The efforts of everypony involved were valiant, but the battle was short. Filled with so much fabric, with so many paints, dyes, and glues, Carousel Boutique had been perhaps the biggest firetrap in all of Ponyville, excluding the library. All things considered, Rarity was lucky to have escaped it at all, let alone with little more than a singed coat; but that the insult outclassed the injury didn’t make it any easier to watch her life’s work, the symbol of everything she had ever striven to be, her home, burn to the ground in a matter of hours while she could only stand helplessly by.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Certainly she’d assisted in the efforts to contain the blaze, helping the other unicorns float buckets of water from nearby houses and places of business. The pegasi, led with commendable haste by Rainbow Dash, had quickly organized a focused deluge over the shop, and the earth ponies had all taken a cue from Pinkie Pie and pelted the flames with enough water balloons to fill a swimming pool; but even as she’d raced with the others to save her home, Rarity had known in the pit of her stomach that it would all be for naught. The fire had simply burned too hot, too fast, and by the time the last flame had been licked out, the only thing that remained of her beloved boutique was a smoldering pile of charred wood, ash, and broken water balloons.
Gone, she thought, as if merely testing the idea, too stunned to feel anything but numb at the notion. Everything is gone.
“Oh, Rarity!” Pinkie Pie’s face popped up in front of hers. The earth pony looked to be on the verge of tears, an expression so foreign to her cheerful features that Rarity, in her dazed state, almost didn’t recognize her. “All your beautiful dresses! And your designs! And your jewels and your material and your bed and your shoes and your glasses and your china and your silverware and your—”
“Pinkie!” snapped a country drawl to Rarity’s right. “Shush!”
Rarity distantly felt somepony’s hoof come to rest on her shoulder. Slowly, she turned to look at a somber, hatless Applejack, whose freckles were obscured by smudges of soot.
“I’m powerful sorry, sugarcube,” Applejack said softly.
“Yeah,” said Rainbow Dash, her wings smelling strongly of smoke as she fluttered to the ground. "We did the best we could to stop it." She glared at the remains of Carousel Boutique as though they were an opponent that had beaten her in a race, which wasn’t too far from the truth.
“It’s…it’s all right,” Rarity heard herself reassure them.
“All right?!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. “Whoa, whoa, whoa – who dethroned the drama queen? Your house looks like a dragon had a sneezing fit all over it!”
“Rainbow!” scolded Applejack.
“What? It’s true! Why isn’t she rollin’ around on the floor with a hoof pressed against her head, crying about how this is THE. WORST. POSSIBLE. THING?”
“Landsakes, Rainbow Dash, the poor thing’s in shock, it ain’t sunk in yet!”
The argument passed back and forth over Rarity’s head like a verbal game of keep-away. Like flies buzzing over something no longer alive.
Rarity shuddered and shook the macabre image from her mind, disgust finally clearing some of the fog from her mind.
“It’s not,” she said.
The warring voices ceased, startled at her sudden recovery.
“Huh?” said Rainbow Dash.
“What’s not, sugarcube?” asked Applejack.
Rarity took a composing breath, then turned her back on the scorched debris to properly address her friends.
“It is not the worst possible thing,” she asserted, and while her voice was brittle, her tone was firm. “I’m alive, and I’m well, and Opalescence is alive and...somewhere—” Rarity’s magical deathgrip on the scruff of the feline’s neck had understandably loosed once they were safely out-of-doors and distracted by the pressing matter of attempting to ensure they would continue to have said doors to return through. “—and thank goodness Sweetie Belle chose to accompany Mother and Father to Chicoltgo to visit Uncle Blitz and Aunt Pom-Pon instead of remaining behind with me. It could have been worse. It could have been much, much worse, and I want to thank everypony here for their quick action, bravery, and assistance in my time of need.”
Applejack forced an optimistic smile. “That’s the spirit! Don’t you worry none, Rarity, we’ll all lend a hoof to get this place back to rights again, even fussier and more gussied up than before.” She looked over her shoulder at the crowd and raised her voice, “Right, everypony?”
