key ring out onto the floor, where it was gleefully seized by her enemy; it broke for the door and left the shop with the jingle of the bell that hung over the entryway, as Roseluck reposed herself in a bed of lilies.

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