The crowd roared as Trixie’s last dazzling shower of sparks rocketed upward and fizzled away into the air. The adrenaline coursed through her veins with each heartbeat, fuling her magic and sending wave after wave of intense satisfaction of a job well done. Her chest was heaving as she dropped to all fours and took a deep bow before the seemingly infinite audience before her. This was her life, this is what she was called to do, to be a stage performer, and she loved it.
“Have you had a good time tonight?” the announcer shouted over the loudspeakers above the stage.
The crowd let up another tumultuous roar.
“Well we’ll see you next year! Goodnight everypony!”
The curtains began to close as the stage hands strained against the ropes to draw them. The director trotted behind the curtain, just out of view of the audience.
“You did good today, Trixie,” the director said as the curtains came to a close.
“Trixie always does spectacularly.”
“Of course, which is why I wanted to personally ask you to attend next year for the-”
“Encore! Encore!” the crowd began to cry in a slowly unifying voice.
Trixie looked at the director and cocked an eyebrow. “Trixie thinks we should give them one more treat.”
The director looked at trixie, and then at the small sliver of crowd that showed itself through the billowing curtains. “So do I.”
Trixie’s heart began to pound as she took a deep breath and prepared to charge out of the curtains to surprise the crowd.
“Encore! Encore!” The audience's cries had completely unified by now, and it seemed as if the curtains themselves were asking for one more special something from the magician.
“You have 5 minutes… Knock their socks off.” The director backed up and surrendered the stage to Trixie.
“Trixie only needs 1.” Trixie smirked, pulled herself back, and galloped toward the curtains. Her head burst through first with her horn pointed over the horizon. She took another step, and unleashed a blinding bright blue column of light that seemed to scrape the stars. She took another step, the light grew larger.
By now the crowd had quieted to a whisper half in fear, half in delight.
Trixie skidded to a stop, and took one more deep breath before snapping her head upwards, directing the column toward the sky. With a slight tremor and a pause the beam violently disappeared, unleashing a violent explosion that sent a slight tremor through the ground. The stage rattled, a few light fixtures shaking themselves free and crashing onto the wooden floor below. The crowd was speechless. The audience that had once been shouting encore had been turned into the largest game of quiet mouse.
Trixie stared at the crowd confidently, as if to challenge them to ask for more.
There was nothing but silence for several seconds. Then, a stallion from somewhere deep in the mass did the only thing he could, shouted. His voice was a war cry in which the rest of the group joined in, amplifying his show of delight by a million.
Trixie took another bow and walked behind the curtain. The director on the other side bore an emotionless face.
“What did Trixie tell you, She only needed 1.”
“Trixie,” the stallion said with every ounce of authority he could muster.
“Yes?” Trixie cocked an eyebrow. Her exterior was confident, but her interior was slightly frightened at his reaction.
“We want you to come back next year, just don’t break all of the light fixtures again.” He nodded in the direction of the stage crew that was desperately trying to clean up the broken glass and twisted metal of one of the lights.
“Trixie agrees!” she declared as she trotted offstage.
Cleaning up an event like the Manehattan Magicians Exposition was a very frantic, yet somehow precisely organized event in itself alone. Ponies with wheelbarrows and carts darted across the cluttered venue as left by the hoard of concertgoers. Pegasi and Unicorns worked hoof in hoof to tear down the towering structures that held up the curtains, lights, and other equipment. It was an enviroment that one could easily feel left out in, one that began to grip Trixie as she started to make her way from the autograph table and toward her lowly traveling cart.
For all of her power, prestige, and pomp, she still was bound by blood to the traveling stage she brought with her wherever she went. It was more than a stage, it was her life. It carried her shelter, her belongings, and her personal sense of security. Despite the infrequent grandiose expositions and frequent street shows, she still lived in what could easily be regarded as poverty. Unlike most performers, Trixie was cursed to wander the world in search of ponies who could still be amazed by her limited knowledge of useful magic. She hated it, and constantly wished her life could be different, but it had seemed as if the fates had already decided she would live a double life of opulence and poverty.
