There was, Rarity had always suspected and now knew with empirical certainty, an art to being famous. And she, simply put, was an artist.

Not that she’d simply say that to anycreature, of course. That was essential to the artistry of it all: confidential confidence, the kind that filled every corner of every room you entered but never shone bright enough to be blinding. It wasn’t just impolite to be boastful; it was unprofessional. It was the domain of the foalish and foolhardy, the stink of sweat under a spotlight, a neon-green advertisement for a blue-collar bar. One could visit such a place — drink without getting drunk, bring up past successes without bragging about the obvious pattern they formed — but one could never linger, or they would soon reek of the only state of being worse than infamy: desperation.

Rarity had not been desperate for years. In fact, she barely remembered what it felt like to peek out from behind a stage curtain and see neither old friends or new compatriots, but a ravenous horde of contemporaries and critics, a smiling and ever-shuffling mob restrained only by velvet drapes and social graces from tearing her to pieces. If she recalled any sensation of the sort, it was in the way one recalled early childhood: as a snapshot taken by a candid camera, a hazy image that just as easily could’ve been a dream instead of a memory.

Had her mother really made her dress in such a hideous shade of yellow for her third birthday? Had she ever really been afraid of these creatures, this stage, the competition? Or was it all just part of the story she wove for the cameras lining the red carpet, the portrait she painted in magazine profiles of a mare who’d struggled and strived for success she certainly had earned but could never acknowledge she deserved?

She’d never spoken to anyone about these thoughts—not interviewers, not close friends or lovers, not even the therapist she visited every other Tuesday for one hour between client appointments scheduled nine months in advance. Not because they were dangerous, or too private for anycreature else to hear, or anything daft like that. They were just irrelevant. They were distractions, and distraction was the first hurdle an artist learned to clear if she wanted to thrive in her chosen field instead of simply survive.

The second hurdle, incidentally, was learning to differentiate between client requests which needed to be followed and client requests which, with confidence that the client did not actually know what they wanted and nevertheless felt the need to pretend they did, could be politely and safely ignored. And the third hurdle, Rarity was learning at this very moment, was keeping one’s wits about them when one’s protégé, pacing back and forth across an airless runway green room, was as desperate and afraid as a freshmare invited to senior prom.

“Oh stars,” Pistachio hissed under his breath—a phrase he had repeated like a mantra for nigh on an hour now. “Oh, I should’ve grown up to be a farmer. I could’ve been a good farmer, probably. O-Or a baker, or a garbage collector, or–”

“Darling,” Rarity interrupted, slipping the word overtop her mentee’s haggard breaths in much the same way a weary mother might slide her hoof over her chattering child’s mouth. She’d never had children, incidentally, and never much desired them either. She’d probably have made a fine parent, but being “fine” at things wasn’t her style. “Deep breaths. In, hold, and out.”

Pistachio gulped air down into his lungs, puffed out his cheeks, and coughed up a shuddering sigh in the span of roughly half a second. Well, it was worth a try. He wasn’t hyperventilating any more, at least. “I’m sorry,” he said—another mantra he’d taken up today, which grew more sandpaper-like in Rarity’s ears with every repetition. “It’s just… well, obviously you know what it is. Never mind. Sorry.”

Indeed she did know what it was: the Met Gallop, a yearly gathering of Equestria’s—and, as of late, the broader continent’s—most celebrated luminaries and most luminous celebrities, all of whom would be dressed in custom-tailored clothing crafted by the world’s leading designers, who in turn would collect more orders and gain more clients based on their presented projects tonight than they would get every other day of the year combined. The main event, the affectionately named “gallop” of the hoi polloi down the most famous well-known runway on the planet, would begin any minute now.

It was Pistachio’s first time participating in this highest of high fashion events. It was Rarity’s… sixteenth time? Seventeenth? She’d stopped counting at ten, and stopped caring soon after. This was just something she did every year now, like visiting the dentist—and for a moment, that comparison stuck in her chest like a thorn from a rosebush. The Met Gallop, the centerpiece of the fashion world’s social and economic calendars, was a dentist visit to her. When had that happened? How long had it been happening?

“Y-You’re so calm,” Pistachio stammered. “How are you so…?”

“Experience,” was Rarity’s answer—and in her chest, the thorn prickled again. “You’ll get used to it as well. You have the talent. All that remains is the practice.”

She meant that sincerely. Pistachio wouldn’t have been her apprentice if she hadn’t. He was gifted, more so than many ponies she worked with and competed against and, generally with ease, overshadowed. He had, as Rainbow Dash once ineloquently put it, “the juice.” But what he lacked, as she supposed all neophytes did, was confidence. What he wasn’t quite yet, and surely would become someday with her guidance, was an artist.