A chorus of “Right!” and “You bet’cha!” and “Of course!” resounded from all sides, and Rarity bowed her head in gratitude.
“And in the meantime,” Pinkie Pie piped up, “you can stay with me at Sugarcube Corner!”
Rarity’s carefully collected poise quavered. “O-oh,” she stammered. “That’s...that’s very generous of you, Pinkie darling, but—”
“But I’ve already asked her to stay with me,” Applejack interrupted. Rarity looked at her, surprised, and was answered with a bright green wink. “Celestia knows we got enough room, and you know the Apple family motto: the more, the merrier!”
The corners of Rarity’s mouth tucked into a little smile. “...All the same, thank you very much for the offer, Pinkie Pie. It means a lot.”
“Awwwww! Okeydokey, Loki! Just remember, my door’s always open! Unless I’m not there, then it’s closed. Or it might be open then, too – I mean, how am I supposed to know what a door gets up to when I’m not there to watch it? Not that I spend a lot of time watching doors, anyway, but if I did...” Her train of thought continued on its paisley tracks as she passively allowed Rainbow Dash to drag her away by the tail.
Realizing there was nothing more that could be done for the time being, the other residents of Ponyville began to trickle back to their homes, either to return to their beds or get an early start on the day, and it wasn’t long before Rarity, Applejack, and Big Macintosh were the only three left in the square.
Rarity’s gaze returned to the rubble, while Applejack pawed awkwardly at the ground with one of her forehooves.
“I know the farm might not be your first choice of lodgings,” the blonde pony began, “but I thought you might like some peace an’ quiet for the time bein’, and seein’ as Twilight and Fluttershy are away visiting their folks in Canterlot an’ Cloudsdale, and can’t nopony who ain’t a pegasus even get to Rainbow’s place—”
The unicorn held up a hoof to hush her. Rarity shook her head, a few bits of ash falling like silver snowflakes from her mane.
“Applejack, thank you, honestly. Peace and quiet sound like the best possible things right now. All of a sudden I feel very, very tired.” She took a step in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres, then hesitated, her weary blue eyes widening with renewed panic. “Opal! Oh, Applejack, I simply must find her! She’s never been outside on her own before!” She glanced around frantically, calling out, “Opal? Opal!”
“Rarity, sweetheart, I’m sure Opalescence is fine, wherever she is.”
“How can you know that?! What if she’s lost, or, or stuck up a tree?”
“Rarity.”
“What if she sought shelter in a cave and is currently fighting for her life against a ferocious, slavering bear?”
“Rarity!”
“Or worse? Oh, hold on, Opal! Mommy’s coming!”
“Rarity Grace Unicorn!”
Rarity was halted by one of Applejack’s hooves against her muzzle.
“It has been one hay of a night. You’re exhausted an’ then some. You just lost...well, a lot. So you just head on up to Sweet Apple Acres with Big Macintosh an’ he’ll get you set up in one o’ the guest rooms. Get’cherself cleaned up, try to get some sleep, and I’ll look for the da– for Opalescence. Okay?”
“O-okay...” Rarity’s voice was as small as Applejack had ever heard it, and the earth pony bit back a sympathetic wince. “Please find her, Applejack! I just don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to her!”
“Don’t you worry your pretty head over it, sugarcube. They ain’t made a critter yet that ol’ Applejack can’t round up.”
Rarity nodded. “I know. I trust you. Thank you, Applejack – for everything. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay—”
“Hey now, none o’ that! That’s what friends are for, to help each other get through hard times.”
“Just like you welcomed Twilight Sparkle’s help during applebucking season, when Big Macintosh was injured?”
Green eyes narrowed in a glare. “Do you wanna look me in the mouth, or do ya want me to find your dang cat?”
“The latter, please.”
