Magic Tricks

Chapters

Sonic Rainboom
Trixie Discovers Denial
Trixie Is Saved
Trixie’s Big Night
Trixie’s Darkness
Trixie in Isolation
Trixie Doesn’t Join The Circus
Trixie Joins the Circus
Trixie Balances the Books
Trixie Learns the Ropes
Trixie Finds Her Place

Sonic Rainboom

Come one, come all, bear witness to the terrible tale of how Trixie came to be! Wail and gnash your teeth at the nightmare I am about to bring before you if you must, but I will not mince my words. The Great and Powerful Trixie will not soften the blows, or ease your worries, for she has a tale to tell that may shake you to the very foundation of your existence! You may no longer hide in your hovels of peace and vague prosperity, for the world needs you to hear what I have to say. For sake of the countless who suffer at your inactivity, you can no longer fold your ears! So it is wise for you to tremble in fear, for I tell this not for your or my sake, but for all the foals out there who need, no deserve a second chance at life. For the ponies who look in the mirror and see a stranger within, eyes empty as the cruelty of fate, powerless to realize their broken dreams and ambitions. Fear not! This is for you, for those who think that all hope is lost, that nopony can help you anymore, that you have fallen too far to ever live a life of beauty and grace. To those of you who drift along, not really living, but simply avoiding death from day to day, I tell this to you, because you will not live in vain, or else I am not the Great and Powerful Trixie!

[pause for fireworks]

Many moons ago, on the day where everything changed, a little pegasus filly caused the Sonic Rainboom, earning her cutie mark for her lightning speed. Over V3Q feet below, two and a half miles away on the ground, another young pegasus filly earned her cutie mark that moment. She soothed the animals, who had panicked in the overwhelming colors and sound that, while they didn't hurt anypony, were still very frightening. The mysterious event moved Cloudsdale itself, where formerly in its shadow twenty-two miles away, a small filly on a small rock farm was exposed to a light she'd never seen before. Two hundred and twenty miles away, far beyond the outskirts of either Ponyville or Cloudsdale, a unicorn filly was witness to the Rainbow shattering the Rock. QSF miles away, that is to say one thousand two hundred and ten, in the jewel of the world known as Canterlot, while observing a very potentious entrance exam, our beloved pony princess of the sun made a terrible mistake.

Two thousand, two hundred miles, over CQ miles away, morning had barely risen on the eastern coast of Equestria. You may be unaware, but the sun that travels from west to east, rises sooner for the west, than the east. To a filly crying for a place she could not rid from her heart, the sun had not risen yet. The chilly, morning fog had yet to obscure the land in mist, and the sunlight was peeking over the horizon, yet she couldn’t even see her home anymore, not even from the tallest building in the city. That was when the rainboom, now nothing more than soft colors, washed over the eyes of that orange coated filly, alone among strangers in distant Manehatten, wondering if she wanted to live this life after all.

Not many ponies ventured beyond Equestria. The dragon lands were a good place to get snapped up and eaten in one bite. The Badlands could harbor no life, so scorched and twisted a place as it was. The gryphon lands however, had a longstanding truce with Equestria, and incidents where a gryphon devoured anything larger than a dog were exceedingly rare. These days, those gryphons caught dining on foals like the monsters of old were met with swift and final justice. Their nation was relatively safe, and they kept wisely to the mountains, the distant, sky-touching eyries.

This didn't make ponies down in the bog feel a lot more comfortable. Only the most adventuresome, hardiest, and desperate ponies ventured to those lands across the sea. The gryphons were happy to leave them to that blasted lowlands, those ponies who needed somewhere to hide. The practice of sending criminal ponies there, for the harsh justice the gryphons served, also tempered the attitude of the population, making it a disordered group of disparate, but by necessity tight-knit communities.

Far, far to the east, in the gryphon lands, Twenty-two thousand miles away from the epicenter, two and a half, times four, times four, times four, times four miles away, there could be found one such community. Perhaps the only outpost of ponies in all directions, that precise distance away. Sunrise there was still long to come, but the glowflies were awoken in the windows of one of the houses. Card Shark had left Equestria many years ago for reasons, but had managed to turn a new leaf in these lands, falling in love and ultimately marrying the great Good Show, a long standing resident of the gryphon lands from her family's migration far in the distant past. A showmare who could bring gryphons and ponies alike to stunned amazement at her prestihoofation.

Her most famous act was teleporting to two places on the stage at once, something no other pony, unicorn or otherwise, has ever managed to, wait for it, duplicate. Being two places at once was considered the stuff of madness, that no mind could comprehend, and yet there she was gayly carrying on a conversation with herself, and acting as her own stage hand. Like any great magician, everyone just knew that she just had to be tricking them somehow, a stunt double, or an illusion, just magical smoke and mirrors, but no matter how they tried to ruin her act, and spoil her secret, it was one she never revealed.

Card Shark, now Card Wish was a very powerful unicorn, though he didn't know it. His ability to see what cards would be dealt earned him a pretty penny in gambling circles, and also a lot of reasons to skip town. When he met Gwendolen, she convinced him to give up gambling, and take up card reading instead. He was frightfully good at this and, though it didn't rake in the bits the way gambling did, it helped a lot of people. Not just ponies, people. For the lifelong drifter, not being chased out of town was a life changing experience. But like any lifelong drifter, old habits die hard, and the high maintenance relationship between those two was strained at best.

Still, when Good Show pulled Trixie out of her cough hat, Card was a reasonably good father: feeding, playing, protecting, making sure she got just what she needed to grow into a beautiful and happy little filly. So very happy. His distrustful life rubbed off on her though, and she was very shy and reserved, taught to suspect other ponies as possible enemies, at far too young an age. The frontier was a harsh place for even the most well treated foal to grow up in. Trixie’s father would take her to every one of her mother's shows, and Trixie never seemed to get tired of it. She could act before she could talk, and idolized her mother, and her mother's role on stage.

Saying Good Show was a Lulamoon did not mean she was ever called Good Show Lulamoon, or Gwendolen Lulamoon. To ponies, calling you by the name of your family makes about as much sense as calling you by the name of your city, or the month you were born. No pony will have a name like Flower Heart Baltimare, or Sky Star Wrapup, but that doesn't mean ponies don't care about cities or seasons. Similarly, you'll never hear a pony speak of Twilight Sparkle Starlight, or Applejack Apple. Never forget though, that ponies do hold their families very close and dear, and those families have names, some more or less distinguished than others.

At birth, ponies are usually given two names: their official name, and a secondary one taken from Old Equestrian. The secondary one is considered ornamental, for formal occasions, not unlike a nice dress. Generally chosen for its pleasing sound and resemblance to the official name, scholarly parents may try to choose one with meaning, as a way to temper or color the official name, or choose one that a famous historical figure once held. Carter for instance was given to Card because it sounds nice. Gwendolen was given to Good Show because it means a beautiful ribbon to match the color of her coat and because a great warrior queen in the Legends of Britannia also had that name. As said, more or less effort can go into the secondary name, though ironically many ponies end up more attached to it than their official one. In a private, personal way, ponies will change their secondary name less often than their first one, and often their choice of the first will reflect that of the second name.

There are exceptions of course. The Candydrop family is less than on good terms with "Bonnie" Bon-Bon, since she rejected the name her parents gave to her because of bad blood. If you ever meet Bonnie, don't mention the name Sarah or Sweetie Drops. You think you've seen her in a bad mood, but what you saw was her normal mood. Her bad mood is much worse. Trust me on this you do not want to call Bon-Bon Sweetie Drops.

So was born "Beatrice" Trixie of the Lulamoon clan. Trixie for her impish attitude as an infant, and Beatrix, because the cards hinted at great journeys in her future, and it would serve her well to be the blessed traveller. The cards may have been drunk at the time they hinted at that, considering how well Trixie's travels actually went.

One night in their little backwoods town, as far away from the benevolent celestial princess's embrace as possible, there was a light on in a window, in the dark of the night. Trixie had woken up suddenly, feeling excited and inspired. Trixie was going to put on a show. Her parents tolerated her antics as the small filly pushed the dresser aside with difficulty, to make way for her imaginary stage. She had promised them it would work this time, that she had it all figured out, and they would be so proud of her. Trixie will always remember that night, even many years later, the feeling of warmth, of confidence and love. Her very first audience, and she was already basking in the attention. This time, her magic would work! She can still see it. Her parents sitting over there on that second hand sofa, sipping at their hot chocolate and watching her with amusement and hope, and Trixie over here, concentrating hard, trying to do what she dreamed of. Trixie was going to summon a star.

It worked beautifully! Even she was captivated by the twinkling light her spell had wrought, just a tiny twinkle floating in a transparent sphere, her idea of lighting up the stage made manifest. With a dramatic flourish, Trixie magically pushed on her illumination, and made it flare into a beautiful brightness, a tiny firework in the sky. And then something

happened

Her parents should have known better. The child of two powerful unicorns is going to be talented at magic. Naturally! They should have cautioned her to stay in control, taught her how to shut herself down. They should have defended themselves. There are protective measures you can take to mitigate a magic surge, that Trixie learned of later, in the libraries at Canterlot. There are ways you can interrupt the spell, break the pony's concentration. Look into her eyes and calm her down. Anything!

But Trixie was far away from Canterlot that night. Her parents weren't prepared, couldn't have been prepared. For all their worth, they were not well studied, and this was no ordinary magic surge. Trixie couldn't remember much of what happened, just an amazing and terrible feeling of floating in a sea of white light, that was both euphoric and frantic. It felt like she was fighting with a tiger. Staying steady was a massive effort, and everywhere she released the pressure, more would build in another place, like a tea kettle with a cork in its spout.

There was no relief that came to Trixie that night. She had no choice but to weather it out, wishing for somepony to help her, when no help would come. She knew it must be a magic surge, but she had only heard stories before, and they told her nothing of how to stop them herself. A surge shouldn't be so overwhelming, or go on for so long. It should be an unnaturally powerful effect or a blast that left your hair sticking up, or your tail a funny color, or sparks in your mane. But not this. What was this? What was wrong with her? Bathed in the blinding white power, Trixie had never felt so alone, or so helpless. And yet it continued for what seemed like an eternity.

Eventually, she just burned herself out and settled to the floor, an ethereal residue smoking from her horn. She couldn't see, but she knew something was wrong. The wind was whistling above, as if she was outside. Everything had a scorched smell to it, and she could hear shouts in the distance from the other ponies in town, but no other sound. Her parents were silent. What had Trixie done?

"Momma? Dad?"

What had Trixie done?

Author's Note

Here’s another story inspired by a single picture, whose artist remains to this day unknown, despite needing all the hugs.

I almost can’t consider this story a comedy. Almost.

Trixie Discovers Denial

They found Trixie cowering in the corner of what was left of her house. Searching blindly forward, she had found her parents silent and unresponsive, lying prone on the scorched wood floor. But when she could not revive them, Trixie backed away from them in fear until her rump hit the wall and she could go no furhter. The explosion had been upward, so while it annihilated her roof, there were still walls to bump into, down at the level of a small filly. Trixie was far too magic blind to notice herself, that anything above shoulder level was no longer a barrier between her and the town, and the trees and the night.

She had wedged herself behind a bureau drawer, crying helplessly and staring forward with blank, unseeing eyes. When the other ponies made their way through the wreckage, they surrounded her, but at a distance. She could hear them milling around. She could hear that they thought she was strange, and wrong somehow. They called her a demon, a monster. She was ready to believe that they were right though. Trixie had done something very bad, and hurt her parents. There was something wrong with Trixie, that scared her just as much as it scared the milling crowd.

Trixie went willingly when they came to take her away. She let them put a bridle around her face and something on her horn that made her dizzy, and made everything feel dead around her. It was frightening and foolish to obey them, but Trixie didn't know any better, and she was desperate to convince someone to help her parents. They didn't want to talk about her parents though, or talk about anything, like about where they were going or what they were doing. Trixie could not see where she was going and that alone made her hoofing precarious, if they would stop pulling her along so roughly, so urgently. Yet the more she clumsily fell over, the more it seemed to take the edge out of their voice, that undercurrent of fear. Trixie didn't want to be scary. She didn't want to be a monster or a demon. She just wanted to be Trixie, the happy one she was yesterday.

Trixie didn't know they had locked her away in a small room, until the townsponies had left her, and shut the door behind them. She explored the full length of it, discovering herself in an earthy cellar from its smell and the feel of dirt beneath her hooves. Trixie was sure there was a window overhead, or at least an alcove that the barest tip of her hoof could find, but her vision was still nothing but a grey haze. She couldn’t even make out changes in light level at this point.

Besides the window, Trixie found nothing but smelly barrels and the stairway to the locked door. She walked around the dirt floor trying to find... something she wasn’t sure she was looking for. She was just so bored! She lay there and cried, but no pony came to comfort her. She kept feeling like her parents were there, just past the reach of her hoof, but no matter how she tried to reach them, all she could find was more of this endless, featureless emptiness she saw, that smelled, and felt like a root cellar. She stopped trying to run forward, and just pressed her head against the cool dirt. If it was there, and she could feel it, then Trixie wouldn’t feel that emptiness before her, nor the urge to run into it, just to see if maybe they would be there this time, to catch her in their arms.

Trixie didn't know why they put her there at the time, or that the only reason they didn't use the town jail, is she was small enough to slip through the bars, but Trixie did know that she was down here because she was being punished. She couldn't stop her horn surge, and now her parents were hurt. It was just like when she went on timeout, when she got angry and used bad words on accident, though in this case the adults who brought her here had a cold tone in their voice that she hadn't ever heard before. Trixie’s very first taste of the hatred and fear for what she is.

Trixie spent days down in that pit. Nopony came to check on her. Nopony could decide what to do with her. She had never been so hungry in all her life, but when she cried for her mommy or her daddy, it just made her lonelier and sadder, and hungrier. She stopped crying after a while because there was just no point, and just sat there staring listlessly forward again. There was nothing to see, because her eyes didn’t work anymore. Maybe that was why her parents didn’t come save her, because they couldn’t see either, so they couldn’t find where Trixie had been hidden. Maybe that’s the only thing that was wrong with them.

Trixie recalled the feel of their warm, limp bodies, the way they crackled and sparked when her hooves touched them, and smelled like burned hair. She recalled the deathly stillness in them that made her back away in fear. No rise and fall of any chest. They didn’t feel like mommy and daddy anymore, so maybe... maybe they weren’t just... just hurt. Trixie wished they weren’t there at all, that what she found had been life sized pony dolls, who happened to be the same size as her parents, and also warm for some reason, just a trick of the mind to beguile her. But as her punishment continued, she was more and more certain that they were now among the ranks of the ponies in town who didn’t get up again.

Trixie had seen things die before. Trixie had seen ponies die before. Everypony out here had. The monster would come and tear out the buildings trying to pull ponies free so it could eat them up, and it would be driven back with spears and stones and mommy’s magic, until it fell down and died, but sometimes it would get the ponies and sometimes it would leave them behind. Sometimes it would leave pieces behind.

Trixie recalled the vernanaught whose powerful jaws that could break a pony in two were a mercy after it had enveloped you in its acidic spittle. The ponies the... pony pieces left behind had been made black, and crackly. Trixie knew what it meant when a monster came, that ponies weren’t going to get up again. Trixie knew what it meant, but she wished she didn’t know.

She just started crying again. Because somewhere in her tortured little mind was the thought that as long as she cried, her parents would be there to help her, somewhere even impossibly distant, alive. And if she ever stopped crying, that meant giving up, and letting the monster get them. Trixie never wanted that to happen. Trixie’s voice gave out. She wanted to die then, so she just lay on her side and—and her magic was stopped, so she just lay there. She must have slept after that, because she felt... better when she woke up. Just sort of less hurting, like she was floating kind of. Like things just didn’t feel all that bad.

Trixie’s state of shock gave her more long hours between sleeping that she could spend finding things to do, such as the thing stopping her magic from happening. Trixie's life was saved, because she found that thing on her horn incredibly fascinating. The magic dampener was, by outward appearances, a ring made out of what looked like black ebony, with a complex pattern carved into its surface. Trixie could not see it physically, of course, but she could feel its effect on her magic, and thereby see how there was so much more to it than just a little ring.

The dampener had inside it a vast and twisting labyrinth, that the magic from her horn vanished into, every time she tried to use it. Trixie had never even seen a horn suppressor before, and in the night which turned into nights, of boredom and hunger, Trixie occupied herself by summoning the magic in her horn, as she had been so accustomed to from a very young age, and watching it vanish into that labyrinth. Every time it did was like a brief flash of light filling the maze, and Trixie felt like she was starting to understand how all the twists and turns kept her magic lost and hidden. In particular, one repetitive pattern she noticed was a series of three counterclockwise spirals which occasionally, randomly it seemed, had a clockwise spiral in their midst.

Were Trixie an unlucky pony, they would have left her alone while she in her childlike innocence corrected the errors in the very magic dampener that was keeping her powerless, turning all the spirals around and sealing her fate. Luckily, they came to kill her before it could happen. Trixie's sight had begun to return, but she could still only make out vaguely pony shaped blurs of color, that came to take her out of the cellar. Even frontier ponies did not have a large number of ways, or any very sophisticated ways to execute ponies. This town had settled for a method that Trixie was not going to like at all. One that condemned none of them individually, since nopony could tell from whom the fatal blow had come. Far from the painless thaumaturgical overload executions, once carried out in ancient times for prominent enemies when Equestria was at war, these ponies just tied Trixie to a post and started throwing rocks at her.

Trixie was getting scared when they again forced a bridle on her, and when they led her outside to face the teeming crowd, the whole village gathered there to see her. The crowd was so big, and shouting so loud, and still shouting that Trixie was bad and needed to be stopped. She had stopped though, and wouldn't ever do it again. She shouted back at them that she was sorry and stop being mean to her, but she couldn't yell very well because of the restrictive headgear. When she tried to move against the halter, she quickly discovered it had been closely bound to a building foundation. Trixie had enough freedom to sit and stand, and that was about it.

Merely trapped there surrounded by all that anger, Trixie was terrified, but that fear turned to white hot panic when something heavy just barely missed hitting her head. Then another rock came out of the blue to strike her side, leaving a deep bruise and a harsh scrape all along her barrel. She tried to summon her magic, but the dampener was doing its job well. She tried to evade the rocks, but they just kept coming, and tied as she was to the support pillar, there was no escaping them. One hit her temple making her ears ring, but thankfully it was only a glancing blow. It was only a matter of time though, before one incapacitated her, or worse.

In the seconds Trixie had to live, she knew only magic could save her from these evil ponies and their rocks. But to do that, she had to make the thing on her horn stop eating it. She covered her head with her hooves, trying to make herself small as possible. Bought her another few, precious seconds, and amazingly, mercifully, the rocks stopped pelting her. Was it because they hesitated at harming what looked like a helpless little filly cowering from their ire? Was it something in their hearts that told them she wasn't a monster, that she wasn’t only disguised as somepony’s filly, in order to kill other ponies with monstrous flares in the night?

Something stopped the rocks from coming, but what it was precisely, Trixie would never know, because in that moment she noticed that two opposing spirals in the dampener, if tied together, could form a self reinforcing circuit. Trixie didn't know how she knew that. It just seemed obvious. The clockwise spirals were like tiny cracks in a glass prison. Hoping against hope Trixie poured all her magic into the dampener straining to reach that which she sought deep within the labyrinth, before it could eat all her magic away. Making the tiny connection that could stop it from working.

The magic dampener exploded, sending white hot shards of molten glass in all directions. Trixie vaguely remembers some ponies crying out in pain, but there was only enough material to leave a few scars, on a few careless ponies’ hides. What immediately happened to her was a rush of power Trixie had never felt before, because she’d never worn a horn suppressor before. Her horn seemed like it was shining, begging to be used, to bring magic into the world.

The first thing she did was an ancient technique, invented time and time again by desperate unicorns being pelted by rocks. The barrage began again with a new, desperate fury, and she could almost see the rocks coming at her, not visually, but the force of their motion cutting through the air. A bubble of solid, raw, purple magic sprang up around her, and the rocks that had been hitting her, now bounced harmlessly off of it.

The rocks stopped then, and Trixie could hear the cries of argument, anger, fear and panic build in the crowd. It felt good to her that they were getting scared too, that Trixie wasn't the only one who had to be scared and hurt. She made to slice in twain the halter that was holding her to the post, only to find that the clumsy shield she erected had already done that for her. The rope was dangling loose from her bridled muzzle. Trixie didn’t want to run. She wanted to shout at them. To make them understand that she was just trying to protect herself. The rocks started at an even greater rate though, and she couldn’t keep her shield up, so Trixie did the only thing she could do.

Trixie fled.

No matter where she ran, she could hear angry ponies coming after her. Trixie couldn’t see, so she had no idea where she was running. All she could do was rely on her magic to push away ponies who came close, and to batter aside the hurled rocks and... pointy metal rocks that she didn’t recognize as spears at the time. They were angry at her because she did to her parents what the monsters did, and she didn’t mean to, but maybe the monsters didn’t mean to either. Maybe the townsponies were right in doing this. Maybe like the larkwagl, Trixie would start eating the ponies she killed, and they had to kill her before she did it.

Trixie didn't care if they were right though, or if she deserved to be punished. She didn’t want to kill ponies, or... or eat them, or leave pieces of them strewn about. All she cared about was not getting hit by more rocks. Trixie had to stop over and over again, to resume her shield and brace precariously, at more rocks headed her way. They were trying to pin her down, corner her so they could finish the job. Trixie wouldn’t let them though. She wanted the hurting to stop!

Finally she escaped the ponies, running blindly into some bushes that as her luck would have it, were at the very edge of town. There, Trixie knew there were no more walls for them to trap her against, so she gallopped as hard as she could through those bushes. And then through some trees, weaving unsteadily as she collided with the trunks. And then she fell into a creek. And then more bushes. Slipped in thick mud, but Trixie just kept going. Eventually, amazingly, the angry sounds faded away, and Trixie was fleeing in blessed silence.

Perhaps the ponies could have caught her, but they were no strangers to the dangers in these forests, and reluctant to risk forging out into them, if nothing else for fear that they would disturb a terrible denizen who would otherwise have left their little settlement alone. They were probably glad to see the forest take back the monster they thought it had spawned. Trixie was no monster. She was a pony. But they didn't understand that, and that simple misunderstanding—that almost cost her her life—was also what convinced them to give up pursuit, and saved her in the end.

Trixie didn't realize she had been crying, until she stopped running to catch her breath. The woods were grey, cold and deep around her, and there seemed like something lurking in every shadow and behind every blur that turned out to be a scraggly bush. Her hoof had sank into a mud puddle at her feet... and she was crying. Trixie didn't know why she was crying. She couldn't know why she was crying. She could not wrap her head around what transpired over the events of last week. Trixie hadn't done anything—O.K. Trixie had done something wrong, but it was an accident! They didn't think she would do it again, did they? If she doesn't want to, it won't happen again, right?

Trixie was upset and confused, and thought she was on the end of her rope. Foals didn’t run into the woods, not ones who came back at any rate. It was only a matter of time, she thought, before something caught the coppery scent coming from her bruised abrasions and decided to make a meal of her. She never thought she would see anypony ever again that night. In her short life remaining, Trixie was sure she would never so much as see the sun rise again. Being run out of town was the worst thing ever! Luckily, Trixie was no ordinary pony, and she would have many long years ahead of her, to get used to ponies running her out of town.

Trixie, the filly, finally concluded that it was just ponies overreacting again. It was the only way she could understand what was going on. Trixie didn't want them to have any good reason for what they've done. She wanted them to be simple, and petty and just plain mean ponies, who had it out for a sweet, innocent little filly who had done no wrong. They simply couldn’t be any good reason. That would mean she was a monster, that she was dangerous, that it would happen again. So instead, Trixie hated them, for ruining her life and stealing her parents and her house and her—her whole life! Now what was Trixie going to do? There was nothing she could do. She couldn't go back—the very idea of it terrified her. But where could she go?

Maybe Trixie could live her life here out in the woods. Like the wayward hero, in a story her mother had read to her, eking out a life in the frozen tundra. Maybe Trixie was that hero. Maybe she had to train to defeat the evil murgrath king, bringing 300 years of cruel, unending winter. Though this forest was more swampy, than frozen tundra. And Trixie certainly was a lot younger than the noble warrior Brightest Wish. Was Trixie to be climbing mountains now? Was she to be singing the heart songs of old, and vaulting chasms, and wrestling bears and—

It was about that time that Trixie noticed the growling behind her.

Author's Note

Trixie Is Saved

Trixie quickly learned that she did not want to eke her life out in the woods. That terrifying encounter with a slugamander had been only the first, of very many terrible things that would happen to a filly, out alone in the woods. Granted, Trixie ran away screaming without a scratch, while it earned a smoking hole through its head for its trouble, but Trixie didn't want to think about what she did. She didn’t want to think about it, no more than she wanted to think about what terrible things the other—the monsters in the swamp did to survive. There was little to eat out here, little that was palatable at least. If Trixie ever has to eat watercress again, it will be too soon. Everything was cold and wet, and miserable, and muddy. So much mud. Trixie had a talent it seems for happening upon it unexpectedly.

