> True Colors
>  by A Hoof-ful of Dust
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> True Colors
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


'True Colors'


Rarity stops me as we exit the theater.

"Do you have a moment?" she asks. "I'd like to discuss the finer details of the costuming position. We could get some coffee?"

My ears twitch--I may have even flinched a little--but then I realize completely what it is she's asked. Asked. Not demanded. If we could get some coffee. Together.

"If you have the time, of course," she continues, and shows me a sympathetic smile.

I have nowhere to be. Not until I start my work on a Bridleway show. For the costume designer of Hinny of the Hills. Breathe, Coco. Breathe.

"I'd love to," I answer.


-/-


We step into a hole-in-the-wall café with the requisite earthy brown tones on all the décor. I don't catch the name; there's no tacky green accents anywhere, so it can't be a Saddlebucks. Maybe it's not even a chain at all. Rarity seems like the kind of pony who has instincts for finding things like little out-of-the-way coffeehouses the moment before they become the next big hit. All the booths in the tiny room are unoccupied, the whole café empty aside from the barista.

I realize I might not ever have to set hoof in a Saddlebucks ever again in my life. I vow not to. I also vow to come to this little place for as long as I'm part of this new show. A wild little nervous giggle threatens its way up my throat and I quash it with a cough.

Neither Rarity nor the barista notice, busy with the process of ordering. Rarity turns back to me and asks, "And what about you, dear?"

I'm struck dumb. All I can remember is Suri's regular (tall double caffè latte) and to stop my programmed mouth from spilling it out I order it to make a sequence of wordless motions instead, which must look completely sensible to the poor barista and not like I've stumbled in to her coffee establishment without the slightest idea of what coffee is. I shut my buffoon mouth and point at the menu in thought.

"Do you do those drinks with the crushed ice?" I ask. There's some chain name for them at Saddlebucks; it's probably not polite to call them that in other places.

"We do," the barista says. I can't decide if she look she's giving me is concentration or trying to decide whether I'm a rube fresh off the bus or not.

"Great, I'll have one of those. Large." I'm in unfamiliar territory, placing an order for something other than a tall double caffè latte. "Triple shot." I feel like I need a huge kick of coffee to calm down at this point. "With cream on top." Because I'm celebrating here. "And caramel."

And if you're going to celebrate, might as well go all the way.

"Sure thing, hon." The barista turns away from us, leaving Rarity and I to find a booth on our own. Rarity and I. We.

We sit by the window. I bite my lip. Rarity reaches across the table and touches my hoof with her own.

"You don't have to be so nervous, darling," she says. "I don't bite," she adds with a smile.

I laugh, a shaky nervous titter. "I guess it really shows, huh?" I glance down at the table. "I'm sorry. It's not every day I stand up to my boss. And quit my job. And then land a dream job. Twenty minutes after quitting."

"It is absolutely nothing to be sorry for," Rarity says with assertive authority. "Why," she continues as her tone shifts to one more warm and confiding, "I may have been known to occasionally be overcome with emotion myself."

I recognize that as a joke; every creative pony who's ever been under pressure has more than occasionally become overcome with emotion. I find it hard to imagine of Rarity, though, with her looking so calm and me a bundle of nerves. But rush-hour traffic feels calm next to me right now.

"From time to time. Once or twice."

I'm doing that thing where another pony talks and I'm supposed to say something and I don't. I want to smack my head against the table. I settle for tugging at my tie.

"I'm okay," I lie, "really, I am. It's just been so long since I ever even imagined doing anything other than working for Suri."

"I will not," Rarity says with a sudden whip of severity, "hear another word today about that dreadful mare." Her brows uncross and she looks at me with wide azure eyes. "I don't think it would do either of us any good."

"You're right," I say, and exhale. "You're probably right."

"You will be wonderful at this. I just know it."

This is the sort of empty chit-chatty phrase that gets tossed around to inflate conversations, but Rarity looks like she genuinely means it. "How do you know that?" I ask. "You haven't even really seen any of my work..."

"And what were all those outfits for Fashion Week?" Rarity asks with an arched eyebrow. "Didn't you make them?"

"Well... yes, but they weren't my designs, I mean, not completely..."

"But they were impeccably crafted," Rarity says, placing a hoof over mine again, "and one does not simply achieve that kind of exquisite craftsmareship without the creative spark to back it up."

"R-really?"

"I wouldn't have been so furious if your outfits hadn't been so gorgeous, darling." Rarity smiles at me and I smile back. It feels like we're sharing a secret.

"This is what I've always wanted to do," I confide. "It's what I thought I would be doing with... um, She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, when she offered to be mentor me. But I ended up being more her assistant than her student." Her slave. Her workhorse. "Fetch this, stitch this, get me another coffee. And, I don't know, even though we weren't collaborating as much as she led me to think we would, it felt like this was the way to get ahead, you know? I mean, other ponies, important ponies, were seeing my work." I sigh and blink my eyes, staring at a knot in the surface of the table. "They just never really knew how much of it was my work. It's just this city, I guess. Lots of little ponies to walk over."