“Then hush, and get goin’. Big Mac, tell Apple Bloom she’ll hafta take care o’ the cows this mornin’, and make sure Granny Smith knows there’ll be a fifth pony joinin’ us for meals for the foreseeable future.”
Big Macintosh nodded, a mute “Eeyup,” and started for the farm with Rarity obediently in tow.
The silence that spanned the gap between Rarity and Big Macintosh was less awkward than it might have been, had Rarity not already known the scarlet stallion to be a pony of few words.
It felt good to walk next to him. Safe. Like walking next to (an admittedly oversized) Applejack herself. For all the golden mare was uncouth in her mannerisms, her manners themselves (in terms of respect for a fellow pony’s privacy, at least) had never fallen short of even Rarity’s extremely high standards. Applejack would not pry. She would not try to cheer Rarity up with a houseburning party (And oh, sweet Celestia, somepony please head Pinkie off at the pass on that idea…). She would not try to psychoanalyze Rarity’s mental state and lecture her on the five known stages of grief and draw up a timetable by which those stages might be followed and gotten over and done with just in the nick of time to pen a letter to the sun princess on the importance of attentive friendship in finding closure after a sudden, traumatic loss. She would not make Rarity hold baby animals until she smiled again. She would not crack well-meaning jokes until Rarity herself cracked into what would be undoubtedly hysterical sobs.
What Applejack would do, was listen.
When Rarity was ready.
For the moment, that seemed a long time away.
More immediate was the front gate of Sweet Apple Acres, and the clear pink dawn rising just behind it that bathed the orchard in the warm honey glow of Celestia’s light – and turned, in Rarity’s mind, each and every apple into a lambent ember, as if in mockery of recent events.
She knew the princess would do no such thing, of course. The alicorn’s noble nature aside, with Twilight and Spike already in Canterlot, news of the fire was unlikely to travel beyond Cloudsdale, which was probably more annoyed at having to clean up whatever parts of the aerial city might have been sullied by the smoke than sympathetic toward the owner of its origin.
The farmhouse was quiet when they entered, or nearly so: Granny Smith sat snoring in a squashy-looking pink rocker in the far corner of the parlor, and curled up on the bench built into the recess of one of the front windows, where she had tenably spent the dark hours of the morning worrying, watching, and awaiting her elder siblings’ return, was Apple Bloom. Big Mac signaled Rarity to keep quiet with a hoof pressed to his mouth, and Rarity used her magic to close the front door silently behind them before following Big Mac up the staircase.
The bulky earth pony was surprisingly light on his hooves – or, more likely, there wasn’t a creaky floorboard in the entire house with which he was unfamiliar and unable to avoid. Rarity made sure to step precisely where he did, and conjured up a little spell to muffle the sound of her hooves on the wood, just in case.
The room to which he showed her was sparer than the rest of the house, which was filled with five generations’ worth of sundry knick-knacks, heirlooms, hoof-me-downs and keepsakes. Here, a simple pine bed stood against one wall, opposite a matching dresser. The bedding and curtains were coordinated with what Rarity referred to as “shabby-chic finesse” in colors of biscuit, cinnamon, and soft sage green, and the lattice pattern of the quilt on the bed echoed the appearance of the crusts of the endless pies that were baked downstairs.
“AJ’s room is right next door,” Big Mac explained, gesturing with one hoof to a door a short way down the hall. “That’s Apple Bloom, that’s me, and Granny Smith’s downstairs, across from the kitchen. The water closet’s at the end o’ the hall. Just give a holler if’n ya need anything.”
The unicorn smiled weakly. “Thank you, I shall.”
Big Mac bobbed his head and proceeded back downstairs.
Rarity took a step toward the bed, which looked terribly inviting, but stopped short when she glanced down and took note of the dreadful state of her coat and hooves. Her not insignificant sense of vanity aside – and, truly, it was at present about the uttermost aside it had ever been, the Sisterhooves Social included – to dirty her dear friend’s sheets when they had been so generously offered her would be unthinkably rude, even if said dear friend wasn’t the tidiest of ponies to begin with. Indeed, that made it all the more important for Rarity, as the Element of Generosity, to be conscientious of Applejack’s possessions, as a show of respect for the farmpony’s charitableness and goodwill.