Trixie cried on that note, when she discovered her special talent. As unimaginable as that may be, Trixie had been lost, blind and confused for days on end. Once her sight finally cleared enough to see, the first thing she saw was the mark on her flank. A mark that had not been there the last time she could see it. The mark that bore a very strong resemblance... to a star. There was only one thing it could mean. It was a talent that served her well in later years, but... it also was a talent that had cost her everything she loved. Trixie knew then more than ever that it wasn’t just something that happened to her. It was something that she was.

The carniverous rock toads ensured that Trixie would grow very good at bringing up that shield spell at a moment's notice. They didn't attack you with their tongue, thank Celestia, but leaping for her flesh, the shadow of one would cover her small figure far too often for her liking. The tangle vines would scratch her terribly when she stumbled upon them, usually after she slid through the mud they grew near, while running away from the rock toads, and Trixie had no means to treat her wounds. When Trixie began feeling ill, she tried to use magic to cure herself, but she couldn't figure out how to do more than reduce the swelling and keep her temperature down. It became a constant struggle for Trixie, and she knew she was in trouble. Big trouble.

When she headed for the nearest pony settlement to her own, it was not with the idea to procure help. She was too afraid that they would know who she was, and what she had done. Instead, she crept towards it in the middle of the night, feverish and weak but determined and desperate. It was a simple task to undo the lock on their medicine chest and purloin their curatives before sneaking back into the night. There she was, a young filly with no knowledge of medicine or brewing, yet one tincture labeled propanoia she found that combatted the ill symptoms far better than the continuous drain on her magic could manage. Among ...other, less helpful tinctures.

Emboldened by her success, and perhaps by the enticing smells of their cooking, and perhaps by the hallucinations she was having from combining unknown medicines, Trixie remained near the border of the settlement. So Trixie made a home, a relatively permanent shelter hidden outside of town. It was troublesome, but far easier to defend a shelter built out of trees woven together by raw sorcery, and steal her food from the ponies—from the other ponies, than it was for Trixie to live a life continuously ranging around looking for edible scrub, right through the territory of so many monsters and predators. The bog rats whose territory she co-opted for her little shelter gave her trouble at first, but they quickly decided otherwise, when a filly half their size proceeded to beat one of them to death, using a tree limb twice their size.

She would creep into town during the cover of night, and wash herself with water from the public basin, or make away from their storehouses with a loaf of hay bread or a tin of butter. The ponies were not expecting a thief in this bleak landscape, so it was trivial to get in there. A lock wiggled apart from the inside, an illusion cast to make noise or a vision to draw ponies the other way, and Trixie’s wish granted of soundless hoofsteps, thanks to that versatile horn on her head. It was still a terrible way to live, though Trixie might have gotten good at it eventually. Trixie didn't exactly have much chance to become accustomed to this lifestyle of foalhood skulduggery, for she only had a few weeks until something went wrong.

Her meals weren't cooked, or fresh, but they gave her enough energy to heal, after the luck of the gods enabled her to overcome or at least ignore the infections. Trixie was too young to understand that she was missing out on vital vitamins that—say for instance—watercress could have provided, but the effect such a diet had was to draw her nose inexorably to the smell of cooking soup. She may not have known what was good to eat in her clumsy theft attempts, but her nose sure did, and when a nose speaks, a little filly finds it very hard not to listen.

She hadn't risked going into a pony's house yet, where they often left large pots of soup to simmer overnight, but she started watching a house on the border to see when in the night the pony retired, and when they emerged in the morning. With her heart in her throat, she crept past their sleeping forms to where, true to her nose, a cauldron of soup was bubbling over low coals. As silently as she could, Trixie stole a ladle and a small wooden bowl, and proceeded to levitate a ladle's worth of soup into her newly acquired bowl. She wanted to eat it right away, instead of fleeing with it into the night where it would get all cold and maybe spill. It was quite possibly the best soup Trixie had ever had in her life. She didn't care how hot it made her throat; the contents of the bowl vanished in seconds. Lowering the ladle back into the cauldron she went for seconds and then thirds.

Full to bursting, Trixie dropped the ladle back into the cauldron with a satisfied sigh. The ladle clanged when it struck the bottom of the cauldron like a ringing bell, and the ponies in the bed across the hut immediately sat up looking her way. This combined with the fact that, in Trixie's eagerness she had failed to notice the moonlight creeping in through the window to fully illuminate her, she was caught in plain sight there before the ponies still in their bed.

"Thief!" came the frightened, yet uncertain cry from a mare who really was not sure how to deal with what she was seeing in front of her. That was more than enough to set the already panicking Trixie into full overdrive. It was at that moment of surety, that the worst possible thing had happened, that Trixie learned how to wink. The next thing she knew, she was safely back in her shelter, well out of town. Literally, the next thing she knew. One moment she was hyperventilating at the unmistakable gaze of the awakened ponies. The next she was staring out from her improvised thicket of magically distorted tree trunks. Still hyperventilating.

Now, this is not to say Trixie was a master of winking at such a young age. Far from it, winking is a notoriously fickle and difficult to perform technique. Fortunately, it becomes easier when your destination is the place you are so familiar with to call home. Fortunately, Trixie was not from a long line of unicorns who had failed to wink out upon being attacked by leopards, as that line of unicorns had died out due to being eaten by leopards, so Trixie just did what came naturally. Fortunately the unpredictable fluctuations in a filly's magic rose precipitously at that particular moment that she needed to cast it. Less than fortunately, Trixie spent the next few days trying to repeat what she had done, without success. It wasn't until years later that Trixie finally learned to get winking down pat. But perhaps Trixie is getting ahead of herself.

The town was on high alert for a while, but the fairy tale of a thieving filly from nowhere appearing in the middle of the night, then vanishing the moment you wake up, that was one that even magic ponies would have trouble swallowing. Trixie found herself in trouble however, as they did start putting a guard out in front of the storehouse. Try as she might, Trixie couldn't conceal herself in invisibilty without glowing like a purple glowworm, and teleportation was right out. She wasn't going to risk going into any homes again, either. Fortunately ponies often threw perfectly edible food onto the refuse heap. Granted, digging through it made Trixie smell like death, and she had terrible stomach aches to lull her to sleep, but... actually no, granted nothing. It was a shitty experience that drove Trixie back to eating watercress.

It might have been that Trixie was careless that one night, or foolhardy in her desperation, or just tired of fighting to live anymore, but when the night watch pony heard something rooting around in the trash she had paid him no mind until he had crept up behind her and captured her beneath a wicker clothes basket. She cried out at that point and tried to throw the basket off so she could escape, but it was stubbornly heavy she soon realized, because he was sitting on top of it. Trixie was more than capable of lifting something five times as heavy as her own body weight, such as an adult male earth pony, but only very...slowly, and he fought her the entire way as he realized she was actually managing to do it. Then he called out for help, and help arrived. It took three ponies to hold her down, and finally somepony managed to smack her upside the head with something heavy, send Trixie spiralling into a dreamless blackness.

Trixie was under for far more than a few hours, perhaps even days. The ponies discovering her abhorred state of malnutrition, and the stubbornly lingering effects of sickness and infection had her in the town's hospital immediately: a squat wooden building only somewhat more permanent than the other buildings. Once she was finally in a stable condition, they brought her back to the waking realm, so that's what she awoke to. The doctor was there, a pleasantly purple pony with a banana colored mane. The mare to his right had a more traditional green and blue coloring. She was the local sheriff, it turns out, and also the one who had ultimately subdued Trixie, it turns out.

When Trixie's pale eyes immediately contracted, the sheriff said hastily, "Please, don't run! You're safe now." That was enough to give Trixie pause. Did they know of the ponies who were trying to hurt her? Did they not know what she'd done? She sat there quietly, not knowing what to say. "Doctor Gentle has been supervising your recovery," the sheriff added, directing Trixie's attention to the doctor.

"It's not every day a pony emerges from the bog alive," the doctor said gesturing at Trixie's arm. Trixie noticed for the first time that a tube was taped to her fetlock, leading to a bag dangling from a string overhead. "You were suffering from malnutrition and several infections... that is, I mean," at Trixie's confused look he stammered a bit, "You were really hungry and hurt, but we gave you special food to make you better." At last, somepony who made sense in this world!

"Am I better now?" she asked brightly, albeit not with a smile.

"You're on the road to recovery," the doctor said. "You should be up and about in a few days. You're a very lucky filly, you know that?" Trixie shook her head, and the doctor just got a soft eyed smile. He cleared his throat, "Anyhoo, sheriff Strong here needs to ask you some questions. Can you be a good little filly and help her out?" Trixie was hesitant so he added, "There might be a lolly for you if you do a good job."

A normal filly would have immediately agreed to just about anything with that reward hanging over her head. Trixie was not abnormal in the sense that she didn't like lollipops. She loved them. But it had been so long since she'd had one. Half a year is a long time for a nine year old filly. ...probably nine. Trixie only had eight birthdays she could remember before then. Like those, thinking of lollipops had Trixie struggling with the flood of fond memories the memory of their taste dragged forth, fond and very painful memories right now.

The doctor seemed concerned with her response or, non-response as it were, stammered a half apology and quickly deferred to the sheriff, backing off.

"So you're the Ghost in the Moonlight," the sheriff started still looking at Trixie appraisingly.

"The what?" Trixie asked confusedly.

"Ponies around here have been making up stories about you," the sheriff slowly explained. "Just catching sight of a pony only to find there never was anyone there. Hearing some sniffle or some noise and just when you go to look a pony has run past behind you. Food stores mysteriously going missing, as if there was no lock at all." She laughed then, a hearty sound, "I didn't believe Silver when he said it wasn't a ghost of a filly tipping over our trash cans and that he was going to catch it. You know, your colors are very pale in the moonlight."

Trixie almost laughed at the sheriff's story. Did she really seem that spooky? "I just used my magic to throw my voice," she answered, "Or make it look like there was a pony somewhere else so I wouldn't be seen."

"You can perform illusions?" the sheriff asked surprisedly. "That's a very advanced magic for a little filly!"

"It comes naturally," she shrugged, trying to look casual about it. "It's my special talent."

The sheriff seemed to buy it, leaning over to look at Trixie's cutie mark, a stream of magic floating around a five pointed star. A mark Trixie will always have mixed feelings about. It didn't really indicate a talent in illusions, but it didn't really indicate much of anything, so whatever validation the sheriff hoped to get was stymied. She straightened up and said,

"I'm sheriff Strong Light, and this is the community of South Fork." None of those names sounded familiar to Trixie, which worked in Trixie's favor as she wasn't exactly on good terms with anything that did sound familiar. How far had she wandered through the wilderness? Far enough, hopefully.

"We're a few leagues south of Star City."

Not far enough. Trixie had heard of Star City, even as a filly. It was where her mother travelled to put on her most famous regular show. Trixie didn't know where it was exactly, as her father took care of her at home while her mother was away, and the one time she went to see it all she remembered was a long horseback ride. It was a big city, full of glitz and glamor, with some of the best and the worst flocking there trying to make a name for themselves.

The sheriff paused for a moment, shuffling her hooves as if pondering what she was going to say. "You have been living out in the wild for a while...?" she said in a suggestive tone.

"A while," was all Trixie would say to that matter.

"You're in a safe place now," Strong Light said, attempting to coo but being far too gruff sounding for that. Furthermore the words she said were very chilling to Trixie. "Were you... driven to live out there?"

She knows.

"It's alright if you want to tell me. Did you run away after you were ...abused?"

Sheknowssheknowssheknowssheknows

Trixie's panicked stare seemed to confirm what the sheriff was thinking, and she smiled gently saying "If your parents have been abusing you, you don't have to go back to them. Just tell me who they are and we can make things right."

Shekn- she doesn't know.

"They're dead," Trixie said bluntly. The sheriff's face fell so dramatically it was almost comical.

"D-did they," she stammered trying to keep the filly from noticing her distress, "Oh I, I didn't know it... of course that's why you—"

"It's O.K." why was she comforting her? Why did Trixie feel so good to say what she said? She didn’t want her parents to be dead! She didn’t want to be a bad pony. That the sheriff didn't know what she'd done, shouldn't that make Trixie feel like a bad pony? Trixie couldn't wrap her head around the immense relief at being off the hook, coming at the same time as the memory of her parent's death. It's a very new emotion for a little filly, that autoschadenfreude when it feels so good to be so bad. Unable to deal with it, she just went with it.

"How did they die?" came the next question. Trixie answered without hesitation, and honestly for the last time.

"A monster killed them."

"Was it... what town are you from?"

"We lived far away from any other ponies," she said, not even caring if she got figured out by now. It was just so much fun thinking up how she could fool the sheriff. "We were surbibleists mommy told me."

"Survivalists then..." the sheriff nodded grimly. Trixie cursed herself inwardly for not knowing about the sur...whatever that word was for those strange ponies townsponies liked to whisper about, many months ago in another life. The sheriff didn't mind she got the word wrong though, so Trixie continued.

"The monster she—it blew up our house, and then it killed them and I ran away and I've been hiding ever since."

"But why didn't you come right to us?" Strong Light protested, "Why did you hide from everypony in town for so long?"

Trixie's gears turned furiously but she was stuck at that. Why didn't she pretend she was a lost filly in the first place? She was just trying to be careful, but doing so practically announced she was suspicious, and hiding from ponies because of something bad that she did. Now she was going to have to say what really happened, and then bad ...things would happen again.

"Your parents were called 'survivalists,'" sheriff Strong said in an explanatory tone, "Those ponies will tell you to stay away from other ponies when they shouldn't. Did they try to tell you about something called the 'night times?'"

Trixie nodded dumbly. Was the sheriff really fixing Trixie's story for her?

The older pony shook her head, "Damn shame, crazy ponies like that dragging little fillies into it. Well don't worry little one, there is nothing to worry about, and you can be friends with other ponies again."

"O.K." Trixie said, afraid to say anything else.

"It's really important that you do so," the sheriff urged, "Ponies don't last very long out here all by themselves. We have to stick together."

"O.K." Trixie parrotted, at scarcely a whisper.

"I'm... I'm really sorry about your parents..." Strong Light said, her eyes gleaming with sadness.

"It... it's O.K." Trixie said, turning away from the sheriff's gaze. It wasn't O.K. Nothing was O.K.

"I think I don't need to ask you any more questions," the sheriff said, "Can you rest there in your bed for me, while we figure out what to do with you?"

In fact now that Trixie thought about it, this simple conversation had worn her to the bone. She was even having trouble holding her head up. Trixie must have been really sick if she was like this, and the whole time she didn't even know how sick she was. That could have been bad. She answered by laying back in the bed, staring at the sheriff with wide unblinking eyes.

The sheriff walked up to her with an almost matronly smile, laying a hoof on Trixie's mane and stroking her in a calming manner. Trixie was not comfortable with this friendly gesture but she dared not show it. She tried her best not to flinch, and just pretend like it was normal. Like she was normal. That's when the sheriff started to sing.

If you had been outside Trixie's hospital room that night, you might have heard a discordant, tone deaf mangling of a lullaby, followed by the town sheriff trotting hastily out of the room at the command of a harsh filly's voice shouting "Get out!" followed by various flying articles you might find at hoof next to a hospital bed.

The sheriff winced as she walked past the doctor at his desk. "Smooth," the doctor purred at her with a smirk. Snorting, she just tossed her gaze away from him and just galloped briskly out the door.

Trixie’s Big Night

The next time Trixie saw the sheriff, it was together with matron Night Tide. Trixie hadn't yet known to hate her, and everything she stood for. The matron just seemed like another pony, maybe even a nice pony, even if she held herself straight with a sort of stiff detachment. Trixie would remember that teal coat very well in coming years. To say Trixie's problems originated entirely from this mare alone would be giving this mare far too much credit, but if only Trixie had known what she was, and what she represented, maybe Trixie's life could have been more bright.

Or at least shorter.

"This is matron Night Tide," the sheriff explained, "She's from the orphanage."

"The what?" Trixie asked honestly. When the sheriff didn't understand, Trixie added, "What's an orphanage?"

That got a laugh from the mare next to the sheriff. A very hearty laugh that would only surface unexpectedly, then plunge deep again as if it were never there.

"An orphanage is a place that takes care of little colts and fillies," sheriff Strong explained, "They can even find you a family again!"

"I told you they're dead," Trixie said irritably. Was this sheriff being mean, or simply entirely lacking in all tact?

"No I mean a new I mean uh," the sheriff stuttered, finally chomping out "Horsefeathers. I'll let matron Night explain."

"Foals most prosper," matron Tide said evenly, "When they are raised by a nuclear family. We provide a transition point from the state of runaway and vagrant, to a productive member of society."

Trixie blinked. Then she mumbled, "I didn't understood all those words."

"She can take care of you and feed you," Strong Light cut in, "You'll have your own bedroom and a lot of other foals to play with."

"I wasn't aware this affair was up for negotiation," Night said drolly.

"It's not— it—," now Strong was stammering at Night instead of Trixie. "It's better if she agrees to it, right?” the sheriff pleaded with an impassive Night, “If she knows it's a good thing, she'll be... I mean, you'll be," now the sheriff was looking at Trixie again. "Believe me when I'm saying this because it's the honest truth,” the sheriff told Trixie, “You'll love it there. And even if you don't, you'll find someone some day to love and take care of you."

"It sounds... nice?" Trixie said, trying to appease the worried mare who was ostensibly the toughest mare in town if she was the sheriff.

"Enough of this foolishness," Night Tide cut in, "I expect her at the carriage station this afternoon. If I may, I am a busy mare and I will take my leave."

"This afternoon?" the sheriff asked skeptically, "You sure she's up for the trip just yet?"

"She won't be any more well tomorrow, than she is today," was Night's answer, and with that she took her leave.

Trixie would agree that Sheriff Strong was being pretty foolish, though perhaps not for the same reasons as Ms. Night Tide. After the matron left, Strong herself hurried out, and then the doctor whatsisface was doting upon Trixie, trying to make sure she was well enough to check out. The IV long since removed, Trixie's diet had been normal for the past few days, even if the wooden hospital's food was a bit plain and unappealing. Trixie was a little unsteady standing on her hooves at first, but determined not to disappoint, Trixie persevered until she was quite capable of carrying herself.

Trixie did get exhausted easily and had to rest often, but the doctor assured her that would get better on its own as long as she remembered to eat her vegetables. He was probably as eager as any of them to free up her hospital bed for other sick ponies, but he made a good show of making sure that Trixie checked out before she... checked out.

Weakness aside, Trixie felt ready to take on anything this afternoon. She felt pretty good actually. Nopony had figured it out. That she had killed her parents. Everypony thought they just died, like many ponies do in these swamps. Trixie had escaped. She was going to live somewhere now, a place that no one would ever think that she was a monster or a demon in pony form. Anyone who knew, they probably thought Trixie was dea—still out in the woods. If Trixie could just be quiet and blend in, then ponies would like her again, and she’d never have to do anything like that ever again.

Trixie was surprised to see two other fillies at the station, when she arrived. “I’m Daisy Dust,” one said, and the other didn’t speak so Daisy added “And she’s Willowsweet.”

“I’m T-Trixie,” Trixie said reluctantly, breathing hard from even that little exertion. “Are you waiting for the um... carriage?”

“Suppose so,” Daisy said resentfully. “They said they have a place we can stay, so we’re staying.”

“Did your parents die too?” Trixie asked almost immediately backpedalling with, “No n-no—no, I didn’t—mean, no never mind, I didn’t mean to ask you it’s okay you don’t have to” but Willowsweet was already on the way to crying.

“Smooth move, idiot,” Daisy said, glaring at Trixie and hugging her... sister it might have been. Trixie couldn’t approach or hug them, because she just had to stand there, scared and miserable at how she’d said the exact wrong thing. These foals didn’t kill their parents. Somepony else did, somepony like... a monster... or Trixie. And now they could never have them back. They deserved their parents back, but Trixie should have been happy to get what she got, even if she didn’t get her parents back. At least the orphanage would be a place to sleep, but T-Trixie really missed her parents too, and her happy life.

That was the state the matron found them in, the mare stepping quietly out of the carriage that pulled up, with Willowsweet wailing and Trixie trying not to cry, while Daisy just glared at the isolated blue filly with an expression of contempt. Nopony else was there to help them, because the pickup location chosen had been one where other ponies didn’t often come. A run-down neighborhood, where crying children would be expected, rather than cause for alarm. As matron Tide stepped down from the carriage she immediately took stock of the situation.

“Welcome fillies, to your new lives,” she said evenly, seemingly not even noticing how one of them was too distraught to hear her. “There is one rule you should familiarize yourself with now,” she explained. Then she kicked Willowsweet hard enough to bowl her over and knock her shoulder against the cobblestones. The filly was so shocked she stopped crying, which gave the matron ample opportunity to say, “There will be no crying at this orphanage. You will maintain a pleasant, deferential demeanor at all times, if you ever want to be adopted.”

“H-how dare you?” Daisy spat out, helping Willowsweet to her hooves, the smaller filly immediately falling back into wailing again. Daisy stomped up to the older mare saying angrily, “She—” but was the last word Daisy managed to get out, before a precisely aimed bolt of magic flew over Daisy and struck Willowsweet in the head. Her cry died in her throat, and she just... crumpled to the floor, like a broken puppet.

“That,” the matron said, “Is what happens to those who disregard their betters. Now must I do the same to the rest of you forsaken fillies, or are you going to come along quietly?”

Trixie didn’t know what to do. She had never seen something so... the magic, it didn’t kill the foal, it just forced Willowsweet to a really bad sleep. That was all Trixie could tell, from what little she could see in that rapid flash. Daisy too then, when she tried to run, she tried to carry Willowsweet with her, and then both of them were on the ground like they weren’t even—Trixie didn’t like looking at it; it felt so indescribably wrong. Trixie herself was too weak, exhausted and terrified to run or even cry at that point, so... the matron didn’t cast it on her. Yet.

The ponies pulling the carriage didn’t so much as flinch at what was going on, as if they were very familiar with this sort of thing. Levitating the two limp fillies into the carriage, matron Tide pushed Trixie ahead of her, up the steps and into its dark confines. With the way they approached it, Trixie felt like she was being pushed into some cavernous black maw just waiting to swallow her up.

As it turns out, it was just the inside of a carriage, but there were two rooms in the carriage. Well, one of them was generous to call it a room, more like a baggage compartment. And, it turns out foals, whether conscious or not, counted as baggage. Trixie wanted to sit in the seat, but the matron made her sit in the little...box, with the others piled against her unresponsively, and Night closed the compartment on them, too.

Trixie later learned that matron Tide often had to deal with crying children; so many orphans have just recently lost their family after all and are prone to crying, so she found a simple and efficient way to deal with it. Cruel, but fair, the matron would say, but Trixie would say just cruel. Still, if that was the only transgression she and the orphanage would commit, Trixie could have forgiven them. Sadly it was just the beginning of a very, very miserable life.

It was an eerie experience there in total darkness, feeling the two fillies slowly begin to revive. Their motions were so confused and sluggish at first. Willowsweet didn’t cry again, not one peep, but soon she couldn’t stop shaking. It wasn’t cold in the carriage. She was just so very scared. Trixie would soon know it was nothing that terrified these fillies, but for now there was no talking about it, only hiding in the box in the darkness. Trixie regretted being placed in between them when Daisy came to, and brutally shoved her aside to get to Willowsweet. They... they just held each other then, and Trixie was once again, even in this cramped space, alone.

These three foals were so claustrophobic by the time they got there, that when it opened they all just about climbed over each other to get out of that compartment and into the cool air outside of the carriage. The orphanage was walled on all sides in thick, durable stone. Stone made most of its construction in fact. The only access to the outside was the front gate, which was ponied at all times by orphanage staff. It wouldn’t do to have the foals run away again, obviously. That would defeat the purpose! There was a plain, well mowed grassy expanse, presumably for play of some sort, but there certainly weren’t any play structures, or swing sets, or even balls. The residences were in a building together, with narrow little hallways leading to thin little dormitories; 3, 4 foals to a room. Beyond that, there was a cafeteria building, the only source of food in the orphanage, barred access outside of scheduled meals even if you were really hungry.

Then there were the... classrooms.

These were not classrooms in the strictest definition of the term. Perhaps once they had been intended to be used for education, but with the beds at the orphanage overflowing, and the staff pushed to the limits of their sanity reigning in all these foals, there was simply no time to spend teaching you how to read and write. Foals distrusted and hated the staff, so no lesson would have been respected or upheld. It was an arms race of hatred, and there never had been room on the payroll for a schoolteacher anyway.

No, these classrooms were used to teach discipline. To teach foals how to act, and what their limits were. To tarnish their spirits so that they stopped being so rambunctious and hard to deal with. These were in fact the classrooms where twice a week, Trixie was taught never to speak of herself in first person. They would try to trick you into saying I, and the punishment for doing so most severe. You were a scornful, arrogant bully then, who thought themselves above the other foals, and even the staff, because of the way you carried yourself, and the words you said.

