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Hatred
“So, Twilight.” Rarity takes a dainty bite of her scone. “How are you? Really?”
Only half-aware I’m doing it, I smile what I think—what I hope—is a serene little smile. I’m trying to imitate the one Princess Celestia always wears, the one that radiates distant reassurance even though nopony can read it. Practicing this smile has become a habit lately, though it’s a slow-blossoming skill, the kind that moves so slowly it’s difficult to perceive a change in. Right now, I’m bad at it. I suspect I’ll always think I’m bad at it until one day, far in the future, I suddenly catch my reflection out of the corner of my eye purely by chance and find myself floored by the realization that I long ago became my teacher’s equal without even realizing it.
But right now, I settle for doing the best I can manage for a couple seconds, then cover what I know must be a lackluster performance by lifting my own scone and taking a bite which I can only hope is as politely dainty as my host’s. I swallow a little too fast and it sticks in my throat. It doesn’t feel dainty at all.
I cover once again by lifting my tea and taking a sip to help wash it down.
“Oh, me?” I feign an inflection hinting surprise once my throat is clear. “I’m fine, Rarity. Just fine.”
Rarity smiles her own version of the smile. It never works for her, though, because she’s got those eyes, those big blue oceans of sparkling sapphire, and it’s the eyes, I’ve come to realize, that are the secret to the smile. It doesn’t work if the eyes don’t cooperate, and hers always tell the truth.
Those eyes say it all, from under their long, perfect lashes.
She knows.
It hangs in the air like steam wafting off a fresh-poured cup of tea, a presence barely seen but impossible not to feel when it’s so close, so personal.
She’s too much a lady to let it linger uncomfortably, so she nips it before it can grow to fill the silence.
“I’m glad to hear it.” She nods a little nod, telling me she won’t question my claim. “I just wish we saw more of you, you know.”
“Well, princess responsibilities, and all.” I shrug weakly.
“Of course.” She nods again. “I understand.”
For just the briefest fraction of a second, I suddenly want to flip the table, because she doesn’t. She knows, but she doesn’t understand, and those are two completely different things.
I long ago despaired of anypony understanding.
I don’t flip the table, of course. Not understanding isn’t her fault, and anyway, the outburst was never a real option. The urge is gone as quickly as it appeared. Instead, I nibble at my scone and keep enjoying my tea—it really is good tea—while we sit across from each other.
“What about you?” I ask. “How have you been?”
“Oh, much the same as always, I suppose,” she says. “Lately, that seems to be a lot of juggling my boutique’s branch shops. Wishing I had more time for creating and less for administrating.”
Now I nod.
“I’m thinking of divesting a bit from that part,” she continues. “Getting back to my roots. Spending more time in Ponyville. I’m not as young as I once was, you know.”
“I’ve been thinking about that myself,” I venture.
She gives me that look again. Now I can’t help noticing the subtle crow’s feet that have formed, and they only make those eyes speak more sharply than ever.
She knows.
Even so, she offers me another flash of a smile, brief and terse but genuine. “It would be wonderful if you did.”
Hearing the idea spoken placates us both for the moment. I suppose it’s enough to grasp onto, because it’s true, I will think about it. I’m always thinking about it.
And so the dance goes, afternoon tea with Rarity. We talk and we circle and I smile my distant smile and her eyes tell me she knows and somehow I know it’s not a mistake that I can tell. Our conversation is a shell; we rotate around a hollow center, and we both miss the days there was something there in the middle.
Then finally it gets late and teatime is over, so I take my leave. I step outside and glance back with hatred at my wings, these wings I never asked for, and I fly away.
Only half-aware I’m doing it, I smile what I think—what I hope—is a serene little smile. I’m trying to imitate the one Princess Celestia always wears, the one that radiates distant reassurance even though nopony can read it. Practicing this smile has become a habit lately, though it’s a slow-blossoming skill, the kind that moves so slowly it’s difficult to perceive a change in. Right now, I’m bad at it. I suspect I’ll always think I’m bad at it until one day, far in the future, I suddenly catch my reflection out of the corner of my eye purely by chance and find myself floored by the realization that I long ago became my teacher’s equal without even realizing it.
But right now, I settle for doing the best I can manage for a couple seconds, then cover what I know must be a lackluster performance by lifting my own scone and taking a bite which I can only hope is as politely dainty as my host’s. I swallow a little too fast and it sticks in my throat. It doesn’t feel dainty at all.
