Helping...Hands?

Chapters

1. Lending a Helping Hoof
2. Don't Panic
3. Learning Curve
4. Insecurities
5. To Canterlot
6. The Majestic and Lovely Lyra Heartstrings!
7. The Show
8. (Threats of) Violence Solves Everything
9. Papercut
10. One Week Later [Epilogue]
BONUS - Helping...Wings? [Non-Canon]

1. Lending a Helping Hoof

“Come in!” the Mayor cried, looking bigger, and in did come the strangest figure! Her queer long cloak, from hoof to head, was half of yellow and half of red; and she herself was tall and thin, with sharp gold eyes, each like a pin, and light loose hair, and lips where smiles went out and in – there was no guessing her kith and kin! And nobody could enough admire the tall mare and her quaint attire. Quoth one: “It’s as my great-grandsire, starting up at the Trump of Doom’s tone, had walked this way from his painted tombstone!”

Lyra advanced to the council-table, “Please your honors,” said she, “I’m able, by means of a secret charm, to draw all creatures living beneath the sun, that creep, or swim, or fly, or run, after me so as you never saw!

“And I chiefly use my charm on creatures that do ponies harm: the mole, and toad, and newt, and viper; And people call me the Pied Lyre.”

“Yet,” said she, “poor lyrist as I am, in Tartary I freed the Cham last month from his huge swarms of gnats; I eased in Roen the Nizam of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats; and, as for what your brain bewilders, if I can rid your town of rats, will you give me one thousand guilders?”

The Mayor and Corporation looked between themselves. “I don’t know,” said the Mayor, “one thousand guilders seems like an awful lot just to kill rats.”

“But they fought your dogs and killed your cats!” Lyra pointed out with a stamp of her hoof. “They bit the foals in their cradles and ate the cheeses out of the vats, and licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles! Split open the kegs of salted sprats, made nests inside stallion’s best hats and even spoiled all the mares chats by drowning their speaking with shrieking and squeaking in fifty different sharps and flats! Which is actually kind of impressive for rats, though, that they can harmonize so well when they have that much going on at once.”

“What were you going to do with the rats, anyway?” asked one of the Corporation.

“I dunno, drown them in the river or something.”

“Drown them in the river?” demanded the Mayor incredulously. “Oh, yes, perfect idea, Pied Lyre! Let’s get a couple thousand rats and drown them in the same water we drink!”

“You filter it first, don’t you?” asked Lyra, casting a sidelong glass at the cup of water she apparently held.

“That hardly seems like the point!”

“I did say ‘or something!’ I won’t necessarily drown them in the river! Maybe I’ll lead them to a wonderful cave that leads to a magical world of plenty!”

“Do you know where a wonderful cave that leads to a magical world of plenty is?”

“…well, I do know where a cave is.”

“Who brought her here again?” asked the Mayor, looking around at the Corporation.

“Look, if you don’t pay me a thousand guilders then I’m going to get magic all up in here and drag you all to that cave!”

“I’m seriously doubting you could do that.”

“Oh yeah?” Lyra demanded as she leapt up –

– and came crashing down onto the floor of BonBon’s room, having fallen from her marefriend’s bed, backwards. Again.

“Ow,” she noted.

My little pony, My little pony
Ahh ahh ahh ahhh...
My little pony
Friendship never meant that much to me
My little pony
But you're all here and now I can see
Stormy weather; Lots to share
A musical bond; With love and care
Teaching laughter; It's an easy feat,
And magic makes it all complete!
You have my little ponies
How'd I ever make so many true friends?

Lyra scratched the back of her head, where the cloth full of ice had been. Her mane was all matted down against her skull there. BonBon, meanwhile, moved about the kitchen of her home, making breakfast for the two of them. Lyra would have helped, but her attempts at trying to cook anything had usually ended, at best, in something that was completely inedible. She’d learned to just sit patiently and wait.

“At least you didn’t land on your horn this time,” the cream-colored earth pony noted of her marefriend.

Lyra winced at the memory. Unicorn horns were…sensitive. Landing on one after falling out of bed was a singularly painful experience, one that she had unfortunately gone through at least twice this month. “I think I need to be tied to the bed…”

“Oh?” BonBon asked, stopping what she was doing and giving Lyra an arch look. “Do you now…”

The unicorn stared uncomprehendingly for a few moments, before realizing what she had said, began to correct herself, thought about the possibilities for a moment, and settled on offering a wry grin. “Maybe we can ‘test’ that idea tonight,” she suggested, leaning forward where she sat at the kitchen table and laying her head to rest on her fetlocks, eyes half-lidded.

BonBon shook her head sadly as she went back to the pancakes she was making for the two of them. “Maybe,” she said, “but I imagine you’ll be too tuckered out from your show in Canterlot.”

Lyra’s eyes widened as she remembered – she couldn’t believe she’d somehow managed to forget that the show she’d been waiting for all month, and preparing for over the past two days, had slipped her mind. Then again, there was the blunt force trauma to her head to consider. “Right,” she noted, sighing as she rubbed her eyes with her hooves. “I should have just gotten a hotel in Canterlot. I can’t believe I thought going there and back and there and back by train, two days in a row, was a good idea…”

“Mmn, but then you’d miss out on these,” BonBon pointed out, as she finished the last of the half-dozen pancakes and set it down on a tray, then brought the tray over to the table, which Lyra had set up with syrup and powdered sugar in between creating her ice pack. “And what’s more important, being fully prepared for your first solo show, or my pancakes?”

Lyra blinked a few times, sensing a trap. She bought time by taking a bite from her pancakes, but that only gave her a few extra seconds. “Pancakes?” she asked finally, hoping for the best.

“No. It’s your show,” BonBon noted, though she leaned forward and pecked Lyra on the nose, adding “but good guess. Besides, you’ve rehearsed, you’re a