"Bye, Rarity! Thanks for the gems!" Spike called, hurrying over to Starlight.

"You're very welcome, darling. If anything, I should thank you for all your assistance today," Rarity responded, trotting over to the duo. She turned to her fellow unicorn. "And how, may I ask, are you today, Starlight?"

"Oh, um," Starlight responded, rubbing one hind leg over the other. "Alright, I guess. I spent most of the morning up at Sweet Apple Acres, and this afternoon, I've been working on a reversal spell."

Rarity cocked her head. "Reversing what, darling?"

Starlight smiled widely. "Pretty much anything. The course of rivers, the path of apple carts, the polarity of the neutron flow… I'm still working on entropy, though."

The alabaster unicorn gaped like a fish. Then, abruptly, she closed her mouth and smiled warmly. "Well, be careful, dear. We don't want to send the universe back to its beginning, do we?"

"The… universe?" Starlight chuckled. "Oh, no. No, no, I wouldn't be able to reach that far. The planet, maybe, but not the universe."

Rarity's smile abruptly became a little more plastic. "That… was a joke, darling." She breathed out. "Oh! I was wondering, could you ask Twilight to come over at her earliest convenience? I have a bit of fabric that's just come in, and I think it would go gorgeously with her coat."

"Of course," Starlight replied with a small smile. "What are friends for?"

It hadn't really been a lie, Rarity told herself. The material would look absolutely glorious on her friend. The fact that she had ordered it especially for that purpose should be immaterial. She glanced out the window, twisting her mane nervously around her hoof. Surely Twilight would arrive shortly? She always made a point of making time for her friends, after all. The unicorn glanced around the room. Good heavens! She hadn't realized how dreadful that vase looked on the coffee table until now. She quickly picked it up in her aura, levitating it over to the mantle. Better, but now the table looked bare. Some other piece of ornamentation or bric-a-brac could surely replace it. A sculpture? Bowl of fruit? Flowers, perhaps? Yes, that could work. She would go and pick some. No, first she would need a vase. She glanced around. Where was that vase? She had just seen it? There! She levitated the vase off the mantle and onto the table. Flowers. Yes. Garden. Rarity flung open the door and rushed out, abruptly colliding with a lavender mare.

"Oh!"

"Beg pardon, just a moment," Rarity said, pushing past. Roses would be nice. Yes. Red roses. And, perhaps, something purple to set them off, something to truly make them "pop", as it were.

"Rarity?"

And then something nice and white to finish the palette. Edelweiss? Daisies? Lilies? No. Not lilies.

"Rarity?"

Edelweiss it would be, then. Did she have edelweiss? No matter, she could buy some in the market.

"Rarity!"

The alabaster unicorn blinked and turned around. "Oh, hello Twilight," she said with a smile. "I'm afraid I didn't see you there."

The alicorn stared. "Uh… huh. Rarity, are you feeling alright?"

"Oh, yes, of course I am, darling. Just a tad… absent." Rarity replied, smile fading.

Twilight regarded her carefully. Rarity did her best to look as well-balanced as she could. "Alright," Twilight acquiesced, nodding. "So, you had something you wanted to try on me?"

"Oh! Yes, of course," Rarity agreed, trotting back through the doors of the Carousel Boutique. "Right this way, darling~"

The fabric was quite beautiful. It was a deep, shimmering magenta which seemed to change to anything between violet and saffron, depending on the light. "Well?" Rarity asked, gesturing to it dramatically.

"Oh, Rarity!" Twilight gasped. "It's gorgeous! I can't ask you to use this on me. Save it for somepony else."

"Nonsense, darling! Nopony else could fit it as well as do you."

Twilight opened her mouth to reply, then frowned. "I… fit the fabric?"

"Of course, darling. Just look at it!"

Twilight looked. "Um," she said.

Rarity sighed. "Alright," she said slowly. "Do you remember the first time we all went to the Gala together?"

Twilight rolled her eyes. "How could I forget?"

"Well, quite. And I'm sure you also remember the little problem of the dresses that preceded that ghastly affair."

"I thought we agreed that we would never mention that again," Twilight said flatly.

Rarity was undeterred. "Think about the difference between the dresses all of you designed and my finished work. What was different?"

"Your dresses actually looked good?" Twilight guessed drily.

Rarity snickered. "Well, quite. But beyond that?"

