Boots and Diamonds

I will admit, freely and without shame, that I have never much cared for festivals held on actual pavement. There is something about cracked asphalt and the smell of fried dough that does not pair naturally with silk, but Mother’s name was on the tent and Father’s money was in the budget, and so here I was — six blocks of county fair stitched, rather violently, to my world. I had flown in the night before with Sweetie and half my management team, garment bags slung over every arm like soldiers carrying the wounded. The silver gown — my gown, my sketch, my hand in every seam even if Mother’s label sat on the tag — hung steaming in the tent while an assistant fussed over it with more nerves than the model wearing it would ever need. “Five minutes,” Sweetie said, poking his head through the flap. “Photographers are already three deep.” “Let them wait,” I said, fixing an earring in the little mirror. “Anticipation is a fabric too.” I stepped out onto the strip in heels that had cost more than most people’s monthly rent, built for marble and gallery floors, and entirely unsuited to whatever this ground beneath me actually was. I did not think much of it at the time. I think of very little else now.I heard the screaming before I understood it concerned me. There is a particular sound an animal makes when it has decided, with total conviction, that the world owes it an apology — a low, rolling bellow that arrived a half-second before the bull itself did, scattering a popcorn cart, flattening a row of folding chairs, sending grown men diving sideways into hay bales like something out of a farce I would have found very funny if I had not, at that exact moment, turned to see it barreling directly toward me. My mind, to its credit, gave the entirely sensible order: run. My legs, to their detriment, were sunk an inch into soft earth in two thousand dollars of Italian leather, and declined. “Rarity!” Sweetie’s voice, somewhere far too distant to help. I had just enough time to think, with a clarity that still embarrasses me, that this was a remarkably undignified way to die — and then I heard hooves of an entirely different rhythm. A woman came down the strip at a dead gallop, hat blown back, blonde braid whipping like a flag, already spinning a rope before I had even processed that she existed. She let out a holler — half word, half pure sound — sharp enough to catch the bull’s attention for the fraction of a second she needed, and threw. The lasso dropped clean over both horns. She wheeled her horse hard, took up the slack, and braced — boots locked, jaw set, every visible muscle in her arms and shoulders straining — and held. The bull hit the end of that rope like it had run into a wall, staggered, bucked once, and went still, snorting, ten feet from where I stood frozen in silver heels, having not managed to move a single inch the entire time. Nobody on the strip said anything for a moment. I certainly didn’t.You alright?” She was off the horse before the dust even settled, looping her rope around the saddle horn as though she hadn’t just done something that, where I come from, would require three professionals and a tranquilizer dart. I opened my mouth to answer and discovered, possibly for the first time in my adult life, that I had no prepared words whatsoever. “I — yes. I believe so.” I looked down at myself, checking for damage out of pure reflex, then up at her properly for the first time. Sun-browned skin. A jaw that looked like it had never once apologized for taking up space. Hat shoved back, eyes green as new leaves, watching me with the same plain, unbothered concern she might show a calf that had wandered too near a fence. “You just — you rode in and lassoed a bull.” “Folks do that where I’m from.” Something in her face eased once the danger had drained out of it, the adrenaline settling into something closer to curiosity as she looked at me properly too — purple hair set in curls that had taken an assistant forty minutes that morning, a dress worth more than her truck, no doubt, and an expression I imagine was somewhere between gratitude and total shock. “Name’s Applejack.” “Rarity.” I managed to smooth my skirt, though my hands were not, I confess, entirely steady. “Then I am eternally grateful you happened to be from there.” Sweetie arrived at a dead run, photographers close behind, lenses already lifting toward the woman on horseback who had just delivered, without question, the most dramatic entrance the entire festival would see. I have spent my whole life being photographed. I do not believe I have ever minded it less than I did in that moment, standing beside her.The bull was returned to its considerably more humiliated owner. The trunk show resumed an hour late, and the silver gown sold for a small fortune — partly on its own merits, I’d like to think, and partly because every outlet within three counties ran a photograph of its designer standing serenely beside a cowgirl and one very chastened bull. By evening, once the crowds had thinned and the lanterns came up gold against the dark, I found myself sitting alone at the edge of the strip, shoes finally — finally — off, my bare feet in grass I would never have touched on purpose that morning. “Didn’t peg you for the barefoot type.” She set two cups of cider down and folded herself onto the curb beside me, unhurried, like sitting next to someone she’d nearly watched get trampled twelve hours earlier was the most natural thing in the world. “Desperate circumstances,” I said, accepting the cup with both hands and studying her properly, finally, without an animal or a camera between us. “I don’t believe I caught your name, given the chaos.” “Applejack.” “Rarity. Though you knew that.” I laughed — a real one, which surprised me. “I suppose we’re a matched set of unlikely names.” “Suppose we are.” She looked out at the lights, then back at me, and there was nothing performed in it at all. “You did good today, by the way. Standin’ your ground like that, even when you couldn’t run. Takes nerve.” “I should think you’re the one who showed nerve, galloping toward the thing everyone else was running from.” “Ma always said there’s more’n one kind of brave.” She shrugged, entirely unbothered by her own heroics, in a way that landed far harder on me than false modesty ever could have. “Yours just comes in heels.” I looked at her — at the calloused hands wrapped around a paper cup like it was the finest crystal, at boots worn soft with years of actual use, at the steady, unhurried way she said everything, as though the world had never once managed to convince her it was in a hurry. I have spent my whole life around people who rush. I did not expect to find the stillness so very becoming. “I don’t suppose,” I said carefully, testing the words before I let them all the way out, “that farm girls and fashion designers have much occasion to see one another again, once the festival packs up.” She considered that, turning her cup slowly between her hands, in absolutely no rush to answer, which by then I had started to understand was simply who she was. “Reckon that depends,” she said at last, “on whether either one of ’em wants to make the occasion.” I smiled — and I knew, even as I did it, that it was nothing like the smiles I gave for cameras. “I believe,” I said, “I’d very much like to.”

Applejack: "Now hold on, sugarcube. You can't honestly be wearin' those fancy shoes to help buck apples."

Rarity: "Applejack, these are not merely shoes—they're hoof-crafted masterpieces! Do you have any idea what one speck of mud would do to them?"

Applejack: "Around Sweet Apple Acres? I'd say about five seconds before they're brown instead of purple."

Rarity: "Exactly my concern!" She lets out a dramatic sigh. "Why must nature be so... untidy?"

Applejack: "Because that's how apples grow." She chuckles. "Tell ya what—I'll lend you a pair of work boots."

Rarity: "Work boots? Me?" She gasps as if deeply offended, then smiles. "...Actually, that would be rather sensible."

Applejack: "Didn't think I'd hear you say that today."

Rarity: "Oh, don't get used to it. The moment we're finished, I'm soaking in a warm bubble bath for at least two hours."

Applejack: "Fair enough. Just don't complain if ya find an apple leaf in your mane."

Rarity: "One leaf I can tolerate. An entire branch, however, would be absolutely unacceptable."

Applejack: "Heh. You're somethin' else, Rarity."

Rarity: "And you're wonderfully dependable, Applejack. We do make rather an excellent team, don't we?"