The Rapture
The streets of Manehattan were rarely empty, even at this time of night, even this far from the main business district. It was midnight, Luna's art plastered beautifully across the sky. The moon was but a sliver tonight, hanging high in the sky, like the noon of the night. The warehouse district was asleep as all the inhabitants were asleep. All the lights were off. It looked as though somepony came by and swiped them all off to some distant land, leaving this one in silence. Trixie wouldn't have it any other way.
The once Great and Powerful Trixie solemnly walked along the tired street. Her midnight blue cloak still clung around her neck. It still kept her warm on the cold nights, and that is the only reason she held on to it. She had left her wreck of a cart right where it sat in the town square of Ponyville. She didn't want anything to remind her of that horrible experience. It was the first and only time she had been run out of town. The first and only time she hadn't met the expectations she set for herself. There were two things that she did want back from her cart. She waited outside the city limits till midnight the next night so she would be able to get in and out quickly without drawing attention. Celestia knows she didn't want any more. Around midnight, she crawled into town and rummaged through her cart. She took her cloak and her purse of bits. She needed something to protect her on the cold nights and she still needed to eat as well.
Her tail and the feet of her cloak dragged through the mud coated streets. The hems tore and the mud ruined the fabric about four inches from the bottom, not that Trixie cared. She was lost, in her mind and in the world. There were no carts, no ponies, not a soul for miles. It gave Trixie some time to reflect on her life as she left Manehattan, the City that Never Sleeps.
She remembered her Sunday school classes as a filly. How the nuns would always tell them you would ascend to the heavens as long as you believed and were just. However Trixie, being as arrogant as she was, dismissed this theory wholeheartedly. She believed only in herself. She was only going because her parents made her go anyways. She didn't actually care about what the Church taught. She would stand at no altar, bow to no god, for she was the Great and Powerful Trixie. And the keyword there was, was. Those days were over now. She continued thinking of the church days. The nuns used to talk of some event called the Rapture. Some unspecified date in the future where everypony would be judged before the big man himself… or something to that effect. However far that is in the future, Trixie didn't want to wait. She wanted a quick and easy way out of this miserable world. Her depressing thoughts egged on even more.
She remembered when her parents were taken from her. When they were in the hospital she actually took up the Church on their word. She bargained, she prayed, she did anything that she thought would bring them home. But all it brought back was a note telling her that they had passed in the middle of the night. This just reinforced what she had believed in originally. It didn't change the fact that her life was turned upside down, however. She was thrown into an orphanage soon after, not given a chance to mourn her parents' passing. At the orphanage she was forced to deal with the jokes and ridicule the older colts threw at her. They couldn't handle the fact that she was a unicorn when the majority of the orphans were earth ponies. She coped with this problem by setting an example. She showed that she wouldn't be pushed around, wouldn't be made victim to the earth ponies' remarks. She snapped one day and knocked one of the "leaders" of the pack of bullies out cold. A kick to the side of the face and a large book thereafter did the trick. The owner of the orphanage kicked her out. She looked at it as her first stroke of good luck since the passing of her parents.
She reached the city limits. She looked around at the desolate street behind her and realized there was still nopony around. If something happened, nopony would hear. Perfect. She kept on walking. Past the limits sign she saw a clearing that ended in a cliff that fell off into the ocean. She checked her purse. She was broke. She made her way to the clearing.
The cliff suddenly brought memories from her life in Manehattan. She could see a small filly running circles around a picnic in the middle of the clearing. She saw a filly playing hide and seek in the woods surrounding the clearing. She saw a teen sitting on a bench looking over the cliff admiring a scarlet sunset. Suddenly her vision came back to her and she was washed over in darkness once again. She made her way to the bench. It's frame was made of wrought iron and the seat and back were a beautiful mahogany. By now the iron had rusted and the wood had splintered with age. She looked at it and decided to stand.
At the top, the view was magnificent. The spot where Trixie stood was about sixty feet up from the water. There were rocks at the bottom, like a forgotten sea wall, sunken to the floor. The top of the cliff was covered in a blanket of grass. The darkness of the night cast a cloak of darkness across the land causing the once bright, verdant grass to become a morose shade of green. Almost grey. Trixie looked out over the water. The reflection of the moon and stars on the glassy surface made it look like space was above and below and Trixie was on an island, lost in the cosmos, just along for the ride. Trixie looked up to the sky, and smiled. A very faint "Thank you" crossed her lips into the abyss of the night.
She closed her eyes and took a step.