The cart was the glaring symbol of her struggle, a burden she carried with herself everywhere, slept in, and protected, but abandoned it as quickly as she could. Ensuring it would be out of view for venues where she would once again wear her facade.
She squeezed into the rusty harness of the cart and began her journey away from those who had just witnessed her other life in full glory only a few hours before. She took one last look through the darkening night at the illuminated skeleton of the stage she had performed on.
“Trixie… Trixie will always be cursed to this life,” she mumbled as she pulled the cart onto the road. “Trixie wishes she at least
“Oh my Celestia!” a faint voice cried from behind the monstrous cart. “Is that Trixie?”
Trixie’s heart skipped a beat as she tried to devise a plan to hide from the oncoming stranger.
“Trixie cannot let them know it is Trixie!” she whispered as she tried to shake free of the harness, but try as she might, she could not free herself from the cagelike snare of the cart.
“It is!” The voices were now just behind the cart. “Maybe she will talk to me!”
“That is an odd request. Trixie has never heard a filly want something more than that scrawl of an autograph that she hands out by the bagful.”
“Maybe she will!” an older mare said, presumably the mother of the filly. “But she may be in a bad mood, sweetie.”
Trixie sighed and accepted the fate handed to her. She would confront the eager fans, how bad could it be anyway?
“Trixie is always willing to converse with an eager fan,” she said with a voice more unconvincing than a used cart salesman’s guarantee. Trixie stopped the cart
“Did you hear that mommie?”
“I sure did. Oh look, the cart is stopping for us.”
Trixie waited for the two to circle to the front and greet her in her humbled state of Trixie: Cart Puller Extraordinaire, but they did not come to her.
“Miss trixie?” the innocent voice asked from behind the cart, “can you come out, please?”
“My daughter is awfully eager to meet you. She started practicing some sparkly magic just like you.”
Trixie paused for a moment, unsure of what to think. First, the two ponies stood behind the cart she was pulling, expecting her be riding in it rather than pulling it. Second the little filly was barely of age, yet she had already begun to practice an advanced form of magic, and she was inspired by none other than Trixie: Cart Puller Extraordinaire.
“Trixie is not in the cart,” she said. The phrase brought with it a new level of humiliation with its connotation. Show ponies were to be pulled by the lesser, not be forced to pull their own weight. “Trixie is in the front of the cart.”
“Oh, my apologies miss Trixie,” the mare said as she trotted to the front of the cart. “I didn’t consider you would be driving your stallio-” As the mare realized the situation, with Trixie being the one pulling her own cart, her cheeks grew bright red. “I’m so sorry, I just didn’t expect you to be pulling your cart.”
Their poverty was obvious by the mare’s coat that was an unimpressive brown color with blotches of red clay around her hooves and across the tattered garment she wore. The little filly that stood beside her front leg bore the same marks of poverty as her mother.
“Trixie doesn’t expect to be pulling her cart either,” she said as she tried to wiggle free of its humiliating grasp.
“Oh, I can help you with that,” the mare said as she expertly undid the latch for the harness.
“Trixie thanks you greatly.”
The mare smiled. “My name is Honeycomb, and this is my daughter Star Dust.”
“That’s Star Dust: The Great and Powerful!” the little filly said triumphantly as she jumped forward and rose on her hind legs and immediately began to wobble. Trixie and Honeycomb both chuckled as Honeycomb caught Star Dust on her foreleg.
“Does Star Dust want Trixie’s autograph?”
“No, I can get those anywhere. I really want to show you my new trick though. I just learned it!”
“Well don’t let Trixie stop you,” Trixie said as she stepped back to watch the delightful filly’s performance.
“Mom! Give me a count down!”
Honeycomb smiled. “Okay sweetie. Three… Tw-”
“No! start from seven!”
“Alright, alright… Seven…” Star Dust dropped to all fours and looked straight ahead.
“Six…” She crouched to the ground.
“Five…” She began to sprint forward.
“Four…” Her tiny horn began to glow with a pure white color.
“Three…” With all her might she threw herself into a flip through the air.
