Spectacles

Twilight Sparkle stared at the princess across the room, completely gobsmacked. 

“What do you mean you ‘guess’ you should wear your spectacles?” 

Princess Rarity looked up from her desk, furrowing her brow. “…Yes? Father told me I need to be prepared for my meeting with the dignitaries, so I suppose I should take my reading seriously.” 

Twilight blinked at her, struggling to piece words together for almost a full half-minute before she finally settled on blurting out: “You need spectacles?” 

Because until that very moment, Twilight Sparkle, who thought she knew everything about Princess Rarity, apparently did not know that the princesses needed glasses. 

“Why didn’t I know this?” she asked next. What else didn’t she know? 

“Because I never wear them, obviously. And the doctor gave them to me when I was a filly, so you’d have no reason to know.”  

“Oh.” Twilight relaxed slightly at this. Well, that was reassuring, at least. They were probably just to avoid minor eye strain. “So you don’t even really need them?” 

“Oh no, I do,” Rarity said, looking back to her book on the desk. “The doctor said I was well on my way to being practically blind. I used only to have a hard time looking at faraway things, but now I can’t see up close, either.” 

“What?!” Twilight gasped. “Princess!” 

“What, Twilight?” Princess Rarity shot back, annoyed. “It’s perfectly fine! I’ve managed for years! Plenty of ponyfolk can’t even afford to wear spectacles, so it’s only fair I share their burden as their princess!” 

Twilight frowned. “Please tell me you’re not serious.” 

“Okay, fine!” Rarity exclaimed. “If you must know, I dislike how I look wearing spectacles, alright?! I look like my foalhood tutor, Madame Bluebloom!” 

“So you’d rather be blind?!” 

Rarity rolled her eyes and looked back to her book. “I don’t know why this is such a big deal to you.” She then looked up and pointed an accusing hoof at her guard. “In fact, I don’t even know why this entire thing is a surprise! I thought you already knew I was blind, considering how much I have to squint to be able to see during those stupid weekly meetings with all of father’s friends in the war room.” 

Twilight paused, going through her recollection of said events. 

“Wait. That was you squinting? I thought you just hated being there and were glaring at everypony!” 

The princess resumed her reading. “Oh, I do. Having to squint solves two problems at once: my sight and voicing my displeasure.” 

To Princess Rarity’s credit, that was pretty funny. Not that Twilight could let her know, so she swallowed down a smile and instead stamped her hoof on the floor. 

“Princess! Do you even realize how dangerous that is? You can’t afford not to see properly. What if you put yourself in a dangerous situation because you can’t see?”

Rarity cocked her head to the side, confused. “That wouldn’t happen. You’d be there and see it for me.” When Twilight slapped her hoof against her face, Rarity whined loudly. “Twilight, you’re making a fuss out of nothing! I’ll have you know I’ve become very adept at distinguishing between colored blobs!”

“Princess!”

“What?!”

“Please, Princess,” Twilight said, rubbing a hoof against her eyes. “Just put them on.”

“That’s what I was going to do!” Rarity protested. “Before you twisted your chain mail into a knot for no reason!” Begrudgingly, she levitated over a purple case and retrieved a dusty pair of thin, red spectacles. She cleaned them off with a nearby tissue, put them on, and then looked at Twilight expectantly. “There! Happy?” 

Twilight Sparkle said nothing. She wanted to, mind, but staring at the aggravated princess who’d suddenly become exponentially cuter with the new addition of glasses, well…

Well. Uhm. 

“What?” Princess Rarity asked, her eyes seeming slightly larger due to the lenses and making her pout very cute. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Sorry,” Twilight replied, immediately looking away and mentally scolding herself. Finally, she cleared her throat and gestured to the book as she carefully examined the wall over there. “Go back to your studying.”

“But what’s wrong?” the princess insisted. 

“Nothing, Your Highness,” Twilight stressed, forcing herself to look back at Rarity, who was now squinting at her through the glasses, which was stupid because she could see now, but she looked really cute. “Do they work alright?”

If the princess was suspicious, she did not follow through on the feeling. 

“They do, yes,” she replied, relaxing her posture. “They’re a little small, though.”

As if to demonstrate the fact, the glasses slid down the bridge of her nose, forcing her to push them back with the cutest little ‘hmph!’ which succeeded in making Twilight Sparkle vividly remember she could, in fact, sometimes be a silly little mare with an embarrassingly unprofessional crush on the princess. 

“See!” said the princess, pushing them back when they slid down yet again. “They’re so annoying! I’m taking them off.”

“No!” Twilight blurted out, wishing she could immediately jump into the castle moat. 

To make matters worse, all her hopes of somehow saving the situation were assassinated when Princess Rarity blinked. “No?” she asked, the innocence of the question dying the second she rested her chin on her hoof and continued with a hay-eating grin, “Whatever do you mean ‘no’, dearest Twilight?”

Oh, Goddesses, damn me.

“B-Because your eyesight is important,” Twilight stammered, feeling as red hot as the princess’ glasses. “As I-I said, you could be in danger if you can’t see properly.”

The princess fluttered her eyelashes. “Oh my, really? I don’t know about that, Twilight. I don’t think they’re working properly, honestly.” She took them off and idly wiped them as she spoke. “They’ve given you the strangest shade of red, and you’ve been acting odd since I put them on! Why, you are my personal guard. Wouldn’t want you to be—” She put them back on and the malicious grin returned: “—Distracted.”

Poof!

“You know what?” Twilight Sparkle said, her horn’s magic fading out as she pointedly avoided looking at the suddenly glasses-less princess. “You’re right. You don’t need them.”

“But, da-a-a-arling—”

“Nope.”