Be compassionate to others was the lesson, but what they taught was never to speak your mind, and never consider your self worth. You are not a person, but a thing, who may not be an I, but must rather be an it, your name as much of a label as a chair is called a chair, or a rock is called a rock. You quickly became accustomed to pretending it was someone else in the room who had to go through this, while you were far away dancing in verdant green meadows. No, I’m not here, and I’m not making a laughingstock of myself, it’s just stupid little Trixie. Some nobody unicorn who surely deserves everyfoal laughing at her while the instructor lays into her for yet another slip of the tongue.

Foals as a general rule did not ever refer to themselves, except directly by name. They enforced it in the classrooms, but it was expected both inside and out, and as much as Trixie wishes to deny it, she grew very accustomed to being just another pony in the room, accustomed to feeling the same way when Trixie was talking about Daisy over there, as when Trixie was talking about Trixie over here. There was no pony where you were anymore, just a slight adjustment in geographic location from Daisy to yourself. Trixie didn’t want to be here, and Trixie didn’t want to be at all.

Trixie had no idea of the classrooms when she first arrived at the orphanage. She was not kept with Daisy and Willowsweet, but instead herded with a number of other strange foals from other carriages, into what looked like a school classroom. There were letters on the wall, that Trixie was pretty sure she even might have recognized at one point, but no pictures of animals, or smiling things. It was all very gray and drab. That wasn’t what bothered Trixie though. What bothered her was a different pony, a brusque green and white maned stallion if she recalls, who ruled that classroom with even less tolerance than matron Tide, if not her particular brand of cruelty.

“You will take the text on the desk before you,” he said curtly, “And balance it on your head.”

“What—” a foal said in confusion, swiftly interrupted with a smack of the ...teacher’s? ruler on the desk and he said,

“You will learn the requirements for living in our establishment, and the first thing is that you obey your betters, immediately, without question.”

A pause, and he added, “Whoever wants to be punished first, will leave their book on the table.”

Every foal very hurriedly put their book on their head.

Trixie wouldn’t have even minded this; she had an advantage after all. Her horn was a great support to her, and after she tired of using magic, it was a great support to brace the book against. But it went on for so long! He just stood there at the front of the classroom, staring... and it was only a matter of time before a clumsy foal slipped and dropped their book.

“Excuse me?!” the teacher or...whatever this pony was supposed to be exclaimed. He strode forward staring down the increasingly fearful foal saying, “Are you incapable of following even a simple command? Do you think you’re better than me? Do you think anypony will ever adopt a foal who cannot respect her elders? Turn around!”

When the foal just whimpered he repeated, “Turn around,” shoving her roughly to face the other direction. “Raise your tail,” he commanded next. When again she merely quivered and didn’t reply he said more evenly, “You will obey me, or you will go to bed without any dinner. It’s your decision. Raise your tail.”

Trixie was suddenly reminded of how she had been picked up before lunch, and hadn’t been fed yet.

The other foal raised her tail, and then immediately squealed in pain as he brought his... oh that’s why his ankle brace was reinforced steel. It wasn’t so much a spanking as it was a beating, because he didn’t stop hitting her with that ruler until well after she was unable to cry about it. One thing they took very seriously at this orphanage was that foals were to have a pleasant adoptable demeanor, and should never, ever cry.

The first beating was the most vicious, frightening everypony when he lifted his head from checking on her unconscious form and said calmly, “Has anypony else dropped their books?” It soon became obvious that nopony was going to leave this room without a beating though. One by one the roughly half dozen foals dropped their book and he patiently waited for them to do so. But his righteous rage erupted every time, with a mechanical precision, deliberate Trixie realizes in hindsight.

Trixie did not have hindsight that afternoon though. Trixie lasted... she didn’t know how long, but the sunlight had faded from the window, when she finally just felt her book slip, and collapsed on the spot, rather than correcting its position. Not to say she didn’t feel the meter stick drag wooden cuts on her stinging flesh, but Trixie didn’t even have enough energy to protest at this point. Maybe it was her fault, she may have thought, before being welcomed into unconsciousness.

Author's Note

Um... oh dear...

Trixie’s Darkness

Not every pony left that room unconscious. Some managed to control their crying and withstand the pain, until they were escorted out as nominally less failures than the ones who had. It was a way of training foals not to cry so easily, as their official rhetoric went, but really what it was was an initiation. New foals to the orphanage were second class citizens, both from the staff and from the other foals. Being shown such harsh discipline was merely a way to cement that. A warning really, to prepare them for a long frustrating life wasting away in a lonely, crowded orphanage.

Trixie quickly learned she would not be adopted. She saw how urgently these foals needed to escape this place, and how bitterly they would fight each other, fighting in the most viciously clandestine ways to gain a better chance at adoption. Regrettably, even Trixie participated in it, sabatoging the future of others to get a ghost of a chance herself, all to no avail. The frontier was no place for a foal, a forsaken one much less so. There were a lot of ponies with foals out here, who don’t come home one day, and there were very few ponies with the time and resources to take on another foal as their own.

Which is to say, foals had reason to fight one another, and a pecking order was quickly established out of sheer necessity—if nothing else—to end all the biting. And new blood landed solidly on the bottom of that order. You had no friends, you had no idea of whom to trust, and nopony had any idea of whether to trust you, so until you proved yourself to them, even for the best ponies you were their enemy. Trixie learned this as any foal did, the hard way. After the third time she had been caught breaking the rules, because of the misleading advice of a friendly face, Trixie learned not to trust when a pony tells you for instance, that you can get a candy treat for good behavior by washing out the bathrooms after curfew.

The staff did nothing to curb this. Why would they? Far from it, they encouraged such wanton cruelty as telling with glee, a foal in tears, exactly why she has no chance of being adopted, or stealing food from a foal with no allies to defend her, because she was seen as an easy target who could be bullied without retribution, or telling her the best thing for her to do was climb onto the roof and jump, or accidentally pushing her down the stairs. One less foal meant one less problem for these beleagured and jaded older ponies. One more excuse to punish a foal for crying, however undeserved, made her much less likely to ever disobey them. Once you’ve broken a pony, they’re yours forever. The more they suffer, the more they will cling desperately to any semblance of security, even if that semblance is cruelty personified. The more power you take away from them, the less power they will have to live on their own, and the less power they will have to escape.

The worst of it for Trixie was not the bullying though. She could never blame ponies for falling into such debauchery and ruin, for she too was drawn into it. Ponies bully because they’re forced to bully, because if they don’t, then they become a target for the other bullies. When caring and friendship are seen as weaknesses, you either show others you are not to be trifled with, or you get forced to wear the horn inhibitor, for using your magic to save yourself from falling down the stairs.

Unicorns are very rare on the frontier. There is a good, if sad reason for this fact. So many ponies there are rejected by their own society for one reason or another. When this happens to an earth pony or a pegasus, it is over some petty crime or mental instability, but unicorns have a unique responsibility on their shoulders. Or, foreheads it might be better said. What Trixie means is, unicorns who go bad will most often burn themselves out in a blaze of glory, that leaves very little left over to retreat to the frontier. With your magic outside of you, it gives you a very intimate connection with the rest of the world and its workings, and it also leaves you with terrible vulnerabilities. If not wisely accounted for, these vulnerabilities will leave behind nothing but a quadruple of smoking shoes. And the wise unicorns never get exiled.

Trixie was, in fact, an anomaly at the orphanage. Other unicorns, even foals, were so rare that perhaps one out of dozens could be found at this orphanage. Of the few ponies here with a horn, none had a greater mastery of the magical arts than the foal who would come to be known as the Great and Powerful Trixie. This gave Trixie the power and ability to help herself in profound ways, and like any power in the hooves of a child, the orphanage staff had to find some method of taking it away.

The first time they put a magic dampener on her, she melted it right in front of them, out of sheer spite. This was a terrible mistake it turns out, because now they saw her as a formidable foe, and the next horrible thing that went upon her horn was much more expensive, high quality, and relatively foolproof. With no education in advanced magical models, Trixie was like a blind filly, trying to find a bit she only once heard tossed on the ground, from very far away in a crowded city.

Not to say this stopped Trixie, but it could take her a good amount of time to figure it out, and they all seemed to have their unique idiosyncracies, and it took her years of fighting them before she started to get good at removing them. To extend the metaphor, Trixie only figured out the secrets of what they put on her horn, largely due to being a blind filly the size of a house, who could blunder her way forward searching for that bit in great swaths, without worrying about what obstacles may be in the way. Trixie may have failed to mention, but she is very good at magic.

It still took her years to do so. Years she spent under rules both cruel and arbitrary. The worst of them was the no magic rule. That’s right. No. Magic. Trixie wasn’t forced to wear those growth stunting contraptions, for no reason at all. She was forced to wear them as punishment, for toying with powers a foal should not possess. In the eyes of the staff at least, a unicorn foal was a disaster waiting to happen, a threat to their power that must be controlled, even if that control results in its destruction or death. For most of the staff, Trixie came to be feared and hated for her uncanny ability to get out of a horn restraint. For matron Night Tide, Trixie was an anathema.

Trixie learned what matron Tide had done to those foals in that carriage very quickly, when she was defending herself in the lunch room with a levitated chair, and then something... some thing hit her. It wasn’t a simple knockout spell, oh no Night had to get creative. It was her special talent after all. You did not simply go to sleep when her magic touches you. You went into a slumber so deep and dark, that you were sure you would never awaken. It’s impossible to describe the horror that it filled you with, with this mysterious spell she devised. There were no nightmares, or rather there was only one very big nightmare. Just a dark, solid, black, pitless Nothing, that swallowed you like a yawning abyss, from which there was no escape.

And then you’d wake up. It was a very demoralizing experience certainly, expecting yourself to be dead and gone, then suddenly being fine and dandy. Matron Night didn’t use a simple knockout spell because what she did have was so much more effective at disciplining foals. There was no fight left in you, when you awoke. There was no resistence, no defiance. You would do anything for anypony, never to feel like that again. If there is one pony Trixie will never mourn, it would be matron Night Tide, not because she was cruel, not because she wasn’t a pony, a very sad pony, who deserved to live, but because she took that spell with her to her grave. Worse spells have been, and will surely be created, but the world is a little happier place with that one gone forever.

Between that and the midnight visits, it was clear Night Tide gained an unusually powerful hatred for Trixie. Perhaps it was what Trixie stood for, her continued defiance fighting the effects of that spell. Perhaps she saw a little bit of herself in Trixie, a unicorn whose powerful magical nature made her feared and dangerous. Trixie lost count of the times that spell took her down, and it was always because she used magic. It didn’t matter to the staff that it was to help somepony, or to save somepony, or even to save herself. Magic was simply forbidden, as a distrusted and feared act, that made foals too powerful to be controlled.

Night took this a step further though. She would come into Trixie’s room and pull her from her bed and say horrible things to her. More often than not awakening with a horn suppressor on, Trixie was always too terrified to use her magic against the older mare. And the things she called Trixie. Unwanted, freak, no-good, terrible demon filly. The saddest thing is, she didn’t know! All that hatred was over mere cantrips, and Trixie’s true crimes went unseen by Night Tide. Trixie may not have survived another night, if matron Night Tide had known the true extent of the terrible fury of Trixie’s magic. How many creatures she’d killed, two very special ponies at the top of that list, who Trixie could never, ever see again.

But her blissful ignorance didn’t stop Night from having a grudge against Trixie’s insistent, perhaps even compulsive use of magic. As a unicorn, she should have understood the need to work out one’s horn, but instead it was the opposite scenario. Night understood that need, and hated Trixie for feeling it, and hated Trixie for being capable, and for not just falling in line like the other foals. She...

As an example, once Trixie had been awoken by the matron’s approach, and before she could escape, she was hurled unceremoniously against the wall, and Trixie’s head wrenched painfully downward, until her horn struck her own mattress. She was dragged by her head across it like a tool, hardly even awake yet, a terrible gouge left in her mattress from where her horn had been. A unicorn’s horn may not appear sharp, but its magic is especially shaped toward penetration, to the point that unicorns have trouble with anything that strikes their forehead getting summarily impaled by what should be a blunt knob of a horn. It wasn’t nearly as good at sideways tearing, but the matron made it work, and when she dragged Trixie across her own mattress, Night hissed into her face, “You did this!”

She forced Trixie against the tear, while Trixie tried so hard not to cry. “This is what you do, you little witch!” she asserted furiously. “You’ll never use your horn. All you can do is break things with it, and ruin things, and hurt ponies. I’m going to make sure of that,” Night said pulling Trixie eye to eye with a guiltily smug grin on her face as she said, “And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Trixie said nothing.

“Worthless!” Night shot out, throwing Trixie to the mattress and leaving her there, unfortunately sobbing now. “Stop crying!” the matron said in a deranged agitation, “You will not cry! You don’t deserve to cry, you horrible, horrible thing!”

That was the last word Trixie remembered, until the matron’s spell once again sucked her into a screaming emptiness of lonely despair. They wouldn’t replace her mattress either, so Trixie had to sleep around the torn gouge from then on, a silly, stupid, harmless reminder of what she was capable—reminder of what had happened, through no fault of her own, to cause that to occur.

Trixie was not alone in the orphanage. There were foals she swaggered with, and showed the world she was not to be trifled with, and there were foals she confided to in hushed tones when she was sure no other ponies could hear. There was all that strife and fear, but in it, as with all things, there was also camradery. She was something of a local hero among foals, for her defiance to the staff. But really Trixie wasn’t trying to be defiant; she had no idea what she was doing with herself. It was the simple fact that Trixie could not bring herself stop using magic. It was just too... useful! It was her special talent, after all. The shooting star on her flank was a cruel reminder, but it was also a comfort in a way. Trixie had something no other pony could match, one thing Trixie was unparalleled at, and foals came to respect her for this, for what she could do for them that a unicorn with mere mastery over levitation or illumination could not.

Her life may have been a different story, had Trixie’s talents at the time also included teleportation. But alas, she was not talented enough to master a complex spell like that so easily. Unable to escape, her use to the foals and her status as iconoclast were directly offset by the trouble she brought to the orphanage staff, and matron Tide in particular really seemed to have it out for her. Trixie could not count how many times she was, in her moment of triumph, wracked by that spell, and whenever she came out of it, an eternity later, Trixie always had a suppressor on her horn. And then the matron would come for her at night.

For all her bluff and bluster, Trixie was as broken as any foal in that orphanage. Her confidence was a sham, and her role as protector was an illusion and a lie. Even if she did protect many foals, it’s just what anypony would do were they in possession of her powers. The staff were very good at what they did, and Trixie was a very young foal when they got their teeth on her, so don’t laugh when you learn that she truly did think she deserved those punishments. She came to think the staff were being reasonable and she was the troublemaker, that there was something wrong with her that could not be fixed, something that doomed her to a life of endless opposition from the powers of authority. Even to this day, Trixie is not entirely convinced that is a lie. She may never feel good about herself again.

She could have forgiven that though. She could have forgiven that spell. She forgave them for their desperate cruelty, both in foal and adult flavors. She forgave that land for being forbidding, and she forgave those few prospective parents so very few, who entertained adopting Trixie only until the moment they saw the horn on her head. Trixie could have lived with that, and she did live with that, and she even managed to make some friends in the process.

No, what Trixie could never forgive them for, was they stole her childhood. One day, Trixie looked at herself in the mirror, and she didn’t see a frightened young filly anymore. She saw herself growing and changing, and blossoming into a young mare who could never, ever, ever be adopted. Thanks to that Tartarus spawned orphanage, every memory of the flexibility and vigor of her youth had been forever colored gray.

That was when Trixie knew that she had to get out of there. No regular meal or stiff, ragged bed to sleep in was worth this. Good behavior allowing her to escape the wrath of the orphanage staff was a pale, thin, unfulfilling reward, compared to the dream of escaping the orphanage itself. So staring at that hopeless filly in the mirror, in the nadir of her foalhood, the young Trixie Lulamoon would begin plotting her escape, and the true beginning of her life.

It wouldn’t do to just run away. You could die, and it was very easy to die out there. If you didn’t, or wouldn’t die, then they would catch you, and they were very good at catching you. No, Trixie needed somewhere to run to, somepony who would protect her. She needed adoption, but barring that she needed an ally outside of the walls. Trixie found that ally in the circus.

Their reasons may seem obvious in hindsight, but when the circus first came to the orphanage, Trixie was spellbound by the amazing feats they could perform. She wasn’t the only one, either. Every foal was mesmerized by the juggling and the tight rope walking, and the strangely wonderful ponies with mysterious abilities, and the laughing. Nopony laughed much at the orphanage, and when they did it was a cruel laugh at the irony of somepony else’s inferiority, but when Goobleberry got things rolling, it was just impossible not to laugh your head off.

Why was the circus coming to this horrible place? There is no doubt in Trixie’s mind that those performers would have razed that orphanage to the ground, had they the power to do so. Perhaps in a way that’s what they did, because what they brought the foals was hope. Hope for something beyond these walls, a drive and ambition to be more, when the staff required foals to only ever be less. This is not to say the circus was recruiting, as they certainly did not give Trixie an easy time of it, but they were... representing the outside world. Showing foals that this isn’t all there is to life. There were always more escapees after the orphanage was (with most reluctance) forced to admit the circus to perform, and some of the escapees didn’t return to the orphanage. Trixie would like to think they made it, but she has performed for many crowds and... she would still like to think that some of them made it. It’s a big world out there.

Her plan was foolproof. The circus would come to the orphanage, and Trixie would slip past the staff and, rather than running off screaming into the night, tempting as that may be, she would sneak into the tent of the ringmaster. There she would amaze him with her feats of persipacious prestidigitation, and secure a place for herself that the orphanage could not steal her from!

Best laid plans, as they say. Trixie had made a ...friend, you see. A pegasus named Bit Bright, who loved the exotic thrill of the circus as much as Trixie did. Pegasi were... clipped in the orphanage. It’s not a permanent injury, so it was seen as an effective disciplinary measure. Just harmlessly snip a young foals’s flight feathers as they grow in, and they’ll run around your feet, instead of... flying off screaming into the night. Pegasi were even rarer than unicorns down on the valley floor here, as any pegasus with an ounce of common sense would take their chances with the gryphons in the mountain roosts. But they were here in small numbers, and they were a sort of foal who should never have been in this orphanage.

Trixie always struggles to describe how wrong it is to clip a pony’s wings. Her horn suppressors were not really comparable: at once more unpleasant, and less soul crushing. The staff had to stop Trixie with walls, and barriers and guards, locking her down because of the fearsome power within her, just waiting to be released. A flightless pegasus has... no power within. She simply becomes unable to fly. This might seem self evident, but it’s more than simply stopping her from flying. Wings clipped, she tries to fly, and cannot, and it cuts to the very core of her being. There are no restraints needed. She has no power that must be withheld. She is just... broken. A shadow of herself. The only analogy Trixie could ever come up for this is if they ever decided to saw off Trixie’s horn. Trixie could not even... imagine what that would do to her.

Pegasi never lasted long at the orphanage. An easy target for bullying, quick to fall ill, and slow to recover. There wasn’t much medical care for sick foals, beyond quarantine and isolation, and being expected to sweat it out in bed. Trixie didn’t remember many foals from the orphanage, because her friendships were always so short lived. She was a survivor, but they would come and... go, and so rarely would they go in a way that was out the front gates with a loving family. Sometimes they would simply disappear, and the orphanage staff would say that they got adopted, but the orphanage staff would never have adopted a foal, without loudly proclaiming their successes for all to hear. No, Trixie knew exactly what happened to those foals, and she saw those fascinating ponies with the tantalizing freedom of their limitless wings, most often get taken away quietly in the night.

But Bitty was... also a survivor. She turned that hollow emptiness inside her into hot rage, and destroyed anyfoal who even thought about seeing her as an easy target. She was... strong, respectable. She was a pony Trixie came to look up to, and she would come to show a side of herself to Trixie, that no other pony got to see. Trixie didn’t understand why Bitty came to trust her so much, but after many nights of the poor filly crying herself to sleep with Trixie by her bedside, nights that Trixie never took to her advantage, Bit Bright knew in her heart that Trixie was somepony she could count on through thick and thin.

Trixie had assumed the opposite was true, but... well, this may come as a shock to you, but on very rare and catastrophic occasions, Trixie has been wrong before.

Author's Note

Trixie in Isolation

Trixie should have realized that clipping day came shortly before her circus plot would bear fruition. The day when any recovering pegasi were swiftly put in their place, and grounded before they could take off again. On that day, Matron Tide broke into Trixie’s dormitory room, unceremoniously clapping the horn protector on Trixie before she could so much as put in a word.

Trixie had learned over the years not to try to resist those things being put on her, as it was always easier to sneak out of them than it was to resist having them put on in the first place. If they didn’t know her capabilities, then she would always have at least a hidden advantage to use against them, if nothing else to buoy her spirits in times of despair. But as Trixie sank on weak knees, in the dizzying total halt of her magic being jerked to a stop, Trixie almost wished Night would just cast that spell on her, so that Trixie would awaken adjusted to this magic deadened feeling.

Almost.

“What—” Trixie managed to say as the matron began rifling through her belongings with abandon. That was the only word Trixie could have said, before she saw ...her.

They brought Bitty to see this, to witness what she had done, and for Trixie to see who had done this to her. Trixie’s friend was there in the hallway, with a desperate expression on her face, and the damning evidence of a collar around her neck, its sturdy leash trailing to where it was tied on the hoof of a staff pony. Pegasus foals didn’t get leash privileges for nothing. It required they be attended, and that they be exercised, and there was no budget for attendants, nor could any of the staff have been bothered. Pegasus foals didn’t often get leash privileges, because that made it the singlemost effective bargaining chip the orphanage possessed.

Bitty was to fly then, as far as the leash extended, until some excuse or infraction would get her clipped anyway. Even if one’s weak, atrophied wings could only keep oneself aloft for a few minutes at best, she was to feel that indescribable feeling that pegasi experience when they leave the ground. And Trixie was to feel the lowest despair, the abject sense of betrayal when you cannot even hate the traitor, but only yourself for being so naive and foolish to ever trust them. Then, much worse, after that.

Bit Bright might have resisted their lure if Trixie had included her in the escape plan, if Trixie had entertained for a minute the idea that her friend could be discovered by the circus too, as anything other than a hot headed, under-fed, weak-winged pegasus. But Trixie did not lie to her, and so Trixie would suffer the consequences of this, and soon so would they all.

Trixie couldn’t blame Bit Bright, but she sure as Tartarus could blame her.

At the time of Bit Bright’s betrayal, Trixie couldn’t forgive her so easily, as later in life, once she had had time to heal, and reflect. Now, Trixie could only feel a sort of detached, hopeless despair. Not even anger, but just emptiness she shared in what she saw in Bitty’s eyes. It was only a matter of time before the angry matron tore out the secret fliers Trixie had thought she’d hidden so well. They were from the last time the circus came, saved from being destroyed like all the other fliers. These ones had the circus tent layout on them, and a shakily mouth-drawn diagram of where Trixie planned to go.

Night waved them in Trixie’s face with a horrible sneer, that combination of smug pride and the terrified anxiety that every overcontrolling maniac feels, when somepony goes against their carefully planned order. Above that tormented grimace, the matron’s horn was glowing; glowing in a way Trixie’s horn could not, because Trixie was numbed, deadened, suppressed. She didn’t even listen to what words were in the matron’s screams, helpless to watch as the matron’s spell struck her with vengeance, and Trixie was lost in blackness, forever.

It always felt like forever, that is. When Trixie ...returned to being awake, she was alone in the quarantine ward. Not because she was sick, but because the doors there had locks on the outside, and the windows had bars on them. Trixie had no magic to sterilize the place because of her horn lock, so who knows how many plagues she could have contracted while she was in there! She almost wished one would though, because it was a week until the circus would come, and Trixie knew what happened whenever she woke up in here.

Hours that bled into minutes. That was Trixie’s life. Rearing up to peer out of that tiny window again and again, silently demanding that the sun go down and hurry it up, so that another day could pass, so that the circus could come and go, so all her dreams would die, and Trixie could be let out of this forsaken, wheat rotting—...room. A pony goes quite mad when she is so alone and cloistered. It becomes an almost intriguing experience. You start to see things, and talk to ponies who aren’t there. When they answer you back, Trixie is fairly sure that is a good indicator that you’re losing your mind. When the most exciting moment of your life is the daily meal pushed through your slot, you spend your hours rocking on the floor, or trotting around and around the boundary of the room, or kicking the bed, just to keep your mind off your inability to think clearly.