“Two…” She rolled onto the ground and rose to her hind legs.
“One!” A small shower of white sparks leapt from the tip of her horn as she toppled and landed on her back.
“Great job sweetie!” Honeycomb shouted as she picked up Star Dust and put her on her back. She turned toward Trixie, her face filled with an infectious smile. “She has been practicing that trick for a month, thanks for letting her show it to you. You were the one who inspired her to start trying it in the first place.”
“Come again?” Trixie asked.
“She saw one of your performances when you came through Hollow Shades a few years ago. She desperately wanted to see you perform…” Honeycomb’s voice trailed off as her gaze drifted away from Trixie’s eyes. “Well… you see… we aren’t very well off as it is.”
Trixie stealthily glanced at her battered cart that she drew behind her everywhere. Inside of it lay her recent payment from her latest show. It was a decent sum of money, but it would have to be stretched thin until her next gig, a venue that was half as big several months from now.
“Oh, no… I’m not here to ask for money, honest,” Honeycomb said as she noticed Trixie glance toward her cart.
Trixie immediately snapped her gaze toward the brown mare before her. She was penniless, but she wouldn’t dare to be a beggar. “Trixie wasn-”
“That’s okay,” the mare said as she quickly lifted her daughter onto her back, “thank you for your time.”
“But mommy,” Star Dust whined, “I want to see her just a little bit more.”
“No sweetie, we need to go home. It’s time to say goodbye to miss Trixie.”
“Awwww…” the filly moaned as she hung her head and regretfully waved at her hero as her mother trotted down the road.
Trixie felt as if she had been slapped in the face. “What has Trixie done?” she whispered as her mind tried to quickly piece together the scene that had just played out before her. She looked to her cart, then back to Honeycomb who was now beginning to whistle a lullaby to her downtrodden filly. “Trixie must do something…”
Trixie cleared her throat, “You are one of the strongest mares Trixie… umm… I mean… I… have ever met,” she shouted toward the two.
Honeycomb stopped.
“Your daughter has a very special gift.” Honeycomb started to slowly walk back to Trixie. “She has a sense of confidence in her that will make her unstoppable.”
“Really?” Honecomb asked as she started closing the distance more rapidly than before.
“Yes, and Star Dust, I think your trick was superb. So spectacularly superb that I think I want you to come to my next show.”
“Really?!” the little filly shouted as she jumped off of her mother’s back and started bouncing with glee. “Mommy did you hear that?”
“I sure did!” Honeycomb looked to Trixie with an expression of gratefulness, but the tears in her garments, the stains on her coat, and the sadness in her eyes said it all. They could not afford anything more than food. “But we had better get going now. It’s awfully late and your father is going to be worried sick about us.”
Trixie quickly opened the panel to her cart, sending out a small shower of sparks to grab their attention. “Trixie must depart too, but you can’t just walk into an event. Take these,” she said as she handed two all access passes to the next magic expo. “This will get you wherever you want to be, but if you want to come next time, you have to show me a new trick. Can you do that, Star Dust?”
Star Dust nodded vigorously, shaking her entire body in agreement to the contract.
Honeycomb could only gasp as she watched Trixie hand the two shining medallions to her.
“I… I don’t know what to say… Thank you, thank you so much!” The look in her eyes had changed to a gratefulness for a future for Star Dust. “It looks like you are going to have to start practicing,” Honeycomb said as she started down the road once more.
“Yeah! I’m going to learn how to do different sparks for next time!”
“Maybe you could try to do it and stay standing!”
Their excited voices began to fade into nothingness as the two walked off into the nighttime fog.
Trixie looked back to her modest cart. Somehow, it seemed tolerable now, maybe her burden wasn’t a burden at all. Maybe she was more than just a traveling performer. She slid herself back into the harness and started down the road. The guilt, shame, and pity that it had once instilled had now vanished. In its place resided a humble sense of gratitude for her work.
“If there is one pony out there who I can inspire, one pony who can benefit from Trixie’s displays of magic, then Trixie will never stop.”