Twilight considered. "... Honestly, a list of similarities would be shorter," she admitted. "I mean, Applejack's first dress was just sort of… clunky, and Pinkie's was too out-there…"

"Precisely," Rarity nodded. "And because of that, the dress distracted from the wearer. Too gaudy, too flashy, too covered in astronomically precise constellations…" Twilight blushed. "... the point of a dress is not merely to look good. The point of a dress is to highlight the wearer's best features, and that requires a certain matchmaking ability. Picture Rainbow Dash in Fluttershy's Gala dress, for instance, or Pinkie Pie in yours, and you'll see what I mean."

Slowly, Twilight nodded. "I think I see," she said. "It's a matter of making a dress that suits a pony's personality as much as it matches their coat."

"Precisely," Rarity said with a nod and a small smile. "It's also why I prefer meeting a client face-to-face at least once during the process. I tell them it's a matter of fitting and simply allow them to draw their own conclusions as to what that entails."

Twilight nodded, slowly running a hoof over the fabric. "I see."

"Like you, the fabric is impressive without being overtly showy, and adaptable to new situations," Rarity continued. "Besides, the colors rather do remind one of late evening, do they not?"

Twilight chuckled. "Twilight colors, yes. And it certainly is sparkling."

Rarity lit up. "You like it, then?"

"Of course!" Twilight grinned. "Have you got any ideas as to—"

Rarity levitated over a stack of papers. "Several."

Fifteen minutes later, Twilight held two designs aloft, examining them minutely. "Well," she began, "I like elements of both of these two. Is it possible that you might combine them?"

"Yes, darling," Rarity said absently, staring at a blank piece of paper in front of her.

Twilight frowned slightly. "...And maybe add on some constellations for decoration?"

"Of course, Twilight," Rarity replied, nibbling on the end of a quill. "I've always been fond of the stars."

Twilight narrowed her eyes for a moment, peering over Rarity's shoulder. "But then, of course, there's the question of where the grape jelly should go."

"Mm, quite," Rarity agreed. Then she frowned. "Grape jelly?"

"You weren't listening to a thing I've been saying, were you?" Twilight accused.

Rarity flushed. "I— well, I—"

"You didn't just call me over here for the dress, did you?"

The unicorn stuttered for a moment more, then slumped forward. "No," she sighed. "What gave it away?"

Twilight pointed a hoof at the scattered paper on the dressmaker's desk. Rarity glanced at it. "Ah," she said, reddening. "In retrospect, perhaps I should have hidden that a tad better."

Upon the papers were quick sketches of dragons of various sizes and shapes, their measurements and ages carefully labeled beside them. On the central one, one particular, rather stubby purple and green figure had been drawn several times over from various angles, alongside annotations which featured copious amounts of question marks. Rarity flushed so deeply that she wouldn't have looked out of place in her collection of rubies. "I can explain," she began.

Twilight gave her a long, searching look. "That might be a good place to start," she agreed. "I'm not sure why you've become so obsessed with Spike all of a sudden, but—"

"He never grows," Rarity said flatly. "He never ages or changes or does anything. You constantly refer to him as being a baby dragon, but Twilight, what age were you when you hatched him?"

Twilight blinked. "Um, about six…"

"And we celebrated your twenty-fifth birthday a few months ago, meaning that Spike is nineteen."

"...Only eighteen, actually," Twilight corrected weakly. "At least until September."

Rarity huffed. "My point stands, regardless. How old does a dragon have to be before he actually ages? I'm aware that Princess Ember, for instance, is only in her late thirties. What kind of growth spurt is he going to have?"

Twilight paused for a moment as Rarity seethed. "Rarity," she said slowly, "Dragons don't age like that."

Rarity paused. "Don't age like… Don't be silly, how else would they age? Backwards? Constantly getting smaller as time passes until one day they crawl into an egg and seal themselves up inside?"

Twilight paused. "Well… no. You might be thinking of the trollish theory of time… never mind. Dragons don't age in the same way that ponies do, constantly growing until they reach an upper limit. Their growth is based on their view of their own importance and maturity."

Rarity took a moment to process this. "...What?"

Twilight chewed on her lower lip, thinking deeply. "...Like the Greed Growth incident. Spike grew because his self-importance went to his head. Ember's father was so huge because he'd been in power for most of his life, but she's relatively small because she's really new to the job and still unsure of herself."

Rarity nodded slowly. "And Garble and his cohorts are still relatively small because of their immaturity," she guessed.

"Exactly," Twilight nodded.

Rarity turned this idea over in her mind. "So… why is Spikey still so tiny?" she asked with a frown. "He's certainly more mature than that big red imbecile, and with all of his responsibilities…"

Twilight's face fell. "I don't know," she admitted. "I've tried to talk to him about it, but he always manages to avoid the subject."