If that made any sense to you, then Trixie’s sincerest condolences, for there is nothing sensible about it whatsoever. Suffice to say, it gave Trixie plenty of time to think, and plan, and of course since her brain went to mush from the boredom after a day or so, her time was well and truly wasted. When the circus did come to the orphanage, Trixie had less of a plan, and more of a desperate, primal desire to see the lights and tents from her little window, and wish she were out there with them. She could see the colors of the acts at night, indirectly through the tent walls. Too distant and obstructed to make out anything clearly though. What Trixie could do most is hear. She could curve her ear outside of the bars, and let the sounds drift into it, like she was really there. The distant music that filtered across the courtyard to her little room, the bright, bold declarations of the performers and the ringmaster. The sound of foals—

The sound of foals cheering, as some strongpony or acrobat engaged their spirits was the purest joy to Trixie’s ears, but such a bittersweet joy. Trixie cried so hard when... when she heard the foals cheering. Not for any noble or tragic reason, but just because she wanted to see it too. That was all she could think anymore, is she wanted to see it too. And everything had gone so horribly wrong.

That was when, in Trixie’s tormented thought process, she came to the brilliant conclusion that she was going to buck having a plan, and do whatever it took to get out, even if it meant running screaming into the night. She... all too easily overrode her horn suppressor. Trixie’s plan to pretend she was incapable had worked. They’d gotten lazy and complacant, and given her an old one that Trixie had already had some time to weaken from within.

When it gave a fizzle pop and clattered uselessly to the floor, Trixie for the first time in a very long time felt a giddy sense of relief. Not for the rush of her magic returning, but for her sense of purpose, her determination that the wait was over. She was not going to take one more minute of this torment. There was something terribly liberating about having nothing left to lose. Trixie had a long way to go, but she had a lot of time, and it didn’t matter if you had isolation addled thoughts, if all you wanted was to work up your horn power.

...several minutes later, and Trixie was still determined, but she figured she had to get through the wall first, so that might take a lot longer than one more minute to end her torment.

Trixie spent the next days levitating pebbles, testing the steel of the bars, curling her telekinesis into that confusing space inside of a door lock, that most unicorns cannot even touch, since it is where they cannot even see. Trixie had years to practice at this specific task, off and on, and now days straight to fiddle with it repetitively. She knew it would be a simple task for her to unlock this door. Even disregarding her focus, practice and desperation, when it came to the end of the day and all things were accounted for, the simple truth remained that Trixie was very good at magic.

Her strength quickly returned, and Trixie took out her hatred on the wall, seeing in it the faces of her tormentors. They did not laugh at her; they just stared, and Trixie destroyed them one after the other. The matron Night Tide who hated Trixie for reasons she couldn’t fully understand. Spare Mint with his intolerance, and his cruel dispassion, feigning rage to scare foals into compliance. Matron Outsell pitting foal against foal and sabotaging their relationships so they would fight each other and not bother her. Trixie’s forceful strikes against the wall flashed brightly at first, but in the lights of the circus, nopony was going to notice one lonely cell in the quarantine wing with curious flashes inside it.

Soon, they were more efficiently carving ballistic dents into the stone of the wall, cracking and crumbling it. Trixie was just so full of... of some dark emotion, that hatred doesn’t begin to describe. It was a raw animal instinct she felt, to fight anything that came to stop her, the terrified and terrifying frenzy of the cornered wolf. She had removed her horn suppressor, so if they got her now, they would put a worse one on, and again, and again, and the matron would visit her at night and Trixie would have more bruises and older eyes, and nopony would ever adopt her and she would never see her family again. It wasn’t hatred of the staff that drove her. Trixie could have thought the orphanage staff were as malcious as fluffy bunny rabbits, and she still would have done what she did. Trixie’s life was focused utterly on one all important task. Trixie was not going to let that circus leave without her.

Indeed, that’s what brought about her panic at the end, is the tents rolling up, and the carts rolling away. From her little window, Trixie could see the circus ponies cleaning up and making for their trek across the bog to the next town, and she had not gotten through the wall yet! The solid stone was thick and sturdy, built to last a thousand foals trying to break through it. Trixie was no ordinary foal, but she faced no ordinary task before her either. It was either this or the door though, and while Trixie could open the one to her cell easily, the other thick metal doors with locks on the outside halls would stymie her long enough for an attendant to come find she’d escaped.

If she had been thinking better, Trixie would have used guile and deception to sneak past the attendants when they did come to feed her her meal, at a time when all the doors barring her escape would have been open except the one she had already defeated. But no, all Trixie could think is she had to get through that wall. The circus was on the other side, and she had to get through that wall.

Trixie redoubled her efforts, doing whatever she could to... to simply do something. Trying to think of ways they would try to stop her, ways to get around that. She even... Trixie should have known to exercise caution and restraint, but this is certainly not what occurred, when in a fit of pique she managed to melt her meal tray into molten slag. She tried to think about how she could overwhelm the attendants, frighten and dissaray them. How she could coax the ones at the gate away, so she would have time to operate the mechanism. How she could get this wall to chip away faster. How she wanted to levitate the whole circus to make them come back and wait for her.

There is a... spell that sets stone on fire. Trixie wishes she had never discovered it, in her hour of need. She would have done much better to discover teleportation, invisibility, or flight. Misdirecting pony eyes, Trixie could do through magic and trickery, but escaping a stone prison that forced her to see nothing but the same walls every single day? Trixie wanted those walls to be gone. She wanted them to go away, so they did. The magic she discovered looked like she was just eating them away at first, but then the crumbling dust flared with a fascinating greenish flame on the ratty floor rug. Trixie didn’t know what she was doing at the time, but she knew that she couldn’t hear the circus anymore, evening was coming, and she had to get out of here right away.

...it was later that evening that Trixie succeeded. Not in the way she expected, though. Trixie’s improvised, hate driven, stone removing spell was not so effective at digging. It needed a broad large flat surface to cast upon, and in that cramped dimple in the wall, Trixie had barely opened a hoof’s span through it to the outside of the quarantine wing. An immense accomplishment even for an older foal, but still not enough. It was with Trixie’s hoof stuck out that hole, trying to physically worry it larger somehow, that she startled suddenly at the sound of her attendant, demanding Trixie give her the food tray, for her evening meal.

One look at the twisted metal of her food tray’s remains, and Trixie began hyperventilating. They were going to know, and they were going to see she had no horn protector, and what she did to the wall. They were going to bury her alive! That’s what Trixie was absolutely certain of at the time. She was delirious from prolonged isolation, and certainly not of sound mind, so the nearest she could describe her thought process is that the only thing worse than this little room would be a little coffin, six feet underground, with barely enough space to move your hooves.

So they yelled again, and Trixie... Trixie unlocked the door. She pulled the door open to their stunned and startled faces, two mares, one as backup no doubt should this crafty monster of a filly manage to make her escape. Trixie bolted between them and their faces hardened and they rushed at her to knock her down. She saw a horn suppressor one had. She—she did what may have been the worst thing she’d ever done and perhaps worse than anything she’s ever done since.

First, she cast her barrier spell, a familiar pop as it appeared and pushed the orderlies away from her, and her away from them, making Trixie skid backwards on the flagstones. Then, she cast her new spell she... she had wanted the floor to collapse under them, to drop them down into the basement so she could make her swift escape. Trixie cast her spell on the floor, and the stone caught fire. And they caught fire. They were trying to escape—they were backed up against the wall, the horrible, impassable stone wall, and Trixie couldn’t... there was nothing she could do.

Trixie didn’t even know them. They had never hurt her terribly. She only knew those orderlies by the food tray they would take every day in her room at the sick ward. They gave her food, that’s all they did! She didn’t want her spell to do this! But those green flames trapping them hungrily consumed the floor, and then the walls and then... Trixie thinks she screamed. She remembers somepony screaming, besides them. She doesn’t remember much beyond that, besides running, and casting her spell again and again. Not to do... that, just to scare ponies away! She hadn’t even realized what she’d done, only that she had to get away. And that’s all it did, is scare ponies away, sending any charging determined adults scrambling back on their hooves as a barrier of flames kept them from harming her.

Trixie did run screaming into the night, come to think on it. She gallopped for the front gate heedlessly, and for every attendant that tried to tackle her to the ground, another was distracted with running past her at the building behind her, calling out in horrified alarm. Trixie did not look back. When Trixie reached the gate, she wasn’t sure whether to feel lucky or insulted. It was closed and it was latched, and for the first time in her life, it was left completely unattended. With a twinkle it was unlatched, and Trixie strained as she frantically turned the mechanism, grinding the doors slowly open, just enough for her to squeeze through. And then she was running screaming into the night.

Trixie stopped eventually, once she crested a hill. She turned to look back, and... everything was on fire. The whole orphanage looked like a solid sea of eerie green flame. It was so quiet from here, watching the orphanage from a distance as it burned down to its foundations, and then its foundations burned.

Trixie stopped even thinking about running. She just sat there on the ragged grassy hill, stunned at what she had done. It had been all over in an instant. They couldn’t take her back now. Nopony could go back now. All her years of torment were just... gone. And she... Trixie thought she killed somepony, or two, or two hundred. She had no way to tell what rescue efforts were underway, or who had managed to get out of there alive. It didn’t burn dirt, only igneous rock, so if ponies avoided the stone structures they should be fine. But what of the foals still inside that building? The circus had just left, so it was quite possible many foals, and orderlies, were still outside. But did ‘many’ mean all?

As Trixie watched her horrible, hateful home consumed in flames, she was sure of only one thing. That orphanage was gone. Trixie curled her tail around her hindquarters, and wondered how she could have been so stupid. She would have called upon any magic to get out of there, so why did it have to be that magic that answered her? It was obvious in retrospect, that she had been burning the rock instead of merely crumbling it, but beyond that, Trixie was utterly and totally lost about what had just occurred.

You may have suspected this, but an untrained unicorn can be a dangerous thing. There are well studied, practiced, safe pathways to the most powerful spells known to ponykind, but for a filly who doesn’t know any of that, all she can do is reach out blindly, seeking something that will save her. The magic of the world is a very crowded place, and even a blind unicorn will latch onto something, but what that something will be is unpredictable, unplanned, and very much a thing of chaos.

Trixie had been living in that orphanage for a very long time, never leaving its walls; it had become her entire world at some point, because she simply didn’t know enough of the world to remember anything more. By the time she escaped, everywhere that wasn’t the orphanage seemed as frightening and wild as the wildest wilderness to her now. She had wanted nothing more than to rid herself of those walls closing her in, sealing her in a cruel, dead stasis, but now that they were gone overnight, she felt terrified by the expanse before her. She felt terrified of herself in that expanse, for what she could do without any limits or safeguards to stop her, for what she did.

Trixie had no idea what had, and what was going to happen. She couldn’t live in this bog, nor could she just walk into a town and start stealing food. If they caught her again, she... she didn’t know how old she had to be to be tried as an adult. She didn’t even know if there were any other orphanages around here. Trixie actually knew very little about where she lived, all her years spent abandoned inside those walls. Trixie spent a good deal of consternated, ignorant pondering on that hilltop, until her frazzled brain finally recalled the whole point of this endeavor.

The circus! Of course!

Trixie was going to join the circus!

And the Guardians help anypony who tried to stop her.

Author's Note

Trixie Doesn’t Join The Circus

Trixie did not actually have a bullying mindset, when she forced the circus to make her join. The time it took was one factor in this. At first she may have had a mind to bully them into making her join, but before she could join them, Trixie had to find them. They had a half day’s head start on her, and Trixie didn’t know what direction they went in. She certainly wasn’t going to try to figure out a circus finding spell, worried that she’d inadvertantly set them on fire too. Once she found them, she would have gotten off scot free, she was pretty sure, as nopony was going to know what went on in that orphanage anyway.

Trixie supposes she is an evil mare for keeping in mind that if everypony died in the fire, then nopony would know it was her who did it.

But finding the circus took time. It took time, and risks, and failures. Trixie had gone the wrong way, it turns out, and that set her even further behind. She found that out when she walked up to a roadside settlement, sore from being unaccustomed to walking, or from moving around at all, and dirty from the mud she kept falling in.

Trixie didn’t even try to hide when walking the dirt streets of this run down settlement. What were they going to do, send her to the orphanage? She just bore her hoofsteps with confidence, and had an air about her that this was a young mare who knew what she was doing, though still admittedly a filly. Clearly, Trixie wasn’t a runaway, looking around like the world was her enemy, but just somepony’s filly, who got in a bit of a mess and was trying to act like she hadn’t. Because that’s how Trixie acted!

Trixie has always been rather good at putting on a show.

Trixie did get a few stares, when she went up to a group of ponies, and asked if the circus had been through here. It wasn’t enough to condemn her though, because then some pony blurted out, “Oh, they were here last week. I think they went to the orphanage next!”

Trixie quickly thanked him for his time, and trotted away fast, before anypony else could wonder why a filly was asking about a travelling circus. That left her in a bit of a situation though. She had no idea of geography or the layout of the towns here. All she knew was there were two roads leading out of the orphanage. The way she travelled, and the other direction. But how could she possibly catch them if she couldn’t find a shortcut to wherever they were going? Trixie also didn’t... want to go anywhere near what she’d done with that orphanage.

She had something of an epiphany though, that night, when her brain finally relinquished the awareness that travelling circuses aren’t always travelling. They stop, and stay in one place, for a week or more depending on attendance to their show. She didn’t know those details, but she did know that if the circus stopped every time, and she didn’t, then it wouldn’t matter if she had shorter legs than they did. It wouldn’t matter she went the wrong way at first. She could still catch up to them!

That was why Trixie roused herself just past dawn, from a surprisingly exhausted sleep given her recent stint in an utterly unstimulating environment. Awakening, she groaned and stuck a hoof out, from her hastily constructed shelter of all too familiar times past, and unburied herself from the sticks and brambles. Trixie had a long trip ahead of her, once she found the road they went down. A long trip that most notably lacked a brush for her mane and tail.

The road between settlements had been hacked and beaten out of this jungle-like, marshy land Trixie was unlucky enough to live in, so it was quite... possible to walk along this road, if a constant maintenance nightmare, very narrow in places, and a distinct hazard for wheeled wagons. A lone pony could make good pace on it, and Trixie was soon trotting confidently down the road she came from. It was only halfway back to the orphanage that Trixie realized, with a frightening and guttural growl behind her... that she was really hungry. Oh look, watercress.

Some time later, her stomach still queasy from the watercress, Trixie began shying to the other side of the road, as it passed by the turn-off to the orphanage. She didn’t want to get any closer to that than she had to. It had been a whole day, and the place was still burning. You could see it from the turn-off. Trixie hardly dared to look, but she saw some ponies standing there before it, with foals at their feet. Trixie wasn’t sure how to feel about that, some combination of blessed relief and terror at being held accountable. She didn’t even take time to see which foals had survived, because if she could see them, then they might be able to see her.

No, Trixie was never going to return to the orphanage, or what’s left of it. She supposed as she traveled the road in search of a sanctuary, that even the foals who survived were condemned to death. They had nowhere to go. They had no way to defend themselves out here, no roof to shield them from the frequent, driving, grey rain showers. They wouldn’t last a month without a place to live. They were just foals, not monsters like her.

This sort of rumination did not leave Trixie in the most confident, or arrogant of moods by the time she reached the town she was heading for. She wasn’t feeling like bullying anypony. And to her dismay, the circus hadn’t even stopped here! It was just a waystation of a town really, not a place for foals, but a place to supply and stock up before going towards the craggy mountains in search of minerals or riches. This was starting to look bad, because Trixie couldn’t walk for days on end. She had been sedentary for so long, she could hardly walk at all, at this point! She had to stop at that waypoint, but she had no money, or clout, or any of that adulthood that commanded respect. Trixie was in the worst time of her life: still powerless as a foal, but too old to be treated as one, at least not by these ponies.

Her solution in the end was to hide and steal. It worked well, because ponies expected a thief out here, but not a unicorn who could pick a padlock from the other side of a canvas wall. Trixie took nothing more than what she would have earned, had she trusted them enough to try and earn it. Not out of the goodness of her heart. Trixie simply couldn’t carry much while she was a lone pony, without any sort of carriage or wagon. She found a pony’s coinpurse in a lock box behind a desk in that pony’s little guard shack, and under the cover of night many ponies suddenly found reasons to be elsewhere while Trixie raided a coat closet at a tavern. Boots would have slowed her down too much, but Trixie did find a nice sturdy and more importantly oiled cloak. It was too big for her of course, but such is the burden of a thief. You can’t expect other ponies to size their clothing to fit the one who steals it.

With her cloak around her neck its hood covering her head, Trixie stole away into the night. The hem was torn and ragged from where she hastily cut it away, using the extra fabric to stitch together improvised pockets on the inside to contain the fruits of her labor. There she could hold some coinage, the two knives she had found, and the spoon, a hair brush, and a flint stone along with its striker. Her final pocket she had stuffed full of the densest, driest bread she could find in their food stores. She didn’t know how long she was going to have to travel, but she wanted to put off eating more watercress as long as possible.

Most of this was unnecessary it turns out, because Trixie found the circus performing in the very next town. It was no hardship or terrible trial. She just walked, crawled really, over yet another ridge, her muscles screaming at her to lay down and go to sleep in her dormitory at the orphanage, and then there they were.

The tents were there just like she remembered. They even had the same layout, the one she hoped they would repeat to aid in her escape. Brightly colored painted canvas, all lit up with lanterns and glowflies in the last fading light of the evening, ponies milling around, booths set up to sell or amaze, strange looking ponies with strange abilities arousing everypony’s curiosity, tempting them on the outside with what they may find in the big top.

Trixie stopped being able to see the circus because her eyes were too watery. She needed to wipe them off to see it again, but she was too weary to even lift her hooves, and no part of her clothing was clean enough to wipe her eyes with, even if she had barely the strength to lift a feather by now. So Trixie just folded her legs on the side of the path and slept. With the circus for her night light, Trixie slept until dawn on the road into town.

Was this the end for Trixie’s troubles? Far from it! Was it the beginning in a new chapter of her life? Even this was to be denied, pushed back by an infuriatingly stubborn pony known as Hat Fancy, the ringmaster of the Fantastical And Refined Cirque Equestria!

Oh does that... does it really? Trixie had not considered... but no matter!

Hat Fancy was a beautiful stallion, slim and tall, with a dashing green coat, and a golden blonde mane and tail. His cutie mark was what he did best, a megaphone between two stars. This stallion’s hoof would come down coldly, and cruelly, refusing Trixie’s earnest entreaty even though she was the very key to their future as a performing group! For when Trixie approached the stallion, in all his green gold glory, and said to him that she had command of powerful magics, magic that could change the very nature of the world, that her grasp on the arcane could lift the unliftable, and move the unmovable, Hat Fancy just replied in a very sarcastic tone,

“So, you can use magic.”

“Yes, that is what Trixie implied!”

“You’re a unicorn.”

“You got something wrong with that?!”

“...beat it, chick.”

“What?! Trixie is giving you an opportunity here!”

“Are your parents around?” he said, leaning to glare at her. “Seriously, go find somepony else to bother. Everyfoal wants to join the circus, so just go find your parents and tell ‘em you want to be an acrobat or somethin’.”

Not only did Hat refuse her offer, but he had the gall to tell Trixie to go find her parents! She was horrified and enraged when he said that. All her life leading up to this moment, and just, go find her parents. JUST GO FIND HER—

Needless to say, Trixie was acting like a chick, despite being practically a fledgeling, and she may have had some very sour words for the ringmaster. He may have called for his head clown to gently escort her off the premises, and said clown may have done so, while inserting Trixie’s entire head into her mouth. And Trixie may have run away then, screaming that they’d be sorry they ever told her to go away, that she was a freak just like them, and that they’d have to let her in. Having not otherwise displayed any emotion other than plentiful cheer, said clown may have slightly frowned at Trixie’s statement, about how her and every bog damned pony in this circus was a freak. To this day, Trixie regrets having made that clown sad. But all Trixie’s other reactions were entirely justified!

Be that as it may, Trixie found herself at a serious quandary. She dared not show her face at the orphanage or what’s left of it, nor was she safe in the wilderness, nor could she safely abide in any settlement she could find, without the risk of being caught, or worse. Her only way out was this circus, who summarily denied her so much as a chance to demonstrate her talents, on the mere assumption that a unicorn’s magic is not a worthy act that could possibly impress anypony, despite the pegasus acrobats and the earth pony strongponies and clowns. It was not Trixie’s first encounter with tribalism, but it certainly was the one that stung the most. That Hat Fancy himself was a unicorn didn’t lessen the sting. The night came again, with the circus in town, and Trixie couldn’t enjoy it at all. Trixie had to save her money for food since she had no hope of finding any in the future, and she was no longer some poor bedraggled orphan, at an orphanage who paid for her to see the circus (as required by the royal funds they received.)

Trixie couldn’t enjoy any of the circus, because she just had to hide away from all the ponies who could have recognized her, with no pony in the world able to protect her, or care for her. Her tears of anger turned to tears of sadness that night, as the terrible loneliness of losing everything wracked her young body with sobs. Nopony was there to hear them though. Trixie didn’t allow there to be anypony there to hear them. So she got to spend another night of an empty stomach, crying herself to sleep.

Not an auspicious beginning to her heroic escape from the terrible orphanage. Do not think Trixie regretted her escape though. She awoke in the night as she sometimes did, that night, terrified that she had been returned to that awful place, that Trixie was awakening in her room, and the matron was just seconds away from demanding to inspect their beds. But the chill of the night wove through her fur and Trixie was soothed by the strange sounds both of distant pony revelry and the ululations of the creatures of the swamp. Trixie realized the orphanage was gone, and she awoke feeling grateful and relieved, despite the disaster of her situation, to be finally free.

Trixie developed a plan that morning, a plan that would surely secure her future for many years to come. Squaring her shoulders confidently, Trixie faced the town with its colorful circus tents, turned on her heels, and ran away.

There was still only one road from this settlement to the next. That road, she ran down. Most settlements only had a small armful of ways to neighboring ones, due to the difficulty of road maintenance in this particular land, though there certainly were many ways in and out of Star City. Trixie was not headed for Star City though, but a nameless villa beyond the one the circus was in. Trixie made her way swiftly to this place, which she confirmed was not merely an outpost, but a place with families and foals and craftsponies who would make a splendid audience for Trixie’s first big performance.

To say Trixie could not live off of stealing from other ponies is not quite an accurate assessment. What she was convinced is that prolonged thievery would result in her capture, but she had no fear for securing herself nutritious food and clean water on a temporary basis. She was more than capable of doing so, from ponies who expected not a mare of her particular talents skulking through their village and raiding their stores. And thankfully this time, Trixie stole good, nutritious food like hay bars, corn cakes and peanut butter. Her time at the orphanage had taught her one thing, which was a love for food that filled you in a genuine way, and lasted a long time until the next meal. Whatever happened in the future, Trixie was no longer at risk of succumbing to the irresistable urge of soup cooking in a pot, now that she was relatively well versed in the arcane art of feeding herself.

Trixie had to eat well, you see. It was an obligation, because she couldn’t be a sallow, hollow-eyed orphan for her performance. She had to be bright eyed. She had to glow with health. She had to be the sort of filly who you wouldn’t ever see growing up in a place like this. She had been their demon in the dark for so long, and now she was going to become their idol. Trixie’s final pièce de résistance was a mysterious cloak of deepest blue. An ordinary, mundane cloak of deepest blue, but made mysterious by the attitude in which Trixie wore it. Trixie made it to fit her body by drastically shortening it. She had to ensure that ponies would not recognize their missing curtains, so she used some cheap silver paint she found to decorate her accouterment, feeling inspired as she tried to transform it into the stunning starscape Trixie saw above her every night, in the wilderness or on the trail, when other ponies hid away in their shelters and wagons.

It was poor compensation for the cold and damp, and monster attacks, but Trixie did have to admit she really appreciated the strangely inspiring sight those curtains of stars presented overhead, way up there in the sky. She wasn’t as good at painting it. But she made do.

Trixie’s act prepared, she executed her plan. “Presenting the amazing, magical pony!” she shouted, atop the town stage / hanging platform. Trixie was not very experienced with coming up with memorable tag lines at this point, but she had plenty of time to learn. Her thin, reedy voice was not carrying far beyond the stage anyway. When nopony paid attention to the filly hollering at them from on that stage, Trixie lit her horn and filled the air with the bright flash of sparkling stars. It was not aimed to impress ponies, oh no, this bit was only aimed at getting their attention. The next bit was aimed to impress them.

Trixie presented herself as what she thought was professional, but may have come more off as desperate, saying, “The magical pony will perform feats never seen before! Her magic is so powerful she can do things you would never think possible! Watch as she amazes you with her show stopping skills!” With Trixie’s horn alight, the trees behind the stage bowed down, as if in deference to the filly of blue. As the trees restored their dignity, the hoof mirror she had stolen hovered above her, reflecting rays of purple light in a five pointed star pattern around her, that glittered in rays of magically enhanced light beams.

This auspicious beginning of Trixie’s stage career was met in the very beginning, with a challenge.

“Oh look, a unicorn using magic,” a brownish earth pony stallion said, in a mocking voice. “What are you going to show us next, how to make your horn glow?”