Our coffees arrive. I experience a flutter of panic as I don't remember paying for it, then I realize Rarity must have. She really is too generous. I take a huge sip out of the straw and close my eyes as the cold liquid spreads through me, full of sugar and caffeine. It's about the best thing I've ever tasted. I run through a list of all the things it's better than.

I realize I don't know how long it's been since I last had a coltfriend.

I take another sip and notice Rarity is watching me. I hope she can't see any of what I was just thinking about anywhere on my face.

"I want to tell you something about Manehatten," she says, "about Manehatten and me."

She lifts her tiny white cup and takes a sip of the dark steaming drink. I feel calm. Calmer. Maybe it's my own coffee. Maybe it's because I'm not expected to speak for a little while.

"When I was a little filly," Rarity begins, "all I ever wanted to be was beautiful. The problem, as I saw it, was my coat. Other ponies got all of these different wonderful colors, while I was saddled with plain old white." She extends a foreleg to inspect her coloring, like she might have suddenly turned a shade other than plain old white. "My mother loves to tell the story of The Day When Little Rarity Got into the Paint Tins at parties, just to remind me of when I was obsessed with my coat. She's told it enough times that I hardly even feel embarrassed about it any more." She takes another dainty sip of her coffee. "Hardly.

"Anyway, we had come on a trip to Manehatten, my parents and I, because of some business deal my father was involved in. He was out for most of the day while I was waiting with my mother in a hotel room, and I must have been pestering her something shocking with asking why we had to stay at the hotel and why can't we go out into the city and do something?"

Rarity's voice momentarily takes on a childish whine, and I smirk around my straw.

"I don't see how my position was all that unreasonable, given that we were in Manehattan, the Big Apple, and just walking around the streets looking at the taxis and into store windows would have been enough for me to have been able to claim I'd experienced big city living to everypony back at school, and she eventually came around to my side of the argument, since we went downstairs in the afternoon and took a cab to an art museum. My mother even let me wander around the gallery on my own, so I felt terribly grown-up studying the paintings like I had an idea of what made them fine art. I think mostly I was drawn to the ones with the most interesting colors, but I suppose that's a perfectly valid starting point for a budding artiste.

"After a little exploring, I came to a piece being studied intently by a young stallion. There were lots of paintings that didn't look much like what they said they were paintings of, but you could see a little hint or an idea of what it was meant to be. This was nothing. Empty. Just a blank canvas. Yet he was staring at it like it was the most fantastically detailed landscape.

"I asked him what it was he was looking at. He said, 'This is my favorite piece in the gallery.'" Rarity uses a deepened voice with a slight accent for the other voice in her story, an accent that might belong to a mysterious stallion who spent his spare time contemplating art. "And I said, 'But why? There's nothing there.' And he said, 'Exactly. Anything could be in this frame -- could be picture of sky, of forest, of great battle, of chair in corner of kitchen. Could be anything.' And he tapped the little plaque with the title of the painting with his hoof, and I read it for the first time as he said its name. 'Potential.'"

"Potential," I echo. I know the piece. I had always passed it over; my focus in an art gallery was always on the designs and the textures, and the more conceptual works rarely registered. I see myself standing in front of the blank canvas just as the stallion in Rarity's story did, the next time I'm at that museum.

"That was me, I realized then," Rarity says, "potential, untapped and waiting. A blank canvas, ready to become art. I wasn't just going to become beautiful: I needed to make myself beautiful. Which is where my interest in fashion started, and as soon as I saw how easy it was to make myself look my best I wanted to help everypony look their best, and... well, here we are.

"My point is, I always think a little of Manehatten and that empty canvas whenever I design. They're both what you make of them. They could be anything. And just because some small-minded cutthroats like She-Who-Shan't-Be-Named--"

"Must-Not-Be-Named," I correct. Rarity gives me a puzzled look but moves on without comment. She doesn't seem like the Harry Trotter type; more Mane Austen, or even Maregaret Mitchell.

"--Choose to turn everything dog-eat-dog, it doesn't need to mean that's how it is."

I smile. Sometime during Rarity's story, I drained my coffee. I feel calmer. Calm. I feel like I could actually talk my new job and still keep my head, anyway.

"Your designer friend," I ask, "what's he like?"

"I have it on good authority," Rarity says with utmost seriousness, "that he despises coffee."

Something about that strikes me as incredibly funny. A single chortle escapes me, and then a full laugh. Rarity joins me. It's wonderful to laugh, properly laugh with nothing held back. It feels like flying, like shooting off into the sky like a rocket.

I watch Rarity as she brushes at her eyes. I suddenly hope she likes her gift, as of yet unopened in her saddlebag. I should get something more for her, since just a spool of thread doesn't equal a completely life-changing opportunity. Maybe invite her and her friends back to see the new show. Maybe before it officially opens, if I can manage it.

I hope she finds a good use for that thread, though.