The unicorn frowned. "That's rather unusual," she said slowly. "How long has this…"

"I only became worried after he helped save the Crystal Empire," Twilight replied. "All that attention should've made him sprout like a weed. Instead, he grew two centimeters taller and one wider." She shook her head.

"Is that," Rarity hesitated. "Is that cause for concern at all?"

Twilight shrugged helplessly. "I don't know! Nopony knows very much about dragons, and dragons don't really go in for writing medical journals. In the end, it's more or less up to Spike to decide when he's ready to grow up." She looked at Rarity sharply. "Why did you want to know?"

Rarity shook her head. "Merely a trifle, darling. A tad worried about the poor dear. Nothing of too much import," she replied breezily. "Now, what were you saying about the dresses?"

A half hour later, Twilight trotted home to her castle, leaving Rarity to brood in the boutique. Why wasn't Spike growing? Certainly he wasn't the most mature of dragons— his obsession with comic books and proclivity to laugh at fart jokes rather precluded that. Nevertheless, he should be taller than that monster Garble and his cohorts, at the very least. How had they gotten to such a height? Rarity wondered idly. By all rights, they should have been no taller than a pony's knee.

She shook herself out of her tangent. No, Spike wasn't the most mature of drakes, nor the most masculine, nor yet the most important. Yet, surely he ranked somewhere on those scales! Why, whenever he visited the Crystal Empire, he should have grown a meter in height! Pausing, she took out a quill and ink. She would write out a list of things that Spike had done, compared to other dragons. Topping the list on Spike's side… she cocked her head and sucked the end of the quill in thought. Sombra's defeat would be a good place to begin… befriending Thorax ought to be high on the list as well, and Dragon Lord Ember…

So distracted was she by her work that the soft chime of the bell on the door went unnoticed. The sharp slam that followed, however, jolted her from her task. "Sweetie Belle!" she gasped, holding a hoof to her chest. "What have I told you about closing that door?"

The filly winced. "Sorry, Rarity," she sing-songed.

Rarity sighed. "Never mind. Just try to avoid it in future. How was school?" she added as an afterthought.

"We had a math test today," Sweetie replied, sticking out her tongue. "Trigonometry, bleah!"

Rarity's eyebrows rose. "Trigonometry? At your age? That's rather advanced, isn't it?"

Sweetie shrugged. "It's okay, I guess. Scootaloo's actually really good at it. She says it's all angles, like flight patterns."

"Is she really?" Rarity replied, raising an eyebrow. "I wouldn't have suspected it, myself."

Sweetie shrugged. "Scoots is actually really smart, if she tries. She just doesn't wanna try unless it's something to do with cool stunts." She glanced over at Rarity's work table, and her eyebrows rose. "Whoa. What're you working on?"

Rarity turned and looked at what she had written. For the most part, it consisted of a lot of measurements, a few graphs, and a couple of annotations regarding what little she had read about dragon culture and biology. She deflated, laying her head on the desk. "I have absolutely no idea," she admitted. "It began as idle curiosity, but now I believe I'm just churning out nonsense and nothing is becoming any clearer!" She slammed her forehooves against the wood of the tabletop.

Sweetie stared. She had never seen Rarity this angry about something that wasn't related either to the Crusaders or the Boutique. "Um. There, there?" she tried. "Should I... make you some tea?"

Rarity did not snort at that remark. Ladies do not snort. They chuckle, and in extreme cases, they chortle. She has a large collection of extremely sharp needles and very precise aim in case anyone says otherwise. "Thank you, Sweetie, but I feel certain that any relation between you and the kitchen would only result in vastly heightened blood pressure. Remember when you tried to make pizza?"

Sweetie frowned. "I still don't know where that green stuff came from," she admitted. "Did Twilight ever say when we could get the pizza pan back?"

"No. I asked, but then she started talking about how you had apparently grown an entirely new form of slime mold. She's considering naming it in your honor."

Sweetie absorbed this. "...Can I get a cutie mark in growing slime molds?"

Rarity chuckled weakly. "If you were going to get one, you'd already have it. And no, you may not use my kitchen to try it again."

"Aw," Sweetie sighed, kicking the floor. "Well, I hope you feel better soon, Rarity. Maybe your spa day with Fluttershy tomorrow will help?"

"We can but hope," Rarity sighed. Then, her pupils dilated. "Fluttershy…" she murmured. "Yes, that might just work!" She sat up straight. "Sweetie Belle, you are a genius!"

The smaller unicorn rolled her eyes. "Tell that to my writing homework," she grumbled, trudging upstairs to her room.

Rarity, meanwhile, couldn't stop smiling. Never had she needed a spa day to come faster.