As Silver Spoon realized her best friend was paying the consequences for her last act against the CMCs, she made up her mind and asked Rarity to eat her too. Diamond Tiara may have been a bully who didn’t ever feel the same way towards Silver Spoon as Silver did towards her, but the gray girl still loved Diamond and didn’t want to live without her. And when she voiced these thoughts, Rarity smiled and understood. So, after giving the younger girl a gentle hug, she opened wide and stuffed Silver Spoon into her mouth… sending her down to join Diamond in her belly, listening as Silver confessed her feelings before holding her fellow meal close. She heard Diamond groan at “the sappiness”, before grudgingly thanking Silver for at least making sure she didn’t die alone, and reluctantly returning the hug before the two settled in to let Rarity’s stomach acids get to work.

A few days later, Rarity was at her shop, humming contentedly as she worked on her latest dress commission. Diamond and Silver had both passed away a few hours after she ate them, the girls resting comfortably in her stomach as they digested. She’d savored the feeling of those two lumps of meat in her belly, and smiled at the thought of the extra abilities they probably hadn’t known she had.

Suddenly, she felt a twinge in her lower half, and knew it was time. Setting her work aside, she hurried into the room she’d prepared for this moment, curling up in the nest she knew she’d need.

Her whole body shivered as she felt her lower tunnel spasming, and the pressure as it squeezed its precious cargo along. Finally, her cloaca opened and deposited an egg into the nest, the soft shell beginning to harden into a leathery one once it fully hit the outer air. But she had no time to think about this; another egg was coming. And another. And then two more.

When the fifth and last egg had squeezed out, she smiled and wrapped the blankets of her nest around them, making sure they’d all be safe and warm.

“I love you, sweeties,” she whispered to the eggs, before returning to her workroom. The eggs would take a month or so to grow to their full size, along with their contents, before finally hatching. But when they did, she’d have her sister and her sister’s friends back… plus Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon.

It was a little known fact, she reflected as she went back to work, that the adults of most predatory species (either human or liminal), including naga like Rarity, could choose whether or not their prey died permanently; if an adult female wanted their victim or victims to have a second chance at life, they could give them that chance, reincarnating them through the predator’s womb as a member of whatever species had eaten them. (Males instead transferred the soul and DNA of the person they ate into their testicles or equivalent organs, depending on the species, and then had to shoot the resulting sperm into a female partner’s womb to impregnate said female and let their prey be reborn that way.) Human and liminal predators alike could also preserve and reincarnate the spirits of a meal’s own most recent meals, so long as they’d been eaten less than a week before the second predator devoured the first. Hence why she’d eaten Diamond as soon as she’d realized what the girl had done, to make sure her sister, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo all had a chance at survival.

Silver Spoon should have known about this, of course (assuming they’d gotten that far in their biology classes, or that her parents had told her some time back). But Rarity suspected she’d been so focused on her friend’s apparent demise that either she hadn’t thought about it at the time, or she’d thought Rarity was angry enough with Diamond to digest her entirely rather than reincarnate her. Seeing Silver’s strong feelings for Diamond though, Rarity had decided to wait on the explanations and instead just give the girl what she was asking for immediately: to be eaten and digested alongside the girl she loved. (And then reincarnate them both, of course. Silver Spoon was innocent in the whole matter, after all, and Rarity wasn’t going to be cruel and force her to live without her beloved. She probably would have just digested Diamond outright, instead of reincarnating her alongside the other girls - she’d certainly been angry enough to do so - if Silver hadn’t asked to join her, but when she saw the look on Silver’s face, she’d softened and changed her mind.)

Sighing happily, she wondered how the girls would react when they emerged from their eggs and found they’d been reborn as human-snake hybrids. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon would be surprised to find they were alive, period, of course. So would Sweetie Belle, whom Rarity suspected would then be thrilled when she discovered her new form - Sweetie had been born human like her and Rarity’s father Hondo, and had always been somewhat jealous of her older sister for instead taking after their mother Cookie, a naga herself, species-wise. She wasn’t sure about Apple Bloom and Scootaloo would react to the change, but expected that like Diamond and Silver, they’d just be happy to be alive.

How Applejack and Rainbow Dash would react, on the other hand, was another story. She was sure that Applejack would be glad to have her sister back alive and well, no matter her species now - the Apples were always big on family, be they human or liminal. (As Rarity well knew, Applejack herself was human, as were her grandmother, father and siblings. Her long-absent mother, on the other hand, was actually a tree nymph; not long after Apple Bloom was born, Buttercup’s tree had been struck by lightning and she’d had to merge with it, entering a dormant state in the process, to ensure it would survive and heal from the damage. The rest of the family still loved her though.) She might be surprised, but she’d still love her sister. (The cows on the farm might be a little nervous at having a part-snake around, but based on what Applejack had told her in the past, they panicked over the silliest things anyway. Like that bunny stampede of all things a few years ago.)

Rarity was also certain that Rainbow Dash would feel the same way as Applejack, though she might be a little disappointed that Scootaloo was now a naga and not a harpy like Rainbow Dash herself. Ah well. If Scootaloo wanted, she could always have Rainbow Dash eat her and reincarnate her as a harpy instead (it was rare for people to let themselves change species multiple times in their lives, but it did happen occasionally if they weren’t happy with their current form). Or, if she wanted to go back to being human, she could just have one of her aunts eat her and reincarnate her back into her original body. (It wouldn’t be the first time she’d spent a night cuddled up and digesting in Holiday or Lofty’s belly before being reborn a few days later, though it would be the first time she’d done so for the purpose of changing species.)

As for Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon’s families… if they rejected the girls for changing species, Rarity herself was willing to take them both in. It was the least she could do after giving them another chance at life.

Finally, finishing the last stitch and looking over her creation one last time to make sure it was ready, she set it down and then went back to the egg room. Shutting the door behind her and entering the nest, she smiled once more.

“Rest easy, little ones,” she said as she curled herself around her eggs and moved her upper body into a comfortable position. “Mama’s here.”

And then with a yawn, she closed her eyes, smiled and drifted off to sleep.