“A-as you can see, Trixie’s sorcery has already made her horn glow!” Trixie said, trying not to shrink back at the stallion’s approach. Another stallion, likely his friend, said,

“That’s just ordinary magic, filly. You think we were born yesterday?”

“I could do that with my hoof tied behind my back!” a greyish mare shouted from the ponies walking by behind them. She wasn’t even a unicorn.

The lead stallion laughed at that, a cruel careless laugh that made Trixie feel calm, and very focused. The mirror fell to her feet, as her magic started to creep along his body. He was a bulky stallion, very dense, and well built, and far too heavy for even an adult unicorn to lift in whole.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he shouted, noticing the glow covering him too late, as Trixie easily overpowered his bioresistence, and severed his earth connection in the most literal way possible, leaving him flailing helplessly in mid-air.

“Watch in awe,” Trixie chirped shrilly around her shining horn, “As the amazing magicalest pony teaches this naysayer how to fly!”

And then she started to swing him around in the air.

“Put me down!” he shouted, and then “Woah! Woahh!!” as his heavy body swung around like it were being carried by an invisible hummingbird with extremely powerful wings. Trixie tipped him upside down, spilling out the contents of his saddlebags.

“Oops!” she said cheekily as what appeared to be his carpentry tools spilled to the floor. She set the stallion down and floated his tools instead, and the other ponies were looking at her now! They were looking at her in ...fear...

Trixie stared at them almost as uncertainly as they stared back at her. Why weren’t they applauding? Trixie noticed out of the corner of her eye that one of the tools was a hammer, with a wooden handle had a long crack through it, that was bound up with tight cloth tape to hold it together. She immediately dropped the other tools and focused on the hammer. “A-a-and thank you for your performance, sir!” she said urgently before anypony could run away, or think that this wasn’t supposed to happen. “For your trouble, your hammer shall be...”

Trixie’s magic glowed brightly, as she rewound the very strands of time to when that hammer was created, remembering the grain of the wood and using that to heal its wound, sealing the very cells together again until it was one seamless whole. “Repaired!” she declared triumphantly, spinning the cloth off the hammer

“Hey!” he shouted as she returned it to his hoof. “That was my...” That was the extent of his diatribe, before Trixie’s arcane hoofiwork become known to him, and with a few practice swings of his hammer, Trixie was in. The townsponies only wanted a few meager repairs at first, but Trixie didn’t just help them. She got their imagination going. And thanks to her unorthodox upbringing, Trixie was much better at fixing ponies than she was at fixing things.

Swamp blight is... an affliction that doesn’t usually kill foals. The damp air and certain suspected toxins lead some foals to contract just a touch of pneumonia. They usually survive it... somewhat weaker than before. It’s not a death sentence, but it’s not a good omen for one’s continued health. Trixie only knew that the tiny foal was coughing, and that her little chest didn’t feel right inside, and that Trixie had just been thrust into things way over her head. But Trixie boasted, and she remained calm, and she tried her best.

Clearing out the fluid in the lungs was easy enough, but the sense of wrongness persisted. It wasn’t exactly dark magic but... something like dull embers that were quenched painfully with the surface of the foal’s alveoli. Yes, hearth magic does not translate well to language or demonstration, but suffice to say, the usual hearth solution is to find things that feel wrong, and wiggle around with your magic to find what would feel right. Not the safest way to treat ponies, and only powerful unicorns (need she say) have much luck at it, but at the very least this foal did not summarily burst into flames.

In the end, when the mare held her quiet child, looking at the peaceful infant foal with a desperate adoration, it gave Trixie a strange feeling: one of satisfaction, but also one of fierce... jealousy. She was unable to ruminate on this however, for that was when the rest of the town started to swarm Trixie, demanding of the filly cures to all their ailments. You may think this was what she was unprepared for, but Trixie was expecting this. She had years of experience fighting foals who wanted to take advantage of her, and her magic. This hostility was something Trixie could deal with, something she had even prepared for.

Snapping out of the paralysis that strange... reaction had caused her, Trixie leaped backwards onto her stage, and shouted down at the crowd, “And just who thinks they are worthy to receive the magic of the most magical mare the world has ever seen?”

Everypony shouted at once, but Trixie had the ability to shout louder. “All who think you are worthy, come to the Fantastic And Refined Circus of Equestria! Trixie will be performing in the big tent.” Then she pulled her trump card, and stomped her hoof on the stinkpuff she’d snuck up on the stage, preparing to make her escape. The swamp gas released by those fungi is quite flammable, so after escaping its concealment, the bright flash of fire Trixie’s horn spark caused easily attracted the audience’s eyes to the stage, where Trixie had ‘vanished.’ In their fascination with the gout of fire, nopony noticed to the side, the outline of what may have been a little purple glow worm, gallopping away from it. The fact that the crowd then had to put out the resulting fire on their stage may have had some distracting influence too, but Trixie firmly stands by the claim that she had not meant for that to happen.

Trixie’s grand scheme, you see, was to capture the hearts and minds of the townsponies, not literally of course. It was something she learned at the orphanage, when other foals would pretend that Trixie had said something, so that she would pay the price for breaking promises she’d never made. The instigator would be far off in another part of the dormitory, while Trixie had to deal snout-to-snout with all the accusations, and the hurt betrayal, whether real or feigned. Trixie wasn’t the sort of pony who would do that to other foals, because either foals were new and unsure of themselves, friends with her, or afraid of her, so the trick was more useful against her than for her. Trixie remembered it though, and remembered how it was an excellent trick against those higher than you, those who had a greater reputation to lose, should trust in them be shaken.

By pretending to be a preview to the real thing, she would amaze and bedazzle the crowds, and when the circus came to town without her, they would pay the piper! She imagined on cold nights, that snooty ringmaster pony run out of town, because he had refused to accept Trixie into his troupe, and now could not produce her on demand. He would be begging at her hooves to get her to join, her audience demanding it of him every time they went in the big tent, and found only floating, and minor conjuration alongside the tumblers and tightrope trotters.

Unfortunately, Trixie may have overestimated her talents at showmanship, and underestimated just how close she had been to disaster that first time. It turns out, that was a fluke. The second town she performed in, she once again began in fine form, “Presenting the amazing magical mare!” she called out atop her improvised stage of crates and discarded planks. Just like she remembered her mother doing, once long ago. But when Trixie dazzled them with her incredible star magic, the responses she got were lukewarm at best. And at worst...

“Gah, my eyes!”
“You stupid filly, are you trying to blind us?”
“What is this supposed to be, a joke?”
“I’ll be telling your parents about this!”
“Are those my planks? You little thief!”

Trixie’s stammered apologies went unheard as that last mare pushed her roughly off the stage, Trixie landing on her tail on the dirt of the road. Rather than reclaim her planks though, the mare ignored them entirely to round on Trixie stating hotly, “I’ll teach you to steal my hard earned work!”

“You can have your planks!” Trixie cried in panic, “Trixie didn’t know they were yours!” The mare raised a hoof at her anyway, a thousand repetitions of this at the orphanage running through Trixie’s head. Trixie braced for the inevitable beating, when Trixie realized... she didn’t have a horn suppressor on, and her eyes snapped open.

The mare didn’t lay a hoof on Trixie, but instead found herself levitated into the air mid swing, missing Trixie’s beautiful snout by mere hairs!

“She’s using magic!” a stallion shouted out. As if that weren’t the whole point of a magic act.

“Somepony stop her!” another mare cried, and the two ponies who rushed at Trixie found themselves summarily tossed in the air, along with the first one who was moaning with fright at her helpless state, and her height of 3 feet above the ground.

“This is only the first of many amazing feats Trixie will perform, at the Fantastic, Refined Circus of Equestria! This simple juggling act is but a preview of what you will see!” Trixie began skillfully moving these ponies through the air, as though they were being thrown from her hooves like juggling balls. “When I perform next week I will cure your foals, and make your dreams come true, and show you things you’ve never even seen before, ever!” She spread her hooves triumphantly at that, as three whole ponies soared high above behind her, awaiting the thundrous applause.

But, not a hoof so much as disturbed the dirt underneath her. Trixie opened her eyes, dropping back to fours and realized finally that the crowd was not impressed by her amazing magical feat of levitation. They were staring up at it though, and murmuring frightfully.

“No pony could do that...” she heard one say.

“Trixie can!” Trixie shouted at the mare. “Trixie is the most magical mare—”

“That’s no pony! That’s no pony at all!” came a frightened response.

“She is a pony!” Trixie protested, shrinking back at the sudden stares. “She r-really i-is a p-pony!” she stammered losing her composure most terribly. And then the words came from that crowd that made her blood run cold.

“It’s a monster.”

Trixie’s magic died. There were three heavy thuds, and three pained shouts behind her. She turned and saw the ponies she levitated were—were on the ground and they had fallen! “Trixie is sorry!” she squealed, looking with fear at one cursing, and holding her leg in pain. “Trixie can fix this!” Trixie said frantically, “F-f-for my next trick...” Her magic enveloped the mare’s leg and oh dear sweet Guardians but there was a sliver of bone in there, like the mare’s bones cracked like glass, jutting at a terrible angle deep within her flesh. Trixie didn’t know which way it was supposed to go, so she enveloped her own filly leg in magic to compare and—yes, that was what she needed to do! She set straight the mare’s—

The mare screamed long and hard. Suddenly everypony was running and screaming. Trixie didn’t know what to do. She had repaired the mare’s leg! She made it—no, no not that short! In a stroke of brilliance, Trixie scanned the mare’s other leg in the chaos, and imagined a mirror in-between them. “Stop screaming!” she screamed at the mare. “She’s fixing you! She is!” but the mare would not stop, pain giving way to panic as she could not pull her injured leg free of Trixie’s magic. Trixie couldn’t let the mare go; she would just break again! She had to make her whole. She had to—with a brilliant flash, the bone fragments were swiftly knitted together.

The mare was crying at this point, crying and blubbering like an adult should never ever ever do. Trixie wishes she could say this was the most scared she had ever been in her life, or the most guilty. But it was pretty high on the charts. Trixie released the mare, and the mare didn’t seem to realize she could walk, just crawling, lurching away from Trixie, finally finding her hooves and gallopping away. Trixie sank to her belly watching her go, trying to figure out where she had gone wrong. After some deliberation, Trixie came to the conclusion that part of what she did wrong was not immediately running screaming out of town as fast as her hooves could carry her, when a dozen hooves thundered around her dismayed form in a circle. Trixie looked up and... spears.

She was surrounded by spears.

Author's Note

Trixie finally makes her big debut!

Trixie Joins the Circus

Trixie knows what you’re thinking. This is the moment when Trixie, mistress of magic, finally mastered teleportation, for truly her magic is powerful and without bounds. No, as a matter of fact, Trixie did not master winking then, and while quite fearsome in its own right, Trixie’s magic is certainly not limitless. When Trixie has frightened a whole town of ponies into calling their guards, gathering their weapons, rushing up and pointing them at her, she is officially in trouble.

Trixie had a few options at this point: make a magical shield, and wait for these ponies to poke a hole in it, and her. Levitate all the ponies at once and escape, in the two seconds it took her to collapse from magic exhaustion. Bludgeon a way through with some sort of improvised club. Fail to skillfully grasp and redirect all their spears at once in other directions, causing her untimely death when a few got through. Or attempt to reason with them, that Trixie is merely a performer and a pony, not some kind of monstrous filly who tosses adult ponies around like they were pine cones.

“What are you...” a rusty voiced mare among the spear holders said in a hoarse whisper.

Bludgeon, it is, then.

“She’s lighting up!” one shouted, as if that needed to be announced, before they all attempted to poke holes in her at once. They hit a hard shield of magic, one that would only buy her a second of time, but she needed only half of one. Trixie borrowed a plank one more time, sadly damaging it beyond repair, by tearing it off of the stolen nails holding it to the fallen stage. Her shield blinked out and it seemed like everypony at once decided to thrust their spears into her supple young hide, much like when bog rats attempt to swarm you as one. Trixie was very good at dealing with bog rats, though. She jumped directly at the spear in front of her, pouring all her magic into the plank’s velocity, trusting her magic would smack the pony out of the way before the spear pierced her nose.

It did. Even as Trixie leapt to impale herself on the spear, the pony’s face barely registered surprise as she, and the instrument of pointy death, were driven violently to the left, leaving Trixie soaring through blissfully empty, free space. Behind her, the spears struck nothing but dirt as the ponies lunged before they even saw her escape their circle. They whirled, trying to follow her, to keep her from growing into some kind of hideous bug-like monstrosity and devouring all their foals, or whatever they thought was going to happen.

Trixie didn’t give them the chance to catch up though, galloping strongly forward and fleeing for the road out of the city. They were much bigger and faster than her, so they would catch up, but Trixie was now prepared for that eventuality. She was prepared by what she still held in the purple glow of her magic floating alongside her, as the settlement’s ramshackle cabins rushed by, a solid wooden plank. Trixie waited until the ponies had given themselves to the chase, their strong, fully grown, earth legs easily outpacing her, as they closed the gap in her narrow lead, and in doing so lined themselves up into a nice orderly column.

Trixie then floated the plank horizontally behind her, a sudden burst of her magic propelling it with great force backwards, gratified to hear the sound of shouts and clatters and crashes, and falling ponies who were hit by running ponies who were themselves hit by more running ponies. Trixie was not nearly a saintly enough pony to ensure that none of her pursuers had met the business end of one of their own spears that the rear guard had pointed her direction, but she certainly did her best to hope that nopony got hurt, as she ran screaming out of town.

Trixie had much better luck in her third stop. Which is to say, she learned from her past lessons, completely failed to win anypony over, and had an angry crowd chasing her out of town. But this time they didn’t think to bring spears, just ordinary rocks, so Trixie counts it as a win, overall. The fourth attempt, she got captured, and just a teensy bit tied to a stake. She sort of deserved that though, because somepony in the audience said she was stupid for not being able to ...perform certain tasks, and she sort of... pretended to turn him into a carrot, and then ate it. They had a hard time getting her pyre to catch fire though, because she kept zapping out their matches while she was secretly untying her ropes. Not to mention getting anything to burn in this muggy wood was a challenging task.

Bruised, scorched, starving despite her attempts at thieving food, and magically exhausted, it really was no surprise that the overenthusiastic young Trixie got caught for good on her fifth attempt. She was exceedingly wary, looking around for any pony watching her as she crept up to this town’s staging platform. Just a wooden platform with stairs, she at least didn’t have to build one herself. That hadn’t gone so well in the second town. There was nopony guarding it, or using it apparantly. Just right for her moment of glory.

Trixie poked her head over the edge, looking around, before sliding another foraged stinkpuff gingerly across its surface, then dropping back down below the level of the stage. She popped her nose up to the stage again, sneaking a hollow shower pole to give the appearance of bending steel, and a flower pot she was going to try to biggify.

Nopony was watching yet, just walking back and forth along the main causeway in front of the stage. She snuck a few more props on, and then leaped onto the stage! Well, onto the edge of the stage, and wiggled her rump up the rest of the way onto the stage. She was almost on her belly as Trixie crept to the front, needing to wow the crowd but really, really not wanting them to throw rocks at her again.

At last, with nopony the wiser, Trixie stood up straight, and then reared up boldly and announced, “Presenting! The really amazing magical—” that was when the diving pegasus snatched her right off the platform, carrying her squealing into to the sky. Before Trixie could so much as orient herself despite the dizzying vertigo, the pegasus holding her threw her into the air!

As it has been said, pegasi do not often or at least not willingly come down into the valley here. A hoofful of unlucky, crippled foals, and perhaps one mare seen in passing. That was Trixie’s flight experience. Trixie had never had her own hooves off the ground before. And now, for the first time in her life, she was 300 feet off the ground, in freefall.

The second pegasus caught something that may have once been Trixie, but was now nothing more than a panicking screaming mess. They were flying forward through the sky faster than Trixie had ever gone before, sliding through the air like greased wheels. Trixie barely had time to even perceive how fast they were going, before her world turned upside down and spun again as the second pegasus threw her in a graceful twirl back to the first pegasus.

Trixie was certainly alarmed enough to wink to safety, at this moment in her life. Unfortunately, teleportation takes a good deal of time to prepare, especially when one has not become exceedingly proficient at it. Furthermore, to have an idea of her destination, Trixie would have had to at least be able to tell what direction was up. Very wisely, and skillfully, they would not let Trixie rest for a second, keeping her in utter, helpless motion, a motion so gut wrenching that her brain shut down so fast, that Trixie didn’t even perceive the moment she passed out.

The mare held Trixie gently then, Trixie suspects, as they spiraled in descent to a circle of wagons. Trixie would have loved to see the camp from above, but her regrettable unconsciousness was very important for their continued safety. She only regained consciousness much later, her mind awakening sluggishly from its unplanned outage. When had Trixie fallen asleep? Hadn’t she been performing, just now? Did she fall asleep on the stage? Sliding her eyes open, the sight of iron bars had Trixie’s eyes widen, and the sudden rush of memories coming back had her scrambling to her hooves, backing up and looking around wildly and...

And she couldn’t feel her magic.

“No...” Trixie lifted a shaking hoof up to her horn. She couldn’t feel her horn, because there was a thick sheathe in the way. Its magic parasitizing upon her own, holding itself tightly onto her horn, and dampening any sense she had of her powerful magical ability, Trixie had a horn suppressor.

“Not again!” she screamed, gripping at it and gasping at the pain, but pushing on it with both hooves in sheer desperation. “Get it off! No, please! Trixie is sorry!” she shrieked in panic, “Trixie is sorry, Matron! Trixie did bad, please, please let Trixie go! Please no more I don’t want to go back no more!”

That was for the most part word-for-word what summoned the other circus performers, to come barreling into the wagon, in which Trixie was caged along with the other monstrous creatures. Well, it’s not entirely fair to say the circus thought that’s where she belonged. They didn’t know what to do with Trixie at this point, and Trixie’s cage wasn’t closed or locked. But for Trixie, she was back at the orphanage again. She was imprisoned, and her magic blocked, and it was only a matter of time before she felt the punishing strikes that came for magical disciplinary infractions. She must have been a pitiful sight indeed, because somepony went right into her cage and pulled her out, not worrying that she would override the blocker, nor that her frantic lashing of hooves would hurt their flesh, Trixie was unable to escape being held by a giant, massive, monstrous

...and very soft pony, with blue fur and a deep pink mane. A pony Trixie knew, and loved from afar.

When Trixie had returned to simply crying again, and regained enough of her wits about her, Trixie wiped the tears from her eyes with a pastern, looking up in awe at the only pony who had ever managed to make Trixie laugh, a very large blue pony’s face, smiling down on her. Trixie was being held on said pony’s rather monumental belly. Trixie felt herself begin to be slightly rocked.

“... is Trixie at the circus?” Trixie asked, in the quiet that came when she stopped filling the air with screaming. The pony didn’t answer.

“Gooble, you are a Tartarian miracle worker,” came a gruff voice to the side of this massive pony, a pony on which Trixie seemed to be cuddled, somehow.

Down the blueberry pony mountain, another pony was standing on the ground, outside of a large wooden wagon, whose stairs led up to an open door, an open iron cage within knocked askew. His own mane and tail were a thick brown, cut short to reduce the risk of any snags or grabs, a dark contrast in color to his lime green fur. His cutie mark was that of an upraised paw of a big cat, but his talents were better shown by the ugly scars drawn down his barrel, where something remniscent of his cutie mark had attempted and failed to make pony cutlets out of him. He had a fearsome moustache, groomed in sharp, square edges around his muzzle, that made it always look like he was frowning. It was very rarely an inaccurate statement to make.

Once he spoke, the stallion turned away from Trixie and this strange mare, walked up into the wagon she had escaped, and righted the cage in there. Trixie recognized it as the cage she had awoken in. He did not come out again, the noises of his movements remaining within, so Trixie took stock of her situation. She was resting on a very large pony who was in a small clearing lined by a circle of wagons in the woods. The road was nearby, this being one of the few turn-off points that a caravan could rest at.

The circus was between towns currently. Well, not at a scheduled stopping spot, but they had hurried their hooves to catch up with Trixie, after having been chased out of the previous town for releasing uncontrollable monsters on them. The nearest next town’s fires could be seen at night from this location, but the circus had been for the most part incognito as they planned their strategy.

Trixie knew none of this at the moment, and merely wriggled out of the larger pony’s grasp, sliding down her smooth belly to a secure footing of three hooves on the ground. Trixie’s fourth hoof she brought to her horn, which still had the inhibitor attached to it. Trixie’s initial panic had been one of great confusion however, and once she was sure that the punishment was not coming to her, having her magic dampened became what Trixie had come to know as merely another part of her weekly, sometimes daily routine. The inhibitor was cheap silver, nothing like the polished obsidian ones that took Trixie days to unravel their secrets. She could have probably blown it to pieces on the spot, but instead she calmly bided her time, and quietly slunk around.

There was the ringmaster hurrying towards her, so Trixie darted behind a wagon covered in splashy stars and painted bursts of light, illuminating a pair of flying ponies. She didn’t continue running, but crawled sideways underneath the wagon, crouching there. Her horn was useless, but her hooves were not, so when three ponies trotted up to her location, a precisely tossed series of rocks clattered on the stage of the wagon opposite from hers. That was where the ringmaster, and two others followed, a rather petite looking purple mare, and a longer, lanky pale yellow stallion.

The ringmaster himself was a very glowing aquamarine, with pale blue eyes and a brilliant red mane, with the cutest little swoosh in front. He wore a cape and bow tie ensemble he often wore even outside of stage performances. The cape was black with white stars on it, to contrast his rather attractive color combination.

Trixie... isn’t ready to talk about it yet.

They all went thundering off after Trixie’s manufactured hoofbeats, while she crept out from her hiding spot and went looking around on her own. It could be useful to learn more about this circus, to learn of their weaknesses, and get more ideas on what mysterious secrets they had. Trixie needed to learn how to make foals laugh and cheer, instead of run screaming just because their hair was a little on fire. And perhaps she could find some clue why the circus went through so much effort to kidnap her, what dark secrets were going on in this veneer of a carnival.

There were six wagons here. The one across from her when she emerged had a fiercely roaring burleo painted on its side in full color. The one she hid under, home to the acrobats, was even more bold in declaring their importance to the world. Besides those, there was a wagon that was obviously the clown wagon from its ridiculous appearance of bright colors, polka dots and eaves that appeared to be gingerbread icing. It was larger than any of the others, a trial to pull along to say the least, but also home to the most ponies in number, of this ragtag bunch.

Trixie had just discovered the snuffed out fire pit still smouldering from the night before, when they found her again. With a foolish shout, the ringmaster pointed her way and started gallopping toward her. But Trixie was not ready to talk with ponies just yet. It wouldn’t hurt to look around a little more, in case they kicked her out again when they did capture her, despite apparantly foalnapping and imprisoning her, and trying to kill her magic. No, Trixie did not want to talk to them right now.

Instead, Trixie improvised, kicking into the fire pit and sending a cloud of ashes exploding into the air, until it thoroughly enveloped the ponies chasing, after her in alarm. Trixie made sure that when they fought through it anyway, to where her current location was, she would be long gone and out of sight.

Trixie had spent a long time surrouded by ponies and walls at the orphanage, but she had also spent a long time on her own, entirely separate from any pony at all. Neither experience had been pleasant, but both experiences made Trixie reluctant to get on the level with a group of ponies who were chasing her, especially ones who had foalnapped her, especially ones who had rejected her.

They played this sort of game of hide and seek for quite a while. The other performers got in on it eventually, making it very hard for Trixie to succeed without the use of her magic. When she snuck in a wagon to hide, Trixie found its contents exciting and exotic. She had not yet become acquainted with what a travelling wagon looks like. In truth this was one of the more normal wagons of this circus, save for the presence of two separate hairbrushes next to the small sink and mirror. But the fold-out bed, the walls covered in cabinets, the bolt shuttered windows, the posters on the ceiling rather than the walls, those were all quite new to the filly.

The wagon was empty, of course, because everypony was out and about trying to find their little lost runaway. But eventually, somepony thought to check inside the wagons too, and when they did, Trixie had been too hasty in climbing out the window, too hasty to check if anypony outside had seen her climb out the window. Too hasty to notice if there weren’t already five ponies out there to see her in plain sight.

So with five odd looking ponies coralling Trixie against the wagon she’d escaped from, the ringmaster pushed past the fire eyed pegasi to approach Trixie. “Young mare, you... young mare—you...!” he said in a thrilling tenor that always wowed the crowds, this time speaking in insufferable irateness. “You have been visiting every town,” he said in a trembling rage, “You tried to join the circus, you... you couldn’t take no for an answer! And you keep crawling back to us, you insufferable little—!”

“Trixie is not crawling back!” Trixie shouted angrily. “Trixie was stolen away, by your pegasuses! Why have you foalnapped a young mare? Just to yell at her?”

The ringmaster looked at her, then pressed a hoof to his temple. “I suppose you still want to join this circus,” he ground out in reluctant acquiescence, “After all you’ve done.”

