Attraction
It was a lovely summer morning. Birds were chirping happily as Ponyville’s inhabitants started to wake up. A cute little squirrel skipped gaily towards Carousel Boutique, climbing a tree next to it. Maybe she just wanted to see if Rarity, the renowned seamstress was singing, as she did usually when she woke up. The little squirrel squinted a bit trying to find her when…
Oh, my… Rarity? I think I made a mistake. This was clearly not the correct way to start this story, so let me try again.
It was a horrible summer morning. The sun was shining way too bright. Seriously, Celestia, we know you are proud of your job, but it wouldn’t kill you to tone it down a bit sometimes! Birds were chirping. Shut up, you damned featherballs! It’s way too early to be singing! A stupid squirrel that suddenly decided it had the right to spy on other ponies found that, as soon as she got near Carousel Boutique’s windows, heavy curtains were closed, the force of the wind they dragged making the squirrel tumble and fall.
Rarity was certainly in a horrible mood. It was always the same. You become good at your job and suddenly people expect more of you. She already did a lot! You want twenty dresses in a week, then go to Qilin! They have entire factories where foals made twenty dresses a night just to get enough bits to eat a rice bowl!
My, my… Rarity was in a really bad mood. Fortunately, she had finished her order and, although tired and cranky, she was happy for she was getting ready to sleep. The soft and fluffy whiteness of her bed was like a siren’s call, singing softly to lure her to dream. Rarity’s horn flared a bit, starting to levitate the covers when, suddenly, she felt something strange.
Around her horn, a subtle magic grid extended. She usually didn’t notice it. After all, it was something all unicorns grew accustomed to. However, this was a familiar tug at the grid’s strings.
“Gems? Now?” Rarity shook her head. Sure, detecting wild gems in Ponyville was a strange happening, but she didn’t need freaking gems now! She needed to sleep, so she tried to slide beneath the covers, but she felt another tug at her magic. “Really? It must be aa…aa…aaaaaawn…” her words were interrupted by a non-ladylike yawn. “A big gem cache. Well, I’m sure it will still be there when I wake up.”
She closed her eyes, and her horn started to flare wildly. “What is happening?!” She screamed, as her head lifted involuntarily. Rarity clasped her mattress as she felt wild magic trying to drag her.
“No! I want to sleep! I will not depart the mattreeeeeess!” Screamed Rarity, the last part evoking a little melody, though one of extreme distress, but she wasn’t strong enough to hold much longer.
With a last tug, the mattress broke. Rarity fell mouth first to the floor next to her bed, ripping the sheets. With an angry harrumph she got up, still sliding, and held her muzzle up. Even if there wasn’t anypony watching her, a lady had to keep a certain style, even under duress. Unfortunately, keeping your eyes up when you’re sliding without control is not the best idea. Rarity learned it the hard way when she crashed on her room’s door, piercing it with her horn.
“Rarity, are you alright?” Sweetie Belle was getting ready for school when she heard the loud thud on her sister’s door.
“Sweetie Belle! Whatever you do, don’t open…” But it was too late. With an ominous click, the knob turned. Although Rarity would kill me if I mentioned her weight, let’s just say that it was more than enough to overpower her surprised sister, throwing her down the stairs while Rarity smashed a window and fell through it. For the first time in her short and apparently about to end life, Rarity wished she was born a pegasus instead of a unicorn.
Like a dart, Rarity’s horn got stuck in the soil, making her look like white cotton candy. White, bruised, angry cotton candy. Ok, maybe that isn’t the best simile. At least, the shock from the impact made her horn stop flaring. Rarity sighed, her nightmare finally over, and started pushing with her front hooves to free herself. Then, she felt a little tingle at her magic.
“Oh… Nonononononononono!” She screamed. Her horn started flaring again, and soon she was ploughing the soil, hoping Big Macintosh wasn’t close, lest he might decide that Rarity could be a good farm implement. However, she didn’t need to worry much longer. Her horn hit a rock, throwing off her balance and making her do a double flip, falling on her hooves. An awestruck Lyra couldn’t help herself and started clapping.
“Where are you taking me, dumb horn?! I don’t need gems!” Rarity screamed, sliding towards Ponyville’s market. It was too early for anyone to be here, unless… Oh! Bless Celestia! “Applejack! Applejack!”
Rarity screamed her friend’s name while silently praising the earth mare for her punctuality. Applejack heard the screams and smiled as she saw Rarity coming.