I cover once again by lifting my tea and taking a sip to help wash it down.
“Oh, me?” I feign an inflection hinting surprise once my throat is clear. “I’m fine, Rarity. Just fine.”
Rarity smiles her own version of the smile. It never works for her, though, because she’s got those eyes, those big blue oceans of sparkling sapphire, and it’s the eyes, I’ve come to realize, that are the secret to the smile. It doesn’t work if the eyes don’t cooperate, and hers always tell the truth.
Those eyes say it all, from under their long, perfect lashes.
She knows.
It hangs in the air like steam wafting off a fresh-poured cup of tea, a presence barely seen but impossible not to feel when it’s so close, so personal.
She’s too much a lady to let it linger uncomfortably, so she nips it before it can grow to fill the silence.
“I’m glad to hear it.” She nods a little nod, telling me she won’t question my claim. “I just wish we saw more of you, you know.”
“Well, princess responsibilities, and all.” I shrug weakly.
“Of course.” She nods again. “I understand.”
For just the briefest fraction of a second, I suddenly want to flip the table, because she doesn’t. She knows, but she doesn’t understand, and those are two completely different things.
I long ago despaired of anypony understanding.
I don’t flip the table, of course. Not understanding isn’t her fault, and anyway, the outburst was never a real option. The urge is gone as quickly as it appeared. Instead, I nibble at my scone and keep enjoying my tea—it really is good tea—while we sit across from each other.
“What about you?” I ask. “How have you been?”
“Oh, much the same as always, I suppose,” she says. “Lately, that seems to be a lot of juggling my boutique’s branch shops. Wishing I had more time for creating and less for administrating.”
Now I nod.
“I’m thinking of divesting a bit from that part,” she continues. “Getting back to my roots. Spending more time in Ponyville. I’m not as young as I once was, you know.”
“I’ve been thinking about that myself,” I venture.
She gives me that look again. Now I can’t help noticing the subtle crow’s feet that have formed, and they only make those eyes speak more sharply than ever.
She knows.
Even so, she offers me another flash of a smile, brief and terse but genuine. “It would be wonderful if you did.”
Hearing the idea spoken placates us both for the moment. I suppose it’s enough to grasp onto, because it’s true, I will think about it. I’m always thinking about it.
And so the dance goes, afternoon tea with Rarity. We talk and we circle and I smile my distant smile and her eyes tell me she knows and somehow I know it’s not a mistake that I can tell. Our conversation is a shell; we rotate around a hollow center, and we both miss the days there was something there in the middle.
Then finally it gets late and teatime is over, so I take my leave. I step outside and glance back with hatred at my wings, these wings I never asked for, and I fly away.
For the beginning, it was unclear what the tone was supposed to be. It felt lighthearted during Twilight’s introspection about Celestia, but when she noted that Rarity’s eyes told the truth, I wasn’t quite sure if it was a playful truth, or an angry truth, or what. It was ambiguous to me until Rarity’s older age came up.
Twilight’s inner voice is mature, but not jaded, which I find 100% believable. It’s definitely a step up from most fics I’ve read where she’s eternally neurotic and has the mind of a teenager stuck in the awkward phase of alicorn.
Rarity was a great choice for a conversation partner, since almost every other non-alicorn character (except maybe Fluttershy) has the social nuance of a chair. I don’t think the dancing around the subject would have worked with any other character.
Twilight’s inner voice is mature, but not jaded, which I find 100% believable. It’s definitely a step up from most fics I’ve read where she’s eternally neurotic and has the mind of a teenager stuck in the awkward phase of alicorn.
Rarity was a great choice for a conversation partner, since almost every other non-alicorn character (except maybe Fluttershy) has the social nuance of a chair. I don’t think the dancing around the subject would have worked with any other character.
Very competently written, and touches on the difference between knowing and really understanding that your friends have different obligations as they get older. It's not something we see a whole lot of in the show proper, so it's a nice choice of topic. I agree with 2Merr in that Rarity is the best choice for this, as she's the only one who really gets how to dance around topics tactfully.
Bringing the last story up to three reviews.
The execution here, in the aggregate, is solid, and if this is on my slate (*checks*… yep, it is) it's gonna be fairly high in my prelim rankings. In particular, I love the way that Twilight self-consciously reflects about practicing Celestia's smile a paragraph before the subtle beat of us learning she's sitting there drinking tea. That said, I have some reservations about some of the details that make up the way this pushes toward its theme, so I'm going to talk about some of my nitpicks that are keeping this from crossing my Top Contender line.
