The first aid kit, always hidden near the front door of the Carousel Boutique, lay unfolded like an origami butterfly on the grass outside the shop. The scissors, though, were held safely out of reach in the air by Rarity’s magic.

“Ow! Rarity, that hurts!”

“I know Sweetie Belle, but this must be tended to. Please hold still and let me have a closer look.”

Rarity examined her little sister’s foreleg while their friends watched closely. A dark patch had formed beneath the stained coat, and she gently rubbed a cloudy white ointment into it. Sweetie Belle wrinkled her nose.

“Looks to be just a bit of bruising,” Applejack stated, “and I sure’ve bucked enough apple trees to know.”

“Yeah, that’s totally nothing! Just throw some dirt on it,” Rainbow Dash offered. “Hey, ow!”

“Don’t go given’ ‘em ideas, sugarcube,” Applejack said, retracting her elbow.

“Phhht! Way too late for that.”

The mares’ banter halted as they noticed Rarity glaring them. Two of the foals stepped back.

“Now then, Sweetie, what in the depths of Tartar—”

“Rarity!”

“Ehem! Thank you, Applejack,” Rarity sighed. She continued to rub the soothing salve into her sister’s bruised little foreleg, and the motion seemed to calm them both. A difficulty, Rarity had found, was not with the bruise itself, but in being able to avert her eyes from the great splotches of green grass stains all over her. “What I meant to ask was what exactly you three were doing—”

“This time!”

“Yes, thank you, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity growled. She took a calming breath and looked up from her efforts, into her little sister’s sad eyes.

The filly’s tail swished, and her ears flattened. She wobbled a little on three spindly legs. “Well, we were only trying to—”

“—to get our cutie marks in Extreme Water Sliding!” Scootaloo crowed. Everypony grew quiet and stared at her. “What? It was awesome!”

“Yes, well I still don’t quite understand how you three managed to divert an actual stream uphill, but…”

“That was easy!” Apple Bloom supplied, proudly. “First we had ta build a dam.”

“Then we built a diversion wall,” Sweetie added, glumly.

“Then we dug a trench up to the top of the hill,” Scootaloo tossed in, sticking her tongue out. “That part sucked.”

Rarity rubbed a hoof against her forehead, realizing too late that she’d smeared salve on herself. At least it felt cool, and it might even help; she was starting to get a headache.

“Thank you, girls,” she replied, proceeding to wrap the tender foreleg in a bit of gauze and elastic bandage. “I think we all begin to see the larger picture… And I now wish to cover that picture with the most serene of expensive wall hangings, but it will never erase the fact of that image lurking behind with the ghosts of all the others.”

The two other mares nodded as the fillies all stared in confusion.

With some white tape and a few quick snips of the scissors, Rarity’s work was done. She set nearly everything down and then reached in with both arms, wrapping her little sister in a warm hug.

“There, Sweetie. All better?” she asked. Sweetie Belle smiled and nodded at first, but then her face scrunched as she pulled back and looked at her bandaged foreleg.

“It kinda looks all… hurtie.”

“Yes,” Rarity said, pausing, “yes, it does.” She looked up from the bandage and saw her sister’s two friends, and then her eyes sparkled. “And I believe I have the perfect solution for that.”

***

“Ya know they’re just gonna do all this again, right?”

“That is precisely why I failed to give them the complete kit, darling.” Rarity shuddered. “The thought of those three fillies running with scissors through Ponyville absolutely terrifies me.”

“Naw, they’re totally— Oops.”

Sweetie Belle tripped and fell as she ran off, and all three mares grimaced. “I’m okay!” she shouted back, waving a fashionably-wrapped foreleg at Rarity. She reached the other two fillies, who each had similar colorful wraps on one leg, and climbed aboard their scooter-drawn cart. With a cry of “Cutie Mark Crusaders Emergency Medics!” they sped off.

“You seem pretty level about all of this, Rarity,” Applejack said quietly.

“Ah, well perhaps… Sweetie Belle always comes to me when she truly needs something from me,” Rarity said with a little smile, just for herself, “and I have learned my lesson quite well. She trusts me, and so I must always be there for her.”