“Morning, sugarcube! What can Ah get ya? Rarity? Yer comin’ a mite too fast, don’t ya think? Ya might want to brake a littOH MAH GOSH RARITY WHAT ARE YA DOIN’?!” Screamed the farmer as Rarity ran over her apple stand, crushing every single apple and breaking every jar, covering both mares in apple juice.
Applejack stood up, staring dumbfounded at her friend, who was already far away, leaving a big dust trail before her, screaming “HEEELP MEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
“Help! Somepony help me, please!” Rarity screamed, sliding quicker than before through Ponyville’s center, but there was nopony there. Suddenly, she saw her salvation. A though and burly earth stallion appeared behind a corner, whistling a happy tune. Oh, he was carrying something… What was that? Oh, my! There wasn’t just one stallion. They were two. They were walking in line. And they were carrying a stained-glass window, depicting Twilight Sparkle’s recent ascension to princesshood. It was for sure an Artsy Glint work, and that meant two things: One, that it was Princess Celestia’s commission, and two, that it was pretty expensive.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Said Rarity. This time, she didn’t even try to do anything. After all, everypony knew this was one of life’s little rules. Holding her head up high with pride, she went cleanly through the middle of the pane, breaking it into a million little pieces.
“Aaargh! Enough!” Rarity screamed. Her haunches felt as if they were on fire after all that sliding as she left involuntarily the crime’s scene. Battered, bruised and bleeding, she was seething in rage. “I swear! If this is somepony’s idea of a prank, I’m going to kill him!” Thinking of a million ways to make a pony suffer, she noticed that her path was taking her directly to Golden Oaks Library, home of Ponyville’s most recent princess, friend of Rarity and, more important right now, Equestria’s most knowledgeable expert on magic
“Twilight! Heeeelp!” She screamed. As she got closer to the library, she noticed that the door was open. At least, it would mean one less crash. As she got even closer to the library, she noticed a very strange glint coming out of the main room.
Rarity was sliding so fast she was starting to think she might be the first non-pegasus pony to perform a sonic rainboom. So fast that, when she finally entered the library, everything looked like a colourful blur. So fast that, even when her horn stopped flaring and her magic stopped dragging her, inertia still made her crash on a bookshelf, every single book hitting her head as it fell.
Seeing her friend covered in books, hurt, and probably dead or at least unconscious, Twilight Sparkle said the first thing that came to her head. “I knew it was a very bad idea to dedicate an entire shelf to Equestria’s biggest and heaviest books…” Levitating some of the tomes with her alicorn magic, she started unearthing Rarity, sighing with relief when the white mare stood up.
Rarity blinked twice, trying to avoid thinking about all the internal damage she had probably suffered, when she noticed something. Laid out on Twilight’s floor, there were lots of wild gems. So many gems, in fact, that they looked like a carpet. But that wasn’t the most strange thing about that display.
“Twilight Sparkle. Why do you have so many wild gems on your floor? And more importantly, why do they spell ‘I love you’?” Asked Rarity. Twilight started blushing.
“Well… You see, Rarity… I might have noticed that I… have certain feelings for you that I don’t seem to feel for any other of my friends…” Twilight tried to avoid looking her in the eyes. “Also, you might have noticed I don’t know very much about this kind of feelings, so… I started reading.”
“… Reading?” Asked Rarity, too dumbfounded to form any kind of complex thought.
“Well, you see,” Twilight said, slipping in a lecturing voice, “I started reading romance books, and I noticed a pattern. Whenever the protagonist loved somepony, just being sincere about it never seemed to work. In the end, they all had to make something flashy and stupid to win their beloved’s affections. So I thought that it might be better to skip all of it and go for the flashy directly, and I remembered your cutie mark story, so…”
“Twilight Sparkle!” Rarity interrupted “That’s the silliest, stupidest, most reckless and sweetest thing anypony has ever done for me! Are you crazy?!”
“I… I’m sorry!” Twilight whimpered. “I just… I just didn’t know how to tell you, and I…”
“Shut up! Just shut up!” Rarity replied, anger seeping through her pores. “I’m tired! Angry! Bruised! Angry!”
“I think you said that one twice…”
“I said shut up!” Rarity said, and Twilight meeped meekly. “You know what is going to happen right now, Twilight?”
Twilight didn’t dare to look at Rarity in the eyes. “I guess… You’re going to reject me and go back to your bed while I stay here crying…”
“No, Twilight. I’m going to go into your bed. I’m going to rut you senseless until my anger is gone. Then I’ll do it again when, hopefully, I start laughing at all the things that just happened. Then I might do it again just because, and then, I might decide if I love you.”
Twilight smiled as she was dragged up the stairs.