On the whole, I think present tense was probably a better choice than past tense for this particular approach, but it did rather grind me to a halt in the opening. Present tense is about bringing immediacy to the story, showing us the thoughts of the narrator in real time — and yet the story starts with a spoken question and then two hundred words of introspection before the question is answered. If you're going to use present tense for its immediacy, be immediate.
"She’s too much a lady to let it linger uncomfortably" is very on point. Nice.
The table-flipping thing feels too on point, if that makes any sense. Like, it's a pretty strong statement about Twilight's feelings, and based on the title and the last line it's clear that you want her to be hiding feelings that strong, but I just feel like it isn't sufficiently established, especially as the single isolated example. The story spends 750 words inside Twilight's head, but she's just as cagey with the reader as she is with Rarity; why are her "princess duties" (that nobody understands) a sufficient thing to generate hatred? More importantly, given that she's the Princess of Literal Friendship, what happened to disconnect her from her friends? It's one thing to lean on the generic "she's an immortal princess now, she lives in a different world", but the specifics of the character don't really allow that to happen without some heavy lampshading.
Noting Rarity's advancing age is a good start to that, and (regardless of how well-trodden Immortality Angst fics are) a reasonable central core for that, but Twilight's sole moment of frustration isn't in noticing Rarity's crow's feet, it's in Rarity not understanding her princess obligations. Again, Twilight Sparkle. What has gone wrong that she can't talk to her friends about this? It's not inconceivable that something happened, but I can't connect those dots without some hint in the story.
The execution here, in the aggregate, is solid, and if this is on my slate (*checks*… yep, it is) it's gonna be fairly high in my prelim rankings. In particular, I love the way that Twilight self-consciously reflects about practicing Celestia's smile a paragraph before the subtle beat of us learning she's sitting there drinking tea. That said, I have some reservations about some of the details that make up the way this pushes toward its theme, so I'm going to talk about some of my nitpicks that are keeping this from crossing my Top Contender line.
On the whole, I think present tense was probably a better choice than past tense for this particular approach, but it did rather grind me to a halt in the opening. Present tense is about bringing immediacy to the story, showing us the thoughts of the narrator in real time — and yet the story starts with a spoken question and then two hundred words of introspection before the question is answered. If you're going to use present tense for its immediacy, be immediate.
"She’s too much a lady to let it linger uncomfortably" is very on point. Nice.
The table-flipping thing feels too on point, if that makes any sense. Like, it's a pretty strong statement about Twilight's feelings, and based on the title and the last line it's clear that you want her to be hiding feelings that strong, but I just feel like it isn't sufficiently established, especially as the single isolated example. The story spends 750 words inside Twilight's head, but she's just as cagey with the reader as she is with Rarity; why are her "princess duties" (that nobody understands) a sufficient thing to generate hatred? More importantly, given that she's the Princess of Literal Friendship, what happened to disconnect her from her friends? It's one thing to lean on the generic "she's an immortal princess now, she lives in a different world", but the specifics of the character don't really allow that to happen without some heavy lampshading.
Noting Rarity's advancing age is a good start to that, and (regardless of how well-trodden Immortality Angst fics are) a reasonable central core for that, but Twilight's sole moment of frustration isn't in noticing Rarity's crow's feet, it's in Rarity not understanding her princess obligations. Again, Twilight Sparkle. What has gone wrong that she can't talk to her friends about this? It's not inconceivable that something happened, but I can't connect those dots without some hint in the story.
That first big paragraph made the intro feel a little clunky when I first read it, though it wasn't so bad afterwards. The subtle details and turns of phrase are excellent; there are some insightful bits of prose, like talking about the eyes.
Though I agree with >>horizon for the most part, I have a different take on Twilight's upset. 'Princess duties' seemed like a clear excuse. Discounting that, it most feels like pure immortal angst. Though that would beg the question that if Rarity went to Ponyville, why couldn't Twilight also, which is a level of detail that the fic is cagey about.
Though I agree with >>horizon for the most part, I have a different take on Twilight's upset. 'Princess duties' seemed like a clear excuse. Discounting that, it most feels like pure immortal angst. Though that would beg the question that if Rarity went to Ponyville, why couldn't Twilight also, which is a level of detail that the fic is cagey about.