She left the room and made her way toward the end of the hall, hearing as she did the groggy interrogation of Big Macintosh by a newly wakened Apple Bloom from the parlor below. Eeyup, he, Applejack, and Rarity were fine; nnnope, Applejack wasn’t home yet, she was still out looking for Rarity’s cat; nope, Apple Bloom could not trade jobs with Applejack instead of tending the cows…
The linen shelf in the washroom yielded a stack of fluffy, cream-colored towels, and Rarity floated one to the lid of the toilet while she inspected the various bottles occupying the metal basket stretched over the foot of the bathtub. Surprisingly, there was not a single apple-scented item in the mix, but myriad warm, energizing flavors: lily and jasmine, sugared pear, pomelo, grapefruit, ginger and clove…
Rarity sniffed each one in turn, but all were scarcely detectable above the lingering odor of smoke in her nose. She chose the jasmine, and hoped for the best.
The bath itself certainly felt divine. Closing her eyes, Rarity sank supine into the tub, and allowed the heat of the water to draw out the fiery tension that had been accumulating in her muscles since she had choked awake earlier that morning. She rotated her head and carefully popped the stiff joints in her neck, and sighed in relief as the stress ebbed from her body and was replaced with the duller, deeper ache of exhaustion. A trip to the spa in the very near future was most definitely in order – only…
Rarity’s eyes snapped open as her thoughts, and her blood, froze at the realization: she could not go to the spa.
She could not go shopping, or to the theatre, or out to eat.
She could always find jewels, yes, but what value did they hold without sumptuous fabrics in which to set them? And what good were bolts of fabric without tools to reshape them into creations of sartorial splendor? It had taken her years to furnish Carousel Boutique to her satisfaction, and in ways infinitely more important than the trim on the walls and the chromatic synchronicity of her kitchen appliances to her tableware.
Her dressmaker’s shears, embroidery scissors, and thread-nippers; her ponyforms, cutting mats and rotary blades; her sketchbooks and patterns, buttons, hooks, eyelets, zippers threads flosses laces sequins beads pins and needles; and worst of all, her most prized possession, her top-of-the-line Cornhusqvarna Sleipnir Limited Edition Diamond Designer Deluxe sewing machine.
She remembered pinching bits on groceries for months in order to afford it, to the point where Pinkie Pie had begun to drop in every morning with a basket of muffins and ohmygosh the most funnest idea ever that they be best breakfast buddies, and every week at the market, Applejack had insisted Rarity take a bucketful of suspiciously pristine “bruised” apples off her hooves. Even Fluttershy had invented a few of the most ridiculous excuses Rarity had ever been ashamed to accept as to why something had suddenly come up and the pegasus would be unable to attend their get-together at the spa that week – and thus unable to see if Rarity skipped it herself and stored the spare coins safely away in an unassuming-looking hatbox on the top shelf of her wardrobe.
The hatbox and wardrobe were gone, now, too.
She sat up, gooseflesh prickling to life beneath her coat in the cool air. A gray film of ash and dirt skimmed the surface of the now tepid water: the residual filth of her once beautiful life.
Rarity felt the tenuous barrier of her traumatized stupor begin to give way. She pulled the drain plug loose and scrambled out of the tub, slipping once on the tiled floor as she wrenched open the cabinet under the sink and, thankfully, found what she needed.
Her concept of time disbanded, minutes and seconds scattering in all directions like pearls from a broken string. She didn’t know when precisely Applejack arrived; only that, suddenly, she was there, wrapping a towel around Rarity’s shoulders, hugging her close, rocking her gently, murmuring words that were muffled to Rarity’s ears, but clear in their soothing tone.
Rarity shut her eyes tightly, and buried her face in the warm crook of Applejack’s neck, and cried and cried and cried.