Surely. The word echoed in her thoughts, settled down behind her collarbone as yet another ephemeral barb. As if it was all inevitable. As if fashion could be boiled down to the rote application of practiced skills, and success was a matter of meritocratic inevitability. She knew better. She was too experienced not to. But with so much experience at his beck and call, her knowledge shaping his skill…

It wasn’t inevitable. He could fail tonight. His suits could fray at the seams, and his gowns could sag like wet blankets, and his career could end in a matter of hours just as easily as it might stratospherically begin. Should she tell him that? Warn him? Would that just send him spiraling into even deeper panic?

“Okay.” Pistachio was still pale, but the bobbing of his head looked more like a nod now than a shudder. “You’re right. I deserve to be here. I… right? I do deserve it, right? Even though you’re… I-I mean, not that you’re the only reason I’m… oh stars. Oh stars.”

Never mind. There he went spinning off all on his own again. And instead of frustration or even mortification, Rarity just felt…

No. That couldn’t be right. This was the Met Gallop. That was her apprentice, her hoof-picked prodigy, about to make his long-overdue public debut. She should be thrilled for him, or relaxed by her confidence in their mutual success, or even afraid that his flame might burn too bright and she might fade away in its shadow. The one thing she shouldn’t have been, couldn’t possibly be…

… was bored.

When had this become boring? When had it just become inevitable that she would be invited to prestigious events, honored with unsought awards, invited to judge the work of others and shape careers and shepherd the state of the entire industry because that was just the kind of thing a mare like Rarity would naturally do?

She was an artist. She created art. It was good art, successful art, art that demonstrated effortless skill which other designers spent their whole lives in fruitless pursuit of, and now she was imparting that skill on a new generation—or perhaps, it suddenly occurred to her, what she was doing to Pistachio was better described as inflicting. She was imprinting herself onto him, her own reputation, her own success, the ease with which she accomplished things unparalleled by the achievements of her contemporaries.

No wonder he was terrified. He was overwhelmed by nerves, by pressure, by the possibility of failure. She had forgotten what those kinds of things felt like. In her success, in the inevitability that fame laced through every part of her life, she had let herself become an icon instead of an artist. She had become complacent. She had become lazy.

That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all.

“Pistachio, look at me,” she said, an order which her apprentice—bug-eyed, gasping like a fish out of water — obeyed. “What are you afraid of?”

“I… w-what?”

“You’re afraid,” she said, a simple statement of empirically obvious fact. “Of what? Be specific.”

“W-Well, I…” began his brief attempt at a protest. Then he slumped, and sighed, and looked his mentor in the eyes again. “I just don’t want to let you down, Rarity. You’ve given me so much, so many opportunities, and you’re so calm right now and I’m so…”

Rarity sat on her haunches in front of Pistachio, took both his forehooves in hers, and stared him down until he was bold enough to stare right back. “Pistachio,” she told him, “forget about me.”

He hadn’t expected her to say that. She wouldn’t have expected it from herself either at the start of the day. But a statement like that from a mare like Rarity would’ve turned anycreature’s head. It was blunt, garish, inelegant—and most of all, it wasn’t boring business as usual.

“You are Pistachio,” Rarity went on. “You’re not Rarity’s apprentice. You’re you. This is your mighty, titanic entrance into the world you deserve to be part of, and you should be afraid. This is frightening. Terrifying, even.”

His confusion had turned to fear—but that was good. It was impolite to say it, career suicide to advertise it, but fear was what made a worker, a creator, a pony with “the juice” into an artist. Desperation was what had driven her through sleepless nights and rejected submissions and so many failures she couldn’t possibly have kept count of them all. Time and success had blunted those sensations, but they were back now, roaring in her ears like an oncoming train with a banner stretched from engine to caboose advertising the Met Moondamned Gallop.

“So what am I supposed to–” Pistachio mumbled.

“Be terrified,” Rarity said. “Be excited, thrilled, embarrassed, all of them at once. Feel whatever you feel and don’t be ashamed of it, because being here in the first place is special, more special than anyone who hasn’t done it can imagine. Success, failure, anything in between, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Just be here, in the moment, and remember it all for the rest of your life. It’s your first Met Gallop. You only get one. Everything else is secondary. Understand?”

Pistachio blinked several times, then furrowed his brow. “Uh… no, I don’t,” he said.

“Trust me,” Rarity told him. “You will someday.”

And that was all either of them had time to say. A volunteer opened the door to the green room, they hustled out in her wake together, and the Gallop began. Pistachio’s pieces didn’t win any awards, and to the surprise of many, neither did any of Rarity’s. But they met new artists and reintroduced themselves to old ones, and they had a grand old time and got very, very drunk. All things considered, it was a smashing success.