“Trixie will never join your circus!” Trixie told him in desperate fury, and by all that’s good his eyes widened in surprise at that. “You have done nothing but laugh at Trixie and take her away from her stage!” she shouted, “You’ll see! Trixie will perform again and again, and she will find out how to keep the ponies from running away, a-and Trixie will have the bester act in the whole world, and you’ll be sorry you didn’t let her join when you had the chance!

“And you cannot stop her!,” Trixie declared madly, “Trixie is going to be the most magical mare who ever lived!” There was a tremendous flash, as everypony cried out in alarm, Trixie’s horn suppressor shattering into bits of glowing hot molten metal. When he pulled his cape away from his eyes, the ringmaster could see the young mare, not even a mare yet, just a souped up image of an older filly pretending that she could be as grown-up as any of them.

Her horn was glowing with an almost blinding, brilliant violet light.

There were no cries of pain, thankfully, from the destruction of the magic suppressor. There was only silent staring. All eyes on her. Judging. Fearing. Trixie’s nerve broke, and she ran away, trying to make it look like she was just stomping off angrily. She picked a pony—it didn’t matter, a big one—and her magic dragged him up into the air, just enough for Trixie to squeeze underneath his pedalling hooves, and get out of that stunned circle. Her righteous trot turned into a gallop as she ran away from the wagon, away from the wagons, away from everything. Where to, Trixie knew not where, but somewhere that would have more answers than this terrible waste of a dream they called a circus.

“Trixie, wait!” that beautiful voice called out, stopping her in her tracks.

It was the ringmaster, looking wearier than one who had run ten miles, rather than merely down the road a ways. Trixie stopped running long enough to regard him warily. “You are Trixie, right?” he said, “It’s just the orphanage, right? You’re not talking about some other mare?”

“Trixie doesn’t want to talk about the orphanage,” Trixie mumbled hastily, failing in her struggle to fight back the tears. “Trixie didn’t do it! Trixie didn’t mean to...”

“For the love of pete!” he exclaimed aggrivatedly. “I could care less about what you did! It’s what you’re doing that has to stop! Besides, that was a collossal magical disaster! There’s no way a little filly like you could have...”

He stopped speaking, and just looked at her silently. To what conclusion he would come, Trixie lacked the understanding and empathy to anticipate. She had an entirely different understanding of the meaning behind his quiet, thoughtful pause.

“Trixie supposes you’re going to offer to let her join the circus again,” she said speaking sideways, sullenly.

“No,” he said with a note of finality. “I’m not going to do that.”

He fell to his knees. “I’m going to beg.”

“Please, please, please join the circus,” the ringmaster pleaded, hooves held together in supplication before Trixie. “You have no idea how to put on a show. You have ruined the last five towns for us, three of which wouldn’t even let us in their gate, and the other two chasing us away before we even arrived. You are trying to brute force so much raw talent, you are a monster little filly. We are out of supplies, out of coin, and out of options. I need you to please join the circus so somepony can do something about your act, before you ruin us all!”

Trixie honestly wasn’t aware if she was even crying at that point. She wasn’t sure whether to be gratified or insulted. Some festering pride inside her breast wanted her to flick her tail in his face and just leave him lying there in the road, but even as she contemplated that, she remembered what she did to those townsponies, to the orphanage. She remembered those long, lonely, sick, scary nights Trixie had spent alone in the woods, so afraid that she was going to die because something was wrong with her, that she didn’t know how to fix. She remembered those long, lonely, angry nights spent in isolation, in the quarantine wing, making her want to smack her head against the wall just to get that terrible echoing silence between her ears to shut up. She remembered... Bitty.

“Trixie will consider it.”

Really, all he had to win Trixie over was mention that there was a bowl of hot stew coming her way, should she wish to tag along.

Author's Note

Trixie Balances the Books

Fancy had no idea what he was getting into when he took Trixie on. He saw an opportunity and a need, but even he had not been privvy to that orphanage’s secrets. The unfortunate truth about unfortunate truths that nopony wants to talk about, is that nopony talks about them. Everypony knew that there were terrible stories from that orphanage, but it was an orphanage. That sort of thing was expected, and taken with a grain of salt, since any former orphan would be seeing things through the lens of resentment. Though a few had some idea, the vast majority of ponies knew nothing of what it did to foals. Not until they tried to live with an escapee that is, or a survivor. And then they didn’t want to talk about it.

Trixie had... something of a problem with enclosed spaces. It took her a long time to wean herself of this troublesome trait, but trying to sleep in a wagon, even among ponies who were open and welcoming, was a challenge at best. Trixie could not stop thinking about the cramped little dormitory she burned to the ground, or the quarantine wing ...that she burned to the ground. Waking up with a wall in front of your nose was a terrifying experience to Trixie, because it always made her feel like somehow, in some way, they had got her back. She was constantly on edge from her inability to trust that this newfound freedom was anything but ephemeral and temporary. Nopony tried to capture her, or return her to any orphanage, so rationally it was clear she was out of hot water, but the feelings just persisted and persisted.

That’s why after the ringmaster escorted her back, and all the ponies except Curled welcomed her back with good cheer, and Trixie had her very first bed to sleep in since her escape from the orphanage, the ponies who so helped her found that Trixie had betrayed them in the night. Trixie escaped their caravan, under the cover of darkness, having gone back on her word, and was fiendishly planning to return to wreaking havoc on their tour route. That’s what they thought, at any rate.

In the cover of night, one small unicorn of the name Trixie Lulamoon slinked out from the wagon, with wide eyes bright in the sallow moonlight. They had given Trixie a simple foldable cot to sleep on, nothing even remotely comfortable, and yet with a full belly and weary legs Trixie was sure she would sleep on it for days. But before Trixie’s eyes, the dark boards of the walls and the ceiling turned back and forth between their reality and the fear of cold, unyielding stone. She may have drifted off at one point, but then she was wide awake and filled with panic at the wall in front of her nose. She felt sealed in, trapped, punished, and that’s why she snuck out that night, and many nights hence.

Trixie considered taking the cot with her, but there was no way she could have carried the noisy thing without waking up the other two ponies sleeping in the wagon with her. So she snuck out on only her own four feet, and vanished into the wilderness. She stopped a full body length away from the camp, and hid herself within a thicket. Not from the ponies, but from what else might be lurking out here, thinking to prey on any hapless ponies who became separated from their group. In this way, Trixie finally got her sleep, right there on the damp dirt, with the moonlight only barely filtering in through the leaves overhead.

The morning came, and with morning came panic. Not Trixie’s panic, but Trixie awoke to shouts from the caravan.

“She’s not here!”

“I can’t find her anywhere!”

“Has anypony seen the filly?”

“She ran away!”

“Search the area!”

“Trixie did not run away!” Trixie shouted, emboldened by the rare sunlight peeking in through the trees. She wiggled out from under the thicket and stomped into the clearing, right up to the ringmaster pony to give him a piece of her mind for accusing her of such a thing. But she only got as far as saying “Trixie does not—” before the ringmaster interrupted, getting in her face and saying to her angrily,

“Why did you leave the caravan?! Were you out there all night? It’s not safe out there! What were you thinking, filly?!” He might have said more, if his righteous anger hadn’t shaken Trixie so badly that she curled up with hooves over her head. Trixie knew exactly what it means when her hot temper has once again made an adult caretaker angry. She didn’t run away screaming because, in the orphanage, there was nowhere to run. There were only walls and corners, and even more severe punishments for foals who try. Just curled in on herself Trixie frantically tried to prepare for his rage, saying something like,

“Trixie is sorry! Trixie is a bad pony. Trixie will never do it again. Trixie will be a good pony. Please don’t stop her horn again, she didn’t mean any harm!”

Master Fancy was certainly nonplussed at her sudden change of face. When the circus came to the orphanage, he had seen neglected foals desperate for a moment of happiness, not... this. Trixie imagines he shrugged helplessly at his associates. None of them knew whether to approach or back away from her, either. In the end it was fifth clown Sue who approached her, not so much because Sue was a comforting pony, or a mare, but because she was one of two unicorns they had, and certainly the smarter, more sensible one.

“Trixie, huh?” Sue said, poking the blue ball of fur that Trixie had reduced herself to. “We can’t stop your horn,” she said in a dully uninterested voice. “You blew up our only horn suppressor.”

It certainly took a unicorn to understand that Trixie’s self esteem was secondary to the safety of her horn. She uncurled enough to look at this Sue in the barest of comprehension.

“Trixie is ...safe?” Trixie asked. Sue didn’t answer, or react to that. The pale grey unicorn merely turned and walked back around the crowd, leaving Trixie facing the ringmaster, the two acrobats, and a cream colored stagehoof. And no more horn suppressors.

“Trixie is safe!” Trixie proclaimed aggressively, climbing to her hooves and looking at the ringmaster in defiance. “You cannot hurt Trixie, and she will leave forever if you try to! And maybe even burn down your stupid wagons, too!”

“Nopony is trying to hurt you, Trixie,” the ringmaster said with a careful hoof lift. “We were just afraid you had gotten hurt, or had run away.”

“Well, Trixie didn’t, so you aren’t supposed to punish her,” the insolent Trixie persisted. “And you can’t punish anypony else either, since only Trixie ran away. Trixie will... will magic you, if you do that!”

“The hay was happening at that orphanage?” muttered a pegasus acrobat, a bright red stallion with a blue mane, not to Trixie but to his associate, a pale blue pegasus mare with a bright red mane.

The mare just shrugged at him, while Trixie asked him in confusion, “Were you asking Trixie that?”

“No, but we probably should,” the ringmaster stated in his stead, looking down at Trixie thoughtfully.

Trixie felt a bit on the spot at that. The ringmaster seemed to have a talent for putting ponies on the spot, or the spotlight on ponies as it were. What happened? What could she tell them had happened? Did they already know?

“It burned down?” she attempted to answer, finding herself shrugging as much as the pegasus had, albeit without the wings for emphasis.

“I didn’t do it.” Trixie made sure to specify.

Trixie rather doubts anypony, anywhere, ever, seriously believed that. Nevertheless Hat gave her the okay, and everypony was glad to conclude it was a false alarm. Trixie promised it wouldn’t happen again and she would sleep normally the next night, but... she didn’t. And the night after that, once again Trixie was crying herself to sleep in the thorny thicket she’d adopted, not from sadness but from anger at herself for being unable to fulfill her promises, and not consciously understanding why she couldn’t.

Trixie’s sleeping problems were a troublesome issue for quite a while, because the ringmaster couldn’t get it through his head that Trixie needed to do this, and she wasn’t doing it just to defy his authority. But eventually, Hat Fancy personally oversaw her sleeping situation, meaning that he declared that this had gone far enough, and that he was going to watch Trixie himself, and that she had to sleep with him tonight, in his wagon, right next to his bed. He was a cunning pony, and even though Trixie had thought he was laying in his bed sleeping, it was a mere ruse with pillows. When Trixie crept out of his wagon, he was standing out there already, fully awake to anticipate her.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked the startled filly in a disapproving tone. He might have been taken aback by Trixie’s reaction of harried, wild eyed fear, rather than one of guilt and indulgence that one would expect from a disobedient filly. But before he could respond, Trixie’s cauldron boiled over, and everything just poured out of her at once.

“I can’t I–I can’t go back in there. Y-you cannot stop Trixie! You can’t l-lock her away! Trixie cannot sleep—you don’t understand. Trixie cannot sleep in there! There’s nothing in there. There is nothing!”

“You’re right,” he said backing up a step at her strident voice. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s all your fault!” she squealed in sudden anger, “You and your stupid circus, coming every single year, and then leaving. Leaving! You put all these t-t-thoughts in my head and Trixie can’t just live anymore a-a-and she sees herself in the mirror and she does stupid things, because of you! She j-j-just wanted a chance and you can’t do this to her. Trixie will never go into that room again! You’ll have to kill her first! Trixie will burn herself alive if you try to! Just let Trixie go. She can’t stay in there any longer!”

Trixie just ran then, and didn’t stop until she was hidden in her thicket, her hiding place, her self imposed prison. Given the choice between torment and danger, Trixie chose danger, and in her life she had not had many opportunities for a third choice. There she sat, trying to stop the crying and be quiet so nothing would come eat her. But what did come was a pony, a unicorn levitating something large behind himself. He set up the folding cot outside Trixie’s thicket and climbed up on it, settling down to sleep.

“What are you doing?” Trixie asked from within the dirty bushes.

“I said you were going to sleep with me tonight,” he responded. “I’m a pony of my word.”

“Just l-l-leave Trixie alone,” Trixie said miserably.

He said nothing, but rather lay there silently on his back, looking up at the drizzly clouds overhead, dampening both their coats, and certainly not doing anything healthy for the cot he slept on.

“They put Trixie in a room,” came Trixie’s voice.

Trixie found it hard to believe it was her saying it. It felt like somepony else was saying it. But she kept breaking the quiet night with her voice. “They put Trixie on punishment,” she said. “There was n-nothing in there. They even put the food through the slot, so the door never has to open. She has to stay in there, whenever they think Trixie is going to r-run away. They put her in, because they found out she was going to join the circus, a-about a week before you came.”

She couldn’t see him in the darkness through the leaves, but she heard his smooth voice ask eventually, “How long did this... punishment last?”

That made Trixie pause. Hadn’t she told him? “About a week before you came?” she tried telling him. “Trixie doesn’t know exactly. It’s hard to remember days after a while in there.”

“Did you know when they were going to let you out?” he asked in a tone that suggested he already knew the answer was no.

“Trixie doesn’t know. Trixie escaped in... in the fire. She supposes they would let the foals out, a-after the circus had left and you were too far away to catch up with. Maybe... three weeks? It depends on how bad you were.”

The wind whispered through the bracken, chilling the moisture on Trixie’s back and haunches. She wondered if the moon was out tonight, so hard to tell with this rotten weather constantly dumped on them.

“The foals?” he asked quietly.

“Any foals caught trying to escape—r-run away I mean. We’re not supposed to call it escaping.”

If Trixie had know more about Hat Fancy’s resolve and temperament she might have been more hesitant to fuel the flames. But sadly, all she knew was he was a pony asking questions, and she was very tired, cold and wet, and just wanted to sleep right now. He didn’t ask any more questions though, and for the rest of the night Trixie slept, as well as she ever did. When she awoke in the morning, the cot outside the thicket was empty, damp all over with morning dew just like everything else. She didn’t know if he had spent the night with her, only that he was there in with the wagons when she awoke, waking ponies up, ordering ponies around, getting them ready to roll into the next town.

Trixie was already more familiar with their waking routine than when she first came, because in the time since she’d joined, the circus had performed at her very first town. The very town that Trixie had been snatched from, by the two pegasi in this troupe. Trixie was utterly forbidden to perform even one single act, but she didn’t feel slighted for some reason, because the ringmaster assured her that she would receive the training she needed, and when she did perform, her act would be truly spectacular. So Trixie didn’t mind biding her time, and was grateful for it in the end, because if there is anything more entertaining than watching the circus perform, it’s watching the circus perform from backstage.

You get to see the performers setting up. Psyching themselves up for running in. You get to see their real pony selves, even dolled up with ridiculous amounts of clown makeup. You get to see that amazing transformation by which they adopt their stage persona, and go from being ordinary ponies, to being something that is both more than a pony, and less than a pony. You get to see the after-act jitters, in which the thunderous applause fails to convince the acrobats that they didn’t flub their act. Truly, spectating from behind the scenes is a rare and blessed act. Though it would be rendered completely moot if it wasn’t rare, and many ponies don’t like seeing the ugly, dirty, trash talking meat behind their shiny performers, but it always gave Trixie a sort of visceral satisfaction. It made her feel more of a part of the action, and less of a spectator, even when she wasn’t the one on center stage, performing.

So yes, Trixie began her illustrious career in performance and art, as a stagehoof. She helped with the secret affairs, lifting poles and planting stakes, moving curtains, unpacking wagons, repacking them. Simple tasks for one of her talents, albeit exhausting on the horn after a long day of it, but tasks so very appreciated by everypony involved. It was Trixie’s first experience since her... cutie mark, with ponies who genuinely appreciated her presence, and it was a very addicting feeling.

After that night in the thicket, it was stagehoofs in fact, who Trixie saw setting up a tent especially for her. Not for an act, but as a cover for the rain. Hat Fancy had the brilliant idea that if Trixie could not sleep in a wagon, she could at least sleep in the circle, with open air on all sides of her to ease her troubled psyche. As she lay in her lumpy cot that still got damp with morning dew, with a broad, solid canvas top preventing the rain from soaking her to the bone, and the lantern light of the circus wagons glowing pleasantly right beside her, Trixie could not stop thinking about Master Fancy, about everything he had done for her. Truly he was a very special pony, the nicest pony she had ever met, who didn’t seem to ask anything in return but simple honest effort.

The stagehoofs were... also the ones who discovered Trixie’s other little problem from her foal years. As the circus brought cheer to the various townships, and neared the big city that was to be a major destination for them, Trixie’s responsibilities grew. As she became more trusted to be reliable and surprisingly competent, they treated her as more than a filly with nothing to her name other than cutie mark and a horn. So it shouldn’t have surprised her, when Calamity Bill hoofed her a bag of marks, and a piece of paper.

“You can carry goods, right?” he said in that cagey Bronco accent of his. “Go find whatever this town has for a tack and supply. There’s a treat in it for you, if you can get back before lunch.”

So Trixie was more than happy to scurry around town, and find some pony who knew where the supply store was. She made sure to get things that she was sure would be invaluable to the circus’s wagon repairs, as well as this really impressive looking tool sash, that she thought Bill would really like. And she returned triumphantly before supper, to complete and utter failure.

“Nails?!” he said, lifting the box out of her discarded saddlebags. “We got plenty of nails already. Those weren’t even on the list!”

“List?” Trixie asked cluelessly.

“Yeah, the list I gave you, with everything on it we need!” he stated in hot frustration. “You did at least get weather sealant, did ya?”

“Um...maybe?” Trixie said embarassed, backing away slowly from his tirade over her triumphantly delivered saddlebags.

“What the hay is all this stuff?” he asked in consternation, pulling his head out of her saddlebags and staring at her accusingly. “Did you even look at the list?”

“Trixie doesn’t remember seeing any list,” she admitted abashedly.

“Then what’s this right here?!” he shouted, pulling out the piece of paper that he had... given to her.

“Oh, tha-a-a-at list,” Trixie said, with a broad smile. “Must have forgot about it. Trixie t-thought you would tell somepony, if you needed anything.”

“Then why would I have given ya a list?” he asked, looking at her strangely. Trixie continued to smile, but felt her ears starting to wilt. This was just like when anyfoal at the orphanage found out, in the rare opportunities they had to do so. How was Trixie going to get out of this one now?

“Just go get yer supper,” he said, tossing the list over his shoulder and waving her off with a hoof. “I’ll see what I can do with this... stuff.” Well, it looks like Trixie didn’t have to get out of this one! She wasn’t the most receptive to questioning in her mood at the time, and he also needed a good amount of time himself to think on the subject. So he didn’t interrogate her, nor did Trixie reject his offer of reprieve. She was quite willing to canter off to the fire pit, to see what sort of goodies over there might include tasty food, and not dreadfully embarassing innocent looking pieces of paper.

Trixie wasn’t out of hot water yet, though. Bill never bothered her again, but another evening, another stagehoof by the name of Mary Contrary came bothering after her out of the blue.

“Hey yo Trixie, get ya tail over to my trailer,” Mary said, and to Trixie’s grave embarassment, she was unaware that Mary was a more educated mare than she was. In fact, Trixie didn’t know that Mary had quite a collection of books she had picked up from here and there, mostly memoirs that townsponies were vainly trying to publish, or travel guides. Lots of travel guides. It may have been a casual hobby of hers, but it did put her in a good position to clomp her yellow furred butt into her little wagon, while Trixie waited outside uncertainly, and then stick her orange maned head out of her little wagon. Grasped skillfully in Mary’s teeth something that made Trixie shrink back in revulsion.

A book.

Mary spat the book onto her hoof saying, “Here ya go, don’t be shy. Bill was tellin’ me you might have learnin’ problems. I wanna see how far you are, before we look into trying to teach ya.”

Trixie didn’t think Mary had a malicious bone in her body, so she took the book warily, asking, “And what is Trixie supposed to do with this?”

Mary blinked at her, then exclaimed, “What else are ya gonna do with a book? Go on, let’s see what you got!”

Trixie still hesitated. Mary couldn’t be serious. It was so humiliating! Why would ponies care if Trixie could do... that?!

“Didn’t they teach you anything at that orphanage?” Mary inquired with a raised eyebrow.

“Fine,” Trixie sighed in defeat. “But Trixie doesn’t see why this is so important.”

Trixie lifted the book up in her hoof, and carefully nestled it behind her horn, balancing it on her head. Then she brought her fourth hoof down, and stood there, looking at Mary with piercing eyes, uncertainly but also confidently. Now let’s see what Mary thought of her. Trixie could keep this up all day!

Mary was clearly impressed. Trixie would even go so far to say that she was staring in speechless amazement at Trixie’s mastery of book balancery.

“I meant ya should read it!” Mary exclaimed loudly, as if that was obvious or something.

“They taught Trixie how to balance them, not how to read them!” Trixie protested, sitting on her haunches and crossing her hooves. Still not losing the book, of course.

“Ya killin’ me, filly!” Mary said in genuine distress. “Ain’t you even know ya ABCs?”

Trixie looked aside, mumbling, “Maybe some of them. Why does it matter?”

Mary was totally flustered at that point. She opened the door to her wagon, stuttering out, “Look just c-c’mon in and show me what ya... what ya know so far.”

Trixie ended up having to mouthwrite what letters she knew, because that’s how she was taught to write them, so that was the easiest method for her to remember. Her clumsy scrawl might have been mostly legible at the age of 5, but after so many years without practice, Trixie was at a loss to remember just about anything of that obscure “letters” thing that her parents had taught her.

“Oh!” Trixie said in sudden revelation. “I learned to write my name. Watch me!” Then she grabbed the pencil and got to work. Then...

The first letter was easy, two broad strokes, an easy and simple symbol. Trixie kind of... blanked at what the shapes of the other peculiar runes were though. She remembered the first one, and the second one was kind of... humpy. But after that, Trixie was just going by visual memory for the most part. A very old visual memory, from a very young age. The rest of her name turned out to not even be letters, just scribbly gibberish. Her own name, stolen from her by that thief called time.

And so, from that day forth Trixie Lulamoon was known as Trlmzo.

Eventually Trixie’s determination gave way to hot tears landing on the paper she was trying to write on. She allowed herself to give up then; she just dropped the pencil and cried. There really was no point to continue. It was obvious that Trixie couldn’t figure out something that the other foals seemed to understand so easily, so naturally.

Trixie refused to study it for a long time henceforth, in fact, on that very argument. Surely if it were even possible for her to learn to read, then Trixie would have picked up on it already. It was one of those remarkably poor arguments, that anyone who could read would have learned better than to try using in the face of a determined adult pony. Trixie herself was surprised to find it wasn’t quite as ironclad an argument as she had thought it would be.

Trixie found herself learning to read anyway, despite her best efforts to remain blissfully ignorant. It was the only way Trixie could get supplies, if the ponies asking refused to tell it to her plainly. No, instead they made a laborious effort to ensure that Trixie knew that this particular collection of shapes meant straps, and this particular collection meant nails, and they refused to tell her which list they were giving her. Some words were easier to remember, like saddle when you turn it upside down it looked like a saddle wrapped around a pony’s barrel, as seen from the side. And bed looks like a bed. Trixie learned the signatures of each performer, though that was paired with a colorful insignia of some sort, which apparantly was not considered part of a word. You certainly do not want to get out the banner for the tightrope walkers when you were searching for the one for D.W. the amazing stunt pony.

So for better or worse, Trixie reluctantly learned a few words, and it was so terribly easy to do so, that Trixie began to doubt her own inability to learn. It wasn’t long before Mary had wheedled and cajoled Trixie into regular lessons, not lessons so much as a school teacher would assign, but quiet evenings where Mary had Trixie lay against the curve of her belly, and had Trixie attempt to read for her, correcting Trixie as she did, or offering her prompted suggestions, whenever Trixie got stuck on a word or passage.

Trixie picked up reading quickly, for somepony who was completely illiterate. But even more potentious than the amazing freedom that literacy would bring, the ringmaster himself was teaching Trixie how to perform, and how to act. The ringmaster trained Trixie directly, not so much because he was the ringmaster, but because he was the more powerful of the two unicorns in their troupe. Sue was a lovely, plain, sensible mare, but her horn had never given her capabilities or problems beyond how to lift a wig, or whether a door was going to remain open or closed.

For all the strangeness of the members of this troupe, many of them were a step removed from the other rejects hiding out in this valley. Sue was one of the ones who came of their own volition, without desperation or thrill guiding them, nor was she born into this sorry land. These circus ponies were not particularly welcomed in the heartland, but they were in no danger there, and had come out here not for sanctuary or adventure, but merely to help the ponies who most needed a little more brightness in their days.

