From classroom to seashore
Rarity spoke in class today.
It wasn’t her class, but she didn’t question it anymore than a foal would question its birth, and Rarity had been doing a lot of that lately. Too many questions running through her mind and all competing for second place. The winner was never the one that reached her first. She always discarded that thought in fear.
Instead, Rarity stood in Mrs. Worthington’s Second Year Pottery Class. She wondered why she had chosen the almost-specialty rather than her first love, which she had forgotten long ago. Seventeen years, to be exact, not that Rarity could understand time at the moment. There were no clocks in the room and the students would not share their time pieces with her. She didn’t ask, but even if she did, they would not have given her a thing.
So Rarity stood, in the precipitous moments before her mouth opened and she declared who she really was in a room full of minor dreams and major disappointments. She didn’t judge them. They simply came pre-judged and she knew the results, much to her dismay.
She moved to open her mouth and caught sight of the posters detailing Twilight Sparkle’s instructions to READ, FEAR and FEAR NOT. Somehow, it all formed one complete thought and Rarity rarely had those in this arena. She’d fought many battles behind her desk, but every time she moved beyond, the protection of the upraised table-shield left her and she was forced to fend for herself during recess when the kids played and she had to forage for food. It wasn’t her fault she was the only herbivore, but their predatory instincts left little room for the herd wishes of the white unicorn.
The first sounds exited her throat, but they came out like a child about to form its first words. She remembered the nursery back in Ponyville and wondered how long she had stayed in the incubator before they let her out of her first cell and into the next. It was an endless progression of first to last from the moment Rarity understood the necessity of survival in a world of fashion and folly.
The next sounds rode the train of echo still bouncing from the first and moved through the space in the air to reach the ears of the kids nearest to her. Two of them instantly had epiphanies that if ponies could come to terms with their humanity, then so could they. Unfortunately, the sound cut out in their minds too quickly, and left Rarity staring at the voids of unwritten expression on their faces, meaning they were never able to begin the journey of crossing their own Everfrees. Deep in her heart, she yearned for an escape they would never have and hoped that the end of her sentence would bring forth the triumph they had always missed.
And she finally reached the end of the first two words.
“I think…”
But it was too late. The kids had already left and Rarity stood alone and unaccounted for. She stopped the movement of her mouth and looked down at the dress she wasn’t wearing before. She felt more vulnerable now.
-
Rarity had a dream.
She dreamed she was sailing on a boat to the stars hidden behind her dresser drawer, where Sweetie Belle stashed the late night cookies and aftershave she had received in a random gift exchange. The combination of the two was a leaner, more powerful form of sweet with shaved outer layers removed, leaving only the valuable chocolate cores exposed to the world. The rats got them and then Opal got the rats. They understood each other very well and all came to agreement they would tell Rarity about this upstanding achievement when she got back from her skiing trip.
She was on Pluto now, with all the other forgotten realms of Human and Pony. The icy world was too far from the reaches of any known civilization and Rarity’s pirate ship had caught aground on the mountain which now soared high above the unknown atmosphere. She had a crew, but they were lost when she couldn’t tell them the directions they wanted to hear. Again, she found herself alone on the surface of a vessel out in the depths of space. The planet contained many secrets and like the fabulous Daring Do, she would find them and bring them to light where the darkness would run and disappear.
Rarity found she could jump planets and lives by mere chance. She had always wanted to talk to some of the smarter, more accomplished ponies from the past, but how could she now she was too late in living?
But someone heard her cry and she felt their grasp pull her to them instead.
---
She saw the desks from the classroom now on the seashore, where Princess Celestia, Luna and Cadance all sat waiting for instruction from some unseen face. There was a fourth Alicorn in the last table, but Rarity did not know its name. It was blue as ice and the frozen mane covered its face.
“Why are we here?” Luna asked. The stars moved around her and began to fall right by her side. The impacts sent up clouds of dust and sand which obliterated any seagulls that tried to talk to her.
“I don’t understand,” Rarity said. She focused a little on the question and her concentration caused a mountain to collapse in the distance. In a moment of clarity, Rarity knew that concentrating in this place would give her the answers she needed, but she would eventually be found out and dealt with. How long did she have before the sea collapsed in on her? “Tell me more about your past,” she told Luna. The moon moved away and the Princess stood in its place.
“I am older than you and anypony else. Older than time and older than space. So where is my memory? I don’t understand anything, dear Rarity.”
The sentence was clear and understood and Rarity saw lightning flash in the distance.
“Who are you that would tell me where to live?” Princess Celestia asked. Bees began to swarm and Rarity moved to swat them away, but they formed a wall which said GO NOW. Rarity hesitated and Celestia’s smile became a rainbow which crashed into the ocean and drowned. A second rainbow appeared over the grave of the first and began to form a pathway across the sea. “Do you want to understand? Then you’ll have to go before the waves catch you,” Celestia said.
Rarity had not yet asked Celestia a question and Cadance was still idle. She had to think: was it a decoy to stay and ask when the opportunity to leave presented itself or was the decoy from Celestia’s smile, which became a grave before it became a path? The clarity of her new thought brought down a cloud of storms in the distance, now closer than ever before.
“Too many questions,” Celestia said.
“I’m going to make this brief and tell you to ask yourself the best question for me,” Rarity said. Several birds complimented her on her ingenuity and then promptly exploded into feathers she used to write the response with.
Celestia seemed upset and pleased as she moved her body one way and her frown the other, like a broken marionette. “Why would I rule when you all do it so well on your own?”
“That question is too simple,” Rarity said and thought of a decoy. The rainbow field behind her was starting to recede. She could catch it if she ran. “Cadance, I’m sorry.” The unicorn turned and found the scene had changed, much to her amazement and dismay. The ocean was now a painting and the scene was gone. Rarity felt her heart sink and she didn’t have enough energy to go into the sea and retrieve it.
---
For months in the Dreamlands, Rarity analyzed the painting and tried to get it to move. The wind always blew around her, but the rainbow fields were nowhere to be found, save for her imagination. She groaned in frustration and wondered what her next joy would be. Sweetie Belle was gone. Twilight never left, but she never helped either and who knows where the rest of the foals were when she needed them. Her friends, both fillies and colts, were too organized now that she was this far into the Dream.
She needed a way out.
---
Rarity awoke and looked around her room. Her facemask was on the floor and the word REST printed alongside its top was now pointed upside down and away from her. She thought about her dream and wondered what it all meant as the fleeting images found their way to her doorstep.