Most of them, at any rate.

Thus, Sue was an ordinary unicorn, with no drama, or issues. And Hat Fancy appeared to be an ordinary unicorn, with no drama, or issues. No others in the troupe were unicorn born. Exposure and time among those who struggle and feud has a way of changing a pony, even a mere spectator of this mess. But these two weathered it well, one better than the other, and as such, they would be Trixie’s first experience with normal unicorns.

You know, that is to say, unicorns who don’t rely on evil deathly sleep spells.

Author's Note

Trixie Learns the Ropes

Hat Fancy was quite happy to teach Trixie the ways of her horn. She learned quickly, naturally, but it was incredible how much Trixie didn’t know about herself. Even simple spell patterns young foals are taught were alien concepts to Trixie, who just battered through any problem that had arisen for her in the past. He taught her how you could layer magic on top of itself, deduce pathways, circuits and runes that would achieve a more fine tuned, and even a more powerful result than just brute forcing it. His knowledge may have been limited to basic graduate Algebra level, but Trixie’s knowledge had been limited to counting, so it was a severe step up for her.

As Fancy taught her to use her magic, he taught her to use her magic for the stage. Performance under his instruction was a far more challenging subject than connecting some circles with thirty degree angles, probably because he was a master at the performing aspect of his craft. Trixie took to it with enthusiasm though, and strove her best to meet Hat Fancy’s challenges and requirements. Perhaps too much enthusiasm, as she had a tendancy to set stage props on fire, or embed them in the wall in her attempts to float them gently up into the air. She adapted, but her raw, unsophisticated attitude was a constant point of contention for him.

“Trixie, Trixie,” he would say, stopping her from wowing another imaginary audience. “Your magic is beyond compare, but all you’re gonna do is scare them! You have to dazzle them, not terrify them. And you have to know your own limits.”

So Trixie’s next attempt involved several multi-colored soft lights, rather than a burningly bright scale model of the sun. It was much more well received, by his light applause on the soft earth. In that fashion, he slowly and carefully led her to a more subtle and less over-the-top form of stage performance. He kept her from pushing things too far, and kept her from risking that terrible feeling Trixie felt, when Trixie began to lose her audience, and had to improvise trying to win them back.

“You lose control of the situation,” he told her, “And your act is sure to fail. So you gotta always do a little less than what you’re capable of. Do what you know you can do, not what you think they expect. They don’t know what to expect, and if you overstretch yourself then things happen. And if things happen, then you get booed off the stage, or worse!”

He would guide Trixie, telling her what in her act was right and wrong, but she had to be vigilant against this. He would interrupt her mid-cast, telling her she was doing it wrong, or to change directions, or that he wanted a different focus. He’d keep doing that more and more severely, until Trixie failed, and squatted atop that miniature stage on his wagon in miserable confusion. That was when he told her,

“Never listen to the audience. They’ll do everything they can to mess you up, and they don’t got a clue about performing. You gotta make them think you’re listening, that you can do anything they put you up for, but you gotta keep control of the situation yourself. Don’t devate from your act just because the audience doesn’t like it. Work harder on your act, to make ‘em like it! You can pretend like you’re doing what they say, but you’re the one in the spotlight here. You gotta always lead them back to what you intended to do anyways.”

Trixie found this difficult, as Hat Fancy would not be fooled, and he was the only audience she was allowed. She started practicing with the other performers and stagehooves, just magic tricks mostly, sleight of hoof or hat tricks. Really, it was pointless to perform for them, as Trixie used far greater magics when she in her work as a stagehoof was erecting a tent with her sorcery. Or, more often, fixing loose catches and ties far overhead, so that the earth ponies who were erecting the tent didn’t have to climb up there and perform such tedious detail work. But they tolerated her at least, and Trixie did manage to psyche them out slowly but surely, making them less able to predict what she was going to be able to do.

Still, it was frustrating. Too often before her mentor Trixie would lose control, and screw up her act, and the tree prop would be falling over onto the chair, which would clatter into the cage of rabbits, releasing them to run amuck until they could be herded back into their dwellings, and all too often this was topped off by something catching on fire. For all Trixie’s power and prowess at catching things on fire, she had yet to figure out how to use her magic to snuff it out.

The caravan traveled as he taught her. Trixie learned well how to quickly unpack the wagons and set up the tents, and just as quickly take them down again, sometimes in even more a hurry than their approach. There was never a disaster like when she tried to go it alone, but there were some close calls.

Many of these settlements were very isolated from the rest of the world, and had unusual customs and preconceptions that might have been driven out of the greater Equestria in disgust. Having traveled this route before, they knew to avoid the ones where ponies were genuinely hostile to outsiders, but the borderline tolerable ones were simply not optional. The troupe needed food, and supplies, and repairs, and having those things done without regular stops in civilized towns was impossible, and having those things done in civilized towns without a steady stream of bits was even more impossible.

Trixie was making improvements, but still struggling, as they approached the jewel of their travels, Star City. She simply had to be ready by then, to prove herself as a performer, and as a real pony who deserves everything any other pony has, not a twisted monster from the swamp. She had her debut performance two stops before the city, a wise choice as throwing her straight into the glamor of a larger community would have courted disaster. As-is, the damage was... minimized.

It was a calm community of ex-adventurers and their families, the ones who realized that crawling through the Caverns of Travail was more trouble than its worth, and the ones with a bad leg or an eyepatch from some damn fool thing like trying to explore the Umbrine Ruins, where wild magic still crawled about like, and sometimes as living things. Not the sort of place that would be terrified, or hateful. And Trixie had tried her best at it, to be the mare that Hat Fancy wanted her to be.

In retrospect, summoning fireworks in a canvas tent wasn’t the greatest idea Trixie had ever had. She was just so dazzled by the lights, and the performers, and the pegasi swooping through the air like birds of prey, navigating their hurdles and obstacles with the ease of somepony who knows how to make it look easy. When it came her turn to shine, Fancy’s voice sounded so capable, so forceful as he announced,

“And now, a mare fresh from the greatest schools in Canterlot itself, whose sorcery is unmatched by any, except perhaps the princess herself! You may see a young mare, but you will soon see something far greater and more magical than any with a horn have ever conceived! I humbly present to you, Lula the Magnificent!”

Trixie was shaking on her shoes as she did what she rehearsed, tossing the smoke powder and leaping after it, then summoning a gust of wind to sweep it away and reveal her in all her glory. Trixie had a dark blue robe just like a real wizard, though she hadn’t yet gotten herself a wizard hat. She wordlessly summoned forth a glowing bird of pure light, concentrating fiercely to trace the magical patterns in the air that would foment and stabilize such a thing. Creation was high level magic, creation of simple constructs not as high, but Trixie made it look anything but simple.

“Well, hello there, Philomena!” Trixie said in a magically projected voice to the crowd who had grown silent before the brightly glowing spectacle now on stage. She directed her articulated bird construct to appear to flutter down to her raised hoof. Trixie didn’t know the name, but Hat said it was a good send out, so some of the audience might even recognize it, and guess at what she was trying to do. “You look like you would like to greet the audience! But you are so tired, will you ever make it there? Fly!”

The construct went accelerating away from her, growing as it swooped toward the frightened audience, then with a subtle flash of Trixie’s horn it exploded into a thousand light motes, swirling around every pony they swept over like dandelion seeds in a breeze.

“Oh no!” Trixie said, directing attention back to herself. “She didn’t make it! But what’s this?” It was much more difficult to reach the floating bits of solid light from a distance, but Trixie managed it once, and she would manage it again! Her horn glowed, and then double glowed as she engaged the pattern she had learned, drawing the swirling motes together into two bright balls of light, that flash brightly above the audience...

And now there were two constructs swimming through the air above their heads in graceful swirls of motion. The ooooh that swelled from that audience filled Trixie with a hearty confidence that filled up inside her like she was going to burst! She reared up on two legs, and the bird constructs soared back, to each land on her outstretched hooves, announcing “A miracle, fillies and gentlecolts!” And then she was so excited that she just twisted the magic in them to turn them into beautiful shooting stars erupting from her podium to explode through the sky and set the...tent on fire.

It was not easily extinguished, having caught in several places, and considering Trixie’s uncanny ability to make things burn. The acrobats immediately flew to attend it, but not before a rope snapped and the burning canvas started to fall on the audience. Trixie levitated it in her magic, running off the stage towards them so she could exert more power and control, but they were already screaming and pushing each other, running for the exits.

“Everything is under control!” she shouted desperately as the ringmaster came running over to her with rage in his eyes. “Do not be alarmed this is only part of the... magic of... Trixie can fix this! I mean, Lula can fix this!” Thanks to her magically augmented voice most of the audience gave pause, but it was good for the circus, not Trixie here in the slightest.

“Why do you think I said no fireworks?!” Fancy shouted at her, in a thankfully not magically augmented manner.

“Trixie didn’t—they were shooting stars, not fireworks!” she protested in vain. Unthankfully, her voice still was magically augmented. Trixie hastily canceled that, which made the canvas drop again, but she grabbed it in her magic again and lifted the whole thing strongly. But a few among the audience were actually snickering now, as they looked her way. Trixie certainly loves being entertaining, but not like that!

Hat Fancy completely ignored them, like they weren’t even there. He only had eyes for Trixie. Angry eyes. “They set the tent on fire?” Fancy insisted frankly, “They’re fireworks. Now let go, so that Zim can tie off that rope again!”

Trixie glanced up, and the pegasus was gesturing towards the rope held in Trixie’s magic with an exasperated look.

“Right away!” she yelped apologetically, letting her horn flicker out, so Zim could take the rope, and tie it so that it wouldn’t fall again. Her obligation to be present no longer applicable, Trixie looked at Hat Fancy like a cornered animal waiting to be struck, then just bolted for the exit of the tent herself.

“Trixie is never performing again!” she shouted out in despair from underneath the strongpony’s wagon. It was nice and dark under there.

“You did alright!” the sound of the ringmaster’s protest reached her, as she was crouched down under there in the dark and dirt. “You just needed a little more refinement. Why didn’t you stick with the original act?”

“Because Trixie got excited!” Trixie said angrily, “Trixie cannot control herself, and she is just a monster! Leave Trixie alone!”

“Look, Trix you’ll get better,” he said in his smooth convincing tones, “It was your first try of course you’re gonna be excited! You didn’t freeze up. You didn’t even flinch when it went wrong. You were actually trying to incorporate that into your act!”

“But you said Trixie shouldn’t do those things!” Trixie protested to him angrily.

“You shouldn’t!” he replied forcefully, “But when it happens, you are quick to think on your hooves! Listen, it wasn’t so bad! So we got to repair the tent, so what? Nopony demanded their money back. We finished the show even without you. Just come outta there already. We can’t even roll out the wagons with you underneath ‘em.”

“T-trixie supposes she could...” Trixie admitted, sulkily crawling out from under the wagon into the bright afternoon sunlight. “Why are you so...” she told him tearfully, “So good to Trixie? Trixie failed, she screwed up! She shouldn’t get your kindness! Why are you still letting her try?”

“Trixie,” he said, putting a hoof on her shoulder, “You are incredible. You could be the best act we have yet. It’s almost a crime that you want to use that talent of yours just to do some rinky dink circus act. You blow stuff up without even trying! You have any idea how useful it could be if you really applied yourself?”

“Trixie doesn’t want to blow stuff up, though,” she insisted. “Trixie just wants to make ponies like her, and to think that it’s okay to be her. Trixie only wants to impress ponies and be the best stage performer who ever lived!”

“...or at least currently living,” she added, a bit discomfitedly.

Trixie continued to perform, and her second performance was neither as hair raising for herself nor the audience, though the rough patches sewn into the tent fabric served as a constant reminder to keep her magic away from the roof. Trixie had been so worried about that, she hadn’t even paid attention to herself, or what the audience was doing. While sometimes a fatal mistake to ignore the audience, here it gave Trixie that mysterious detachment, like her aloof nature simply failed to make the audience impress her at all, as she juggled heavy weights around like toys. This was child’s play to her, and though Trixie was technically still a child, it made what she did look like the easiest thing in the world. And that really is the key to being a good performer.

When she was done, and the stunt ponies had fled backstage, and the lights had gone out, and her horn quiescent, Trixie was glad to see that nothing had gotten so much as scorched. And then the applause began. It honestly startled her, suddenly she was looking forward at an audience who was stomping the floor, just like they did, just like she once did for her mother. They were doing it for her. They were looking at her like somepony incredible, not like somepony scary or intimidating, or monstrous. She didn’t know why she was crying as she smiled, and she was glad her act had no more speaking roles. It wasn’t earth shattering applause, and it died out politely once she had received it, but it was acknowledgement of her existence, in a way Trixie had never before experienced.

She shakily backed off the stage, and went and... hid in a wagon for a while. She was so happy, but so frightened from the experience, her nerves were just shot. Trixie didn’t know how she felt about it. She simply knew that it hadn’t gone wrong, and she was really afraid of even talking to anypony at this point, just shuddering there by herself as she tried to piece together her scattered wits. And for once, she needed this enclosed space around herself. She hated it and she loved it. It felt stable to her, comforting somehow.

It was what she was familiar with.

They reached Star City with great fanfare. It was a beautiful city, a genuine city rather than some ramshackle array of shacks, carved out of the swamp by ponies determined to make their new home a place that ponies can live in. Their success at that, marginal at best. But the tall buildings that rose overhead were something Trixie had only the most vague, wavering memories of.

Trixie hid in the wagon with the other stagehands, rather than presenting herself boldly as they paraded in, like the acrobats and the strongpony and the beastmaster, but she was granted this at least. Trixie didn’t even have her own wagon, and the printed flyers they had were from their home base on the coast, so she was at the moment a reserve act, though one the ringmaster was very enthusiastic about. There was a large cleared out space just outside the city limits for the circus to set up in, and multiple days were planned for performing. This was as close to the big time as you could get this side of the ocean, and Trixie was withers deep in the action.

She was entirely thrilled, but both in a good and a bad way. Trixie wanted to be special, but she didn’t want to be special. She wanted to amaze others, but didn’t want to make them think she was wrong, or dangerous. And in a big city like this, with this many ponies from all over the land, anything she did wrong could end up haunting her career for the rest of her life.

Hat really helped Trixie, giving her pep talks, and teaching her how she should behave on stage, to achieve what both of them wanted. “You’re great at thinking on your hooves,” he told her, “But you have to anticipate these things better, and when something happens, you gotta bring the focus back on what you intended to do.”

She heard him, and she tried, and her act was deliberately placed in the morning slot where there were fewer attendees, and fewer foals. Foals in an audience meant parents, who would be especially worried if anything dangerous or frightening happened, and foals themselves... Trixie had to be strong. She was all grown up now, too old for an orphanage, and too weathered to be terrified at the things that would make little fillies and colts would scream in fear and delight. She had Hat, she had the circus, and she had an incredible life ahead of her, if she could just... stop messing it up.

But when Trixie’s balled lightning got away from her, and started crackling dangerously as she struggled to pull it back from hurtling into the audience, Trixie tried to return to her original act, and she just blanked out right then and there. What was she going to do with this thing? She had summoned it and... laughed about a... thing, and every eye was on her. They were looking at her with fear. She knew they were! She almost hurt them, again! She could hardly control this thing; why did she even think it was a good idea to summon it?

“A-and for her next trick, she will... um...” Trixie said trying to buy time, as her anxiety got worse and worse. She didn’t want to be here. She was too stupid to be here. Lightning is for pegasi, not unicorns! She just turned all her fear into rage, and tore the lighting ball apart, sending it lancing in bolts over her on stage, where it hit... metal rods, yes. Yes that’s right, she was going to hit the lightning rods with the... ball of lightning that Trixie no longer had.

She stood there alone on that stage, saying “Trixie will...” how could she return to her act, if she had nothing to act with? She looked at the audience, and a hissing sound came from the ceiling. Trixie looked up to see the pegasi spraying water on a scorched spot on the tent. She had—a-a-gain she had... what was Trixie doing after the lightning? What new magic was she to unveil? Trixie just couldn’t think!

“This m-mare needs to... go,” Trixie blurted, then just set off every smoke bomb on the podium, running for her life before the smoke even engulfed her, saving her from those judgemental, prying eyes of fear and shame, that could ruin her entire career if everypony in the city learned of what a terrible thing she is.

“Trixie can’t do it,” she sobbed to Hat that night, long after the last act was over. He came trying to convince her, but the only words she could spit at him is, “Trixie can’t perform no matter what she does. All everypony will ever see is a strange creature on stage. Trixie isn’t a pony, she’s just a big pile of angry magic. Even her cutie mark is magic!”

“You can be magic though,” he said to her soothingly, “That’s what ponies want! You can be everything they ever dreamed up! You just can’t ever let them know your full capabilities.”

Trixie sniffled, and looked at him uncomprehendingly, saying, “But then how...?”

“They’ve gotta be surprised,” he said in an enthusiastic bent, “Surprised by everything you do, so you gotta always keep an ace under your hat. If they aren’t astonished, you lost them.”

“But Trixie does surprise them,” Trixie said bitterly, “Trixie scares everypony who watches her act, with things they never expected!”

“Think about it this way,” Hat said, still on a roll with his new idea, whatever it was. “What’s a better act,” he asked Trixie, “The mare who can tap dance, or the mare with no legs, who can tap dance?”

“Well obviously the second would be better,” Trixie said, “Because she’s doing something incredible—”

“But all she’s doing is tap dancing!” the ringmaster exclaimed. “Anypony could do that!”

“Not a pony without any legs!” Trixie countered.

“That’s the thing though,” he said earnestly, “You only think she doesn’t have legs. Does she? Does she have something else? You don’t know! All she has to do is make the audience think she’s crippled, and suddenly anything easy for her to do becomes incredible in their eyes!”

“But... but you’re right!” Trixie shot back accusingly, “It is only tap-dancing. Why would it suddenly be an incredible act?”

“Because nopony expects it!” he crowed. “She surprises the audience, astonishes them with her skill, and everypony remembers her as amazing. The ordinary tap dancer gets maybe a ‘nice,’ at best. But the mare defying their expectations and surprising them? She blows their little pony minds!

“And that’s what you gotta do,” Hat continued, tapping Trixie’s chest with his You aren’t a mare of magic. You’re just an ordinary pony, to them. You know it ain’t true, but that’s what they gotta see. Then when you whip out your best tricks, they’ll be astonished that an ordinary pony could do such things. That’s how you get your name on the map.

“If you go into it claiming you can do anything, they just keep testing you until they find the one thing you can’t do. You gotta do that though, because half of them wanna see a mare who can do something amazing, and the other half wanna prove that you can’t do anything amazing. But here’s the trick. Claim you can do amazing things, but then fail them right away. Prove yourself wrong, and them right. You fall on your face in the first step, ponies conclude you’re a loser. Then you can wow them, by proving them wrong again and again. And since they already concluded, they won’t keep testing you. They’ll just sit back and think, ‘Wow, that mare was something special.’

“So Trixie should... say she can be very magical, then pretend to be less magical, until their guard is down?”

“You got it! You don’t just want to be a magician, you want to be a performer, and any good performer always keeps that ace in their hat. They feign weakness or failure, then blow ponies’ minds once their guard is down, and ponies’ll never get wise to that.

Trixie hesitated still, and Hat looked at her figure long and hard, then his face brightened, and he said “Listen, I got an idea. Wait here I’m gonna go get some stage makeup.”

He returned with some body paint, a fine bristled applicator, and using these simple tools, Hat Fancy effectively changed the very course of Trixie’s destiny. Trixie felt strange as she watched him. She felt strange, because it was such an innocent activity, but she felt like it had far greater implications. She felt strange, because nopony ever touched her there at all, and now here he was this amazing stallion, using a delicate brush to draw a long, slim line on each side of her hindquarters. She felt strange, because it should have upset her. It should have scared her, and made her flail away until he stopped coming after her. Trixie gulped nervously. She felt strange because, it wasn’t that she was scared, it was that she wasn’t sure she wanted him to stop.

Soon her rump looked... odd is the best possible way to describe it. Her shooting star, that immense event that shaped her life forevermore, now had a stick coming out of it. Nothing elaborate, just a long thin line.

“It’s a wand,” he explained. “Like earth pony magicians use to do tricks. That way when ponies see you on stage, they won’t see you as some big pile of dangerous magic. They’ll just see a performer, a true performer whose mark tells her that she’s there not to do incredible things, but just to perform a few harmless tricks.

“That’s when you wow them,” he said, his face enticingly close, as he spoke in that gorgeous voice quietly, seriously. “They think all you got is a wand, but what you got underneath is a shining star.”

Trixie isn’t sure why she kissed him, then. Oh, who is Trixie kidding, of course she’s sure. Fancy was a performer, and even when he wasn’t trying, every inch of him oozed charisma, from his silky voice to his gorgeously slim jaw, to his piercingly blue, but welcoming eyes. He had just complimented her in the best way Trixie can possibly conceive of, and stroked her ego like a purring kitten. He worked patiently and closely with her, put up with her quirks and failings, and saved her from a life of suffering, drudgery, and possibly even death. It didn’t hurt that her hindquarters were still tingling from the gentle touches he made, to save her from her own terrible destiny.

So of course she kissed him. Trixie had never even thought of kissing anypony before that, but she simply couldn’t not kiss him. Just as thanks, was her addled thought, as she kissed him quickly, then pulled back in tremendous insecurity. “T-thank you,” she said awkwardly to his wide eyed, surprised face, wondering what in Tartarus possessed her to do something so stupid like that. That’s when he kissed her back. And his kiss wasn’t insecure, or awkward at all. Trixie felt like she was drowning from the sheer power and intensity of it, flowing through her like lava in her veins. Yet another of Hat Fancy’s many talents: he was an amazing kisser.

That night, Fancy taught Trixie something she only knew of in whispers and rumors, something that had very little to do with kissing. And say what you will about Trixie’s age, Fancy’s troubled character, or his actions henceforth, but Trixie has never once regretted what she did that night. While it hurt her first, he patiently guided her and eased her into it, until she’d opened her heart (among other things), and her body was ready to welcome him. Everything beyond was pure bliss. Her insecurity, her lack of experience, he neither judged nor punished her for it, gently guiding her as always where she needed it, by what he knew from his past marefriends, and then just letting instinct and passion take its course.

To say Trixie was enamoured of Hat Fancy after she woke up from that incredible night is somewhat like saying rose water has a slight odor to it, or the surface of the sun is just a tad warm. Perhaps not as strongly as that may imply, but when Trixie awoke with him there, for the very first time since joining the circus, she hadn’t been afraid to sleep surrounded by walls. When he told her they needed to be discreet about it, and she shouldn’t tell anypony else what they did, she agreed as eagerly as she would have agreed to jump off a bridge at his suggestion. Her adour certainly cooled over the day that followed, but Trixie felt nothing less than a thrilling, forbidden bliss, at the memory of what they’d done, and also at the secrecy of it.

Trixie had vaguely known herself capable of such things, as a mare growing slowly into her own, but to actually experience it was beyond par. She wasn’t even sure if half the rumors she heard about colts and fillies even applied to what they’d done. There wasn’t any sort of courting, that she was consciously aware of at least. There wasn’t any thought in her mind or his for settling down, or living in a cottage, like she had been told ponies did, long ago in story books read to her in front of a warm fire. Trixie had no idea how what she’d done would necessarily result in wedding bells in her future. It seemed like two totally independent things, because that’s what it was. Trixie should have realized. If she had known the consequences of what she’d done. If she had read more, and learned more...

But instead, Trixie found herself waiting the next night with a drunken giddiness, to slip into his wagon, that he might show her more of the tricks he’d learned, or perhaps exhaustively review some of the ones they’d covered the previous night. Trixie is, if nothing else, very passionate at what she does.

Hat Fancy must have been mortified that first day, afraid that his status as a stallion would put an end to his greatest money maker. But even by the second time, he had a plan. He insisted on using protection from thenceforth, while never quite revealing to Trixie the reason for these odd machinations. An ace in his hat, if you will. Were Trixie to betray him, she certainly wouldn’t help his enemies very much if she ignorantly employed what he taught her, until she was just another lonely outlands mare swollen up like a watermelon. That first, magical night was certainly enough to do it, but Trixie luckily dodged that particular responsibility, and would never again have an opportunity to bear his foals.

Trixie remains undecided whether that makes her feel glad or melancholy, because Fancy didn’t deserve what happened to him, and... if she could have preserved some part of him, Trixie might have been willing to go through the pain and hardship that accompanies such things. Though considering the eventual result of this for Trixie, every part of him would have most certainly been lost to the world.

Author's Note

I was kind of reluctant to upload this chapter. I hope I don’t lose readers, but with a whole 2 dozen of them, I clearly have nothing to worry about. I think my 7% popularity rating speaks for itself. This story is sure to win the hearts of all, just like Trixie juggling four unstoppered jars full of nitro glycerin. It’s a good thing my writing is so popular, considering it’s my greatest skill in life, greater than any other talent, career or occupation.

Trixie Finds Her Place

With her new cutie mark, her new outlook on life, and not to mention the torrid introduction into herself as a mare, Trixie’s act quickly and markedly improved. It became easier every time Trixie performed, to do just enough that it would leave her audience wondering whether she could do more. It was trivially easy, in fact. She just had to act like a mare who knew what she was doing, while making them think she didn’t. Such a simple formula, she projected a false confidence, so that she could amaze them with a simple display of true confidence.

It was almost impossible for even an adult pony to summon living things, even if it was more trivial to summon inanimate objects. It was a peculiar quirk of teleportation that involved biomorphic fields, and other things Trixie had no idea what were, other than “really hard.” Despite the difficulty, she did manage to do it with mostly living flowers. Trixie probably should have focused on summoning herself. Maybe that would have taught her how to teleport again. But flowers were always a crowd favorite.

What caught the eye of the audience was not the unassailable difficulty of Trixie’s acts of magic, but the fear that she might not succeed, that the act they paid to see would be a failure. It was that little moment of thrill, when you thought for a moment she wouldn’t be able to make the bouquet of flowers appear again, that Trixie succeeded, and paraded around the stage as if there had never been any doubt. It was in this manner that Trixie learned to capture her audience’s wonder, rather than simply bludgeon it with pizazz.

Trixie was more than ready for Star City. She was riding on the high of a rising star, who had discovered their talent on stage and had not burned out yet. The world was her oyster, and she didn’t even mind how little time Hat Fancy had to spend with her. She considered herself too busy for him for once! But Fancy was busy too, and not just with show business. He would meet with city officials, and rather unfriendly looking ponies, and some high ranking members of the city’s defense. Trixie didn’t know any of them, but some were old buddies of his, so she figured he was just getting in touch with the friends that he was usually too busy travelling to see.

When he called her to the meetings, Trixie found it a bit odd. It was very uncomfortable going up before those strange ponies who she had little in common with, and all seemed to look at her with unfriendly eyes. Fancy had her perform private shows for them, and his instructions for her there were far more demanding than the face she showed to the greater public. These ponies he was friends with weren’t looking for a thrill or a dazzle you see, but rather for something else in her entirely. Trixie didn’t know how to approach this situation, but she tried her best, for Fancy’s sake. And he rewarded her greatly for doing so.

This was how Trixie got to meet gryphons for the first time. She walked into the ...unfortunately stone building, looking around apprehensively, and there were three high ranking generals in the gryphon legion. As you might expect, they stared at Trixie like hawks, or lions, and Trixie herself was doing her best frightened deer impression. She was thankful it didn’t become her fainting goat impression, because as good as she was at that, it was highly inappropriate for the situation.

“Is she just going to stand there, or...?” one of them said, a rough throated male with a scarred eye.

“T-t-trixie is going to perform for you,” Trixie blurted out hastily, trying to recall what she could do with that horn thing on her head. “Uhm...”

“The Great Trixie Lulamoon,” Fancy said with a meaningful look to the three generals, “Is going to demonstrate her incredible powers, by defeating the shielding abilities of not three, but five unicorns!”

With a dramatic flourish, he pulled the curtain aside to reveal four rather dismal looking unicorns, in varying shades of color and uncertainty. Trixie didn’t know about this! She was magical, but could she really break five shields at once? Wait, where was the fifth unicorn?

“How do we know this isn’t a trick?” one of the gryphons asked, with a suspicious leer at Hat Fancy.

“For two reasons!” he declared boldly, “First off, because I myself will be one of the unicorns involved. There will be none to defeat our magic aside from her.”

“Trixie doesn’t—!” Trixie squeaked in alarm, but Fancy went on with a dangerous gleam in his eyes, saying,

“And furthermore, if you wish to prove our magic genuine, well you gentlecocks had better be prepared to show us what happens to a unicorn whose shields fail.”

“I’m liking this demonstration better and better,” the gryphon on the left said, raising a forehoof with its gryphon talons clenched in a ball, and pounding it against the other forehoof.

“Hey, we didn’t sign up for this!” one of the other four said in an alarmed if goofy sounding tone.

“Then you’d better raise your shields!” Fancy said to them smugly, his horn lighting up and a shimmering barrier appearing before him. As the three gryphons stalked forward towards the three mares and two stallions, the other four hastily raised shields of their own, in varying shades of ability. “It’s not like this one lone untrained filly,” Fancy threw a hoof out to Trixie, who wished he hadn’t, so the gryphons wouldn’t notice her, “Can take down all of our shields at once.”

The gryphons charged.

Trixie was privileged to see firsthoof how magic avails a unicorn in battle. There is an excellent shield spell, which many learn as a basic part of combat training, as well as some disruptive spells to disorient and demoralize the enemy. Offensive magic of course is a double edged sword, so generally conventional weapons and levitation are employed. But none of these unicorns had been provided with weapons, and if they had had them, they were certainly relieved of them before coming here.

Nevertheless, one does not simply defeat even an unarmed unicorn in battle. Though the gryphons roared and clawed at the flashing shields of shimmering force, the ponies could keep away from them, limiting them to a safe distance. “Now, Trixie!” Hat shouted, snapping her out of her trance. “Just like we practiced!”

“Trixie doesn’t want—” Trixie whimpered nervously, but he just bellowed back at her,

“Do it, filly!!”

Trixie lit up her horn. The magic must have felt her reluctance, because it was difficult to dismantle the shields of these unicorns. It was a similar principle to breaking a magic suppressor though, and in that Trixie found herself unmatched in skill. Plus only two of the unicorns were as skilled as Hat in combat magic, and the others had a spell form as shaky as their nerves facing off against raging gryphons. Trixie tried not to cry, telling herself that it was all part of the act, as one after another each unicorn’s shield flashed brightly and shattered when touched by her creeping magic.

Trixie didn’t realize this, but the gryphons were very careful and considerate with their foes. If they hadn’t been, no pony but her would have walked out of this building alive. But she was no judge of the brutality of combat, and the cries of pain and the bloody slashes utterly terrified her. The gryphons completely ignored her, corralling the five unicorns all into a tight group, snapping at their flanks, and scraping at their barrels. Because they couldn’t shield themselves, because of what Trixie was doing, because—!

“Okay Trixie, that’s enough!” Fancy shouted out, after not hesitating to return the black eye a gryphon general had given him. Trixie felt nothing but confused relief as she pulled back her magic, and let it flicker out, and the other unicorns were immediately all covered in one collective, combined, huddled shield.

The gryphons did not continue their attack, but merely stopped instantly, backing up to a respectful distance, and then turning and looking at Trixie in a worryingly new light.

“How do you feel, Trixie?” Hat Fancy said after all was said and done, limping up to her with a silly smile on his face while the gryphons conferred with each other.

“Terrible!” Trixie said stridently. “They were hurting you! And all those ponies! Trixie thought this was part of the show!”

“It was!” Fancy said confidently. “Don’t worry about us though. How do you feel? Tired? Weary? At risk of magic exhaustion?”

Trixie blinked at him. “...no?” she said tentatively.

“You see,” he said, not to Trixie, but to the gryphons, whirling around to face them. “Not even winded! With the right training, just imagine what this little mare could accomplish for you!”

Trixie was amazing, and she was talented, and she hadn’t felt guiltier about being either of those since burning down an orphanage in her own frenzied hubris. Fancy had fantastic words for her then, but an hour later hiding in the corner in back of a trailer, Trixie had a different opinion of herself.

“Trixie hurt all those ponies!” she wailed. “She stopped their shields so easily! Trixie is a monster!”

“You’re not a monster,” Hat Fancy retorted in frustration, standing above the disaster of a filly not quite a mare, “You’re an amazingly talented mare!”

“Trixie—” her face twisted in rage as that name, that stupid name fought its way out of her lips. “Trixie cannot even speak for herself!” she whined angrily, “She can only talk about—about some other pony who—somepony who deserves Trixie’s name, while she doesn’t even exist!!”

At first the only answer she could hear from him was silence. That and her disgusted sobs. Trixie just wanted him to go away, to leave her in her misery, so that she could wallow in whatever it is that ponies were supposed to wallow in!

“...a lot of ponies end up that way,” he stated calmly, more calmly than he had sounded all afternoon once Trixie had her little freak out here. She sniffled and looked up at him, seeing not the wrath of an angry stallion, but a sad, tired look in his eyes.

“What?” Trixie said, naturally.

“It’s not common, but there are places... Equestria funded institutions that teach foals to always speak of themselves,” Hat Fancy told her quite honestly. “It’s supposed to be a lesson in humility, and ponies just don’t realize how much it can... affect the foals they work with. But you, Trixie? You’re an amazing filly. I have full confidence that you can overcome anything they threw at you, and be a great and powerful success!”

“...Trixie just wants everypony to love her,” Trixie mumbled.

His face broke in an easy smile, and he drawled out, “Aw, Trixie babe, you know I love you, no matter what—”

“Trixie wants everypony to love her!” Trixie declared more firmly, staring with defiance at that stupid, gorgeous, capable stallion. She already knew she lost the argument though, as Trixie had sufficiently calmed down enough for him to lower his head and lift up her chin, and softly caress their lips together. Shortly thereafter, until the sun had set, Trixie became very able to appreciate the love of one single pony.

Trixie did want everypony to love her, though. She had gone for too long without love, and for Trixie the ignorant applause, from ponies unknowing of her crimes, was the most addictive of drugs. She was a naive little filly who like most fillies her age already thought she was a wise and worldly mare, and as such Trixie was easily manipulated into a situation she really did not want to be in.

The gryphons were impressed. They were high ranking military officials to boot, so Trixie’s stage career at Star City started to become somewhat derailed by the requirements of some very important creatures who required so much of her. Not just in magic, oh no, but in combat and loyalty. They sought to test Trixie’s mettle, and to ensure she would only use it in their favor, and she had no idea what they were doing. It was inevitable really. A powerful young mare like Trixie could only go so long, before the powers that be sought to use her to accomplish their goals.

But Fancy didn’t help matters one bit. Trixie may have been hopelessly naive, but he was intoxicated with the idea of Trixie as some kind of valiant battle mage, seeing all his imagined enemies falling before her arcane sorcery. Ponies didn’t come across the ocean to this valley without a very good reason, without something to hide, some reason to run. And Hat Fancy as it turns out—well, Trixie never got the full story, but he had been driven from Equestria with his tail between his legs. He was a pony with an axe to grind, who had rather sour opinions of a certain princess of ponies, who took responsibility over sun and moon.

Trixie began to understand Fancy, when he was upset with her for fumbling the slicing spell, when she was too afraid to see the cuts appear on that frightened pony’s face before her. Trixie backed away saying, “Trixie can’t... Trixie is not okay with this! He doesn’t want Trixie to hurt him! Can’t you see what he...?”

The gruff pony who had dragged the stallion before Trixie just rolled her eyes and muttered something about working with civvies. She had insisted he was a criminal, who deserved no less, but Trixie just couldn’t bring herself to do it. The pony left, disappointed in Trixie, but Hat Fancy was not disappointed in her. No, he was absolutely livid.

“I can’t believe you chickened out! You were doing great, what happened?” he demanded of her, in his personal wagon that night.

“Trixie doesn’t hurt ponies!” she shouted back at him in exasperation. “Trixie is not a monster! She is not a... a pony hurter!” Trixie had not yet been exposed to enough reading material to have run across the word ‘sadist,’ if that was not clear.

“You are whatever you want to be!” he told her fiercely, “And I want you to be dynamite, not a wet noodle!”

He got right close to Trixie’s side and said in a dangerous tone, “We’re gonna show what you can do, to some very good friends of mine, and next time you are not going to chicken out. Are we clear on that?”

Trixie was most conflicted at the moment because before he had exploded at her tonight, she thought he would, you know, alone, together in the dark? So she felt no fear, only disappointment, and burning resentment when she said in a harsh whine, “Trixie does not have to obey—”

She had no chance to finish her sentence of course, because Hat Fancy kicked Trixie into the wall. “The hell you don’t!” he roared, rounding on her, “After all I’ve done for you! How dare you? You owe me everything!”

“Trixie is sorry!” Trixie said, feebly holding her hooves up to cover her face. She could have done so many things to stop him, but all she could see was his anger, and the fear clouded her mind with what she always did when her caretakers acted this way. Plead forgiveness, and lie like a fish. “Trixie didn’t mean it! Trixie will do better next time. She promises! P-please Trixie was wrong, she didn’t mean to say it. She will do everything you say! Just don’t—!”

Trixie lost her voice then, but the fire in Fancy’s eyes died, and his raised hoof lowered to the floor. “I’m just under a lot of pressure!” he protested to her, “You know how much trouble I could get in, if they think I’m lying? It’s for your own good. You need to use that talent of yours, for real magic, not just stage performance!”

“T-Trixie will do better,” she mumbled emotionlessly, without meeting his gaze. “Trixie won’t disappoint you. Everything will be fine. Trixie will be even better. Trixie is sorry.”

“Ugh, just... just go find someplace else to sleep tonight,” he told her, rubbing his forehead with a hoof.

“But... Trixie wanted...” Trixie whimpered uneasily, looking at him.

“Maybe when you earn it next time, you can sleep with me again,” he said in an almost, no in a definitely smug tone.

Trixie couldn’t use the slicing spell on that stallion that day, but she isn’t sure whether she would have done worse to the next pony. Hat Fancy really was everything to Trixie at that time. What he’d done for her, and to her, Trixie really thought the world of him. To think that he would strike her, Trixie just couldn’t ignore that she’d done something very wrong to deserve that. With her thinking like that, he might have gotten Trixie to seriously hurt somepony, and cemented her into Hat’s new role, in his misbegotten quest for vengeance.

But thankfully, a circus is more than its ringmaster.

As Trixie stumbled out of his wagon into the night, nursing her wounds and fighting to avoid weeping bitterly, there was Goobleberry waiting for her. The nature of this pony, this mare, it defies explanation. One thing is clear, that Gooble was very, very large. Blueberry was her given name, and she represented that role well, but sillifying it to Goobleberry was what made her magic on the stage, and Trixie shall always refer to her by the name that filled her with vivacity. She was a large blue pony the color of blueberries, and very much overweight. Her hair was naturally pink, but she often dyed it white or shades of blue for the purposes of her act.

That act being the head clown of a clown troupe. Goobleberry and the Five Filberts went the schpiel. They were all together, like peas in a pod, and fiercely devoted to Goobleberry in each of their own special ways: Tall, Skinny, Tiny, Lefty and Sue.

At the time, Trixie still wasn’t sure of Gooble’s mental abilities, but the prospects weren’t looking good. The large pony simply smiled at her dumbly, as Trixie came from the wagon, and presented her side, lowering heavily onto her rotund belly. Trixie rolled her eyes at this, but she knew what this was about, and frankly... she couldn’t say no, the way she was feeling right now.

Trixie climbed atop Goobleberry as invited, and just went limp laying on the pony’s back. Goobleberry was soft, and so very warm. It soothed Trixie enough that her emotions began welling up inside her. Gooble stood, and walked calmly off, despite Trixie being increasingly wracked with helpless sobs. Trixie just didn’t know what went so wrong, with that night, with her relationship with Hat Fancy, and with Trixie’s whole entire life. Goobleberry didn’t console her, or chastise her, but merely carried Trixie in silent acceptance, to where Trixie was going to be sleeping tonight.

No, Trixie was not sleeping with Goobleberry. As pleasant as that would sound, between her bulk, and the other five, there wasn’t much room left in Gooble’s wagon. And Trixie wasn’t that comfortable with close contact. Yet somehow she didn’t mind being laid over Goobleberry herself. It was part of that pony’s magic, Trixie swears.

Instead, Trixie stayed with Bim and Gertrude. They were an... odd pony. Trixie wasn’t kidding when she said this was a circus of freaks. Bim and Gertrude had been twins in the womb, but something had gone awry and when they were given birth, well there was mostly one pony that came out. The unique thing about their particular condition is that both of their heads were fully intact. It was rather like being around some kind of pony hydra. Sort of literally. Bim would joke that if you cut him off, two more of him would grow in his place.

Trixie isn’t... sure how they managed to walk around. It’s all they’d ever known though, and they never seemed to have any trouble with it. It was probably good that Goobleberry delivered her to their wagon, because if there was anything these two knew how to deal with, it was arguing. Because they had gotten over all of their personal issues together, out of sheer neccessity.

“Of course you can stay with us honey,” Gertrude said, her voice full of emotion as she hooked their hoof around Trixie’s shoulders and led her into the wagon.

“What happened?” Bim asked in his rather nasal voice. “You always uh... slept with Master Fancy before.”

“We’ll find out in due time,” Gertrude gently corrected him. Even their mane color was different, Bim’s red and Gertrude’s orange. Their tail was what you’d think was a normal bicolored tail, until you saw its colors divided up between that of their heads. Trixie had found them inconceivably creepy at first, but enough times performing with anypony and you’ll become comfortable with them, and unsurprised by their strange appearance. It helped that they were one of the nicest ponies Trixie knew.

“Fancy has problems every time we go to this city,” Gertrude explained in an appeasing tone, over three mugs of hot tea. (Trixie would have preferred cocoa, but it wasn’t exactly easy to come by around here.)

“He’s always talking about going back to Equestria,” Bim added , “How he’s gonna make it someday.”

“But he just can’t let go,” Gertrude shook her head. “Something hurt him back there, and he wants some closure, or, retribution or something.”

“He just needs your support,” Bim said to Trixie foolishly, “You’re real important to him, you know?”

“He just has a ...strong way of expressing it sometime,” Gertrude agreed. “He kicked you out, right? What do you think he’d do if he was real cross, and wanted to protect you from him blowing up?”

“He’d... make Trixie leave, instead of... Trixie understands,” Trixie said mutedly.

“Plus how would you get him angry,” Bim pointed out, “If he didn’t care a whole lot about you?”

“Yeah,” Gertrude said approvingly, “Remember when he first saw you? He was like, beat it, chick!”

“But now he’s just... more invested, that’s all,” Bim added.

“Trixie would rather he only kicked her out,” Trixie complained resentfully, massaging her sore flank, “And hadn’t kicked her as well.”

Neither of them could think of any encouraging words to say to that, though.

Trixie learned a lot about Hat Fancy from the other performers. He kept his secrets close, but they had known him for years, and some for more than that.

“He failed once, and he wants to succeed, but he thinks he can’t succeed if he ever fails. He’s a real piece of work,” the completely insane pony unironically known as Death Wish advised Trixie. “You know he was once in the Equestrian guard? For a combat trained unicorn, running a sideshow is a bit of a step down.”

Wishy was a blue pony a shade lighter than Gooble, grey blue really, but with a blonde mane that really made her stand out. Stand out was exactly what she liked to do. Her cutie mark of a sword on fire was certainly... augmented like Trixie’s, but it really did capture her heart, even if Wish’s talent was something more mundane.

“What happened?” Trixie asked her.

“I don’t know the full story,” she revealed in a rare display of reluctance. “I’m ex-mil too, but Curled was the one who was in his squad. There was a huge disaster though. Curled is uh, I didn’t mean he’s the only one in his squad who’s working here. I mean he’s the only one who uh, walked away. Sort of.”

Curled Paw would not tell Trixie what happened either, though it certainly would have made things easier. But a few things were clear. Both he and Hat lost a lot of good friends that day, and emotions were still raw even after all these years. Reminders of the past wasn’t something either of them needed. It was hard enough to let go, without ponies constantly trying to remind them of it. Or gryphons, as it were.

Trixie did not do well, given Fancy’s new focus for her. She had the ability, oh yes, but the violent intent simply was not there. You have to attain a certain attitude, before you can wilfully hurt other ponies, and for Trixie that attitude was slow in coming. Certainly not for lack of trying. Fancy would... express his disapproval when she failed, and Trixie didn’t like getting beaten up any more than any other green recruit.

Oh his clients tried to convince her, to get her invested in their master plan, and they had some very good reasons for doing so. Trixie could have listened, and she might have hurt more than a few ponies. That she didn’t, does not make Trixie some sort of pony saint. Rather, she was more acting out of fear than compassion, fear for herself in a world where everypony is her enemy.

Call Trixie foolish, but she still held onto the hope that she could be a pony’s friend, and not their monster in the dark.

This is not to say her fellow performers were saints, or that they didn’t have their own reasons for hating Equestria for what they’ve done. Trixie only infrequently met with the acrobats, but their meetings were usually very portentious and informative. The twin acrobat pegasi were not actually twins, but they sure looked the part. Identical in build, and both pegasi, a mare and stallion pair who were in a way closer to each other even than the pony with two heads. Razzy was green with a purple mane, and Azim was purple with a green mane. Trixie swears they didn’t use dyes; they were simply fated to match together. In their show they appeared identical, moving seamlessly together as one, like two pieces of the same pony.

They were the stars of this circus. They the longest segment to perform, and the fanciest wagon, lovingly stylized with their faces and their ego. Not the two headed pony that intrigued the audience, not the beast tamer who soothed their fears of the things that crawled in the swamp, not the strong pony whose inexplicably petite frame made her acts all the more impressive. No, what ponies in that land wanted to see were Zim and Zam, the acrobats extraordinare. Through them, you see, ponies could vicariously experience the freedom of flying away from that place, and leaving the valley floor behind.

Talking to them muzzle to muzzle, the two were quite a bit different than their appearance suggested. They got along well; opposites attract as they say, but they were certainly not identical. Razzy was far more hot headed than Azimuth. And Azimuth had a depth of emotion that she could not hope to match. Or as Razzy put it, he was a big crybaby. When they performed, Azimuth would put it away, while Razzy would take it out. It worked very well. Interacting with them was a bit schizophrenic though.

With all that ponies did to her, Trixie should have been full of violent intent, but somehow managed to escape that. There were good reasons for feeling that way, though, were Trixie not so much of an ignorant coward. Other ponies who heard her plight felt very strongly about what happened, and to these two acrobats, her story managed to cut especially deep.

Trixie was telling them this, because she had been living with the company for a while, and had finally opened up enough to start talking about her experiences in the orphanage. These two, being pegasi, were curious what happened to the foals who were pegasi, whether the foals went up to the mountains where most pegasi roosted, or what. The circus performed once a year, every year at that orphanage, and these two always wanted to do something about all those sad little foals, but they never knew just how bad it was...

“Trixie thinks the pegasi foals might have been able to jump to the ground,” she had been in the process of explaining to them, regarding the mysterious orphanage fire. “They could at least slow their fall. Oh of course Bitty probably could have flown away,” Trixie added in contemptuous disgust, “She wasn’t clipped.”

“What do you mean, clipped?” Razzy, the female of the pegasus pair asked crossly.

“They clipped wings, there.”

Both acrobats looked her way as one, as the words left Trixie’s mouth, totally still for once. Pegasi move around a lot more than other tribes, so it was really noticeable. Trixie had already told the two about the beatings, and the isolation, and the... unorthodox curriculum. When Trixie told them about clipping, she knew enough about pegasi to know that they would be upset, but she certainly did not expect that the terrible silence would be broken by one mare’s hooves smashing right through the wall of her own wagon.

“7 years!” Razamatazz shouted at Azimuth in rage as bits of board clattered to the ground outside. He didn’t even seem to notice though.

“That’s why the foals never flew...” the stallion said, staring forward in a broken melancholy.

“7 years!” Razzy repeated shrilly, “7 years, and we did nothing!!”

Razzy flew straight out of their wagon, so swiftly Trixie couldn’t even see her leave. She was just gone, with a billowing blast of air in her wake. Azimuth sunk to his haunches, wings wrapped protectively around himself, shaking his head in dismay. “All those foals...” he continued to say to himself.

Trixie really didn’t know what to say to that. “Did you know one named Bitty?” she asked looking at him uncertainly. “Bit Bright?” Trixie didn’t understand what was going on, what was she supposed to do? Comfort him?

“Trixie thinks that Bitty escaped,” Trixie said as comfortingly as she could. “That’s why I said she wasn’t clipped. She could have flown away from the fires, because she got to skip clipping day that time, because of ...Trixie.”

Trixie would have found more well-intentioned words to comfort him with, but she was struck dumb then by that troubling revelation.

That horrible sting of betrayal, the weeks of isolation, all the needless struggles Bitty’s betrayal had caused, Trixie remembered the look in Bitty’s eyes when they made her watch the betrayal of Trixie. Having tattled on Trixie to get out of wing clipping, Bitty was held there by leash and threat , to watch Trixie rendered unconscious and dragged away to isolation. The very idea that all of that could have accomplished something good was just inconceivable to Trixie. And yet there it was, right out of Trixie’s mouth. Bitty could have flown away. She might be alive to this day, thanks to tattling on Trixie.

Trixie was torn from her shock back into the present moment, as Azimuth grabbed her and hugged her to him like a ragdoll, wetting her fur with his tears. “You were the best thing that ever happened to that orphanage!” he said in a voice heavy with sorrow.

“Trixie burned the orphanage to the ground,” Trixie protested dazedly.

He did not contest that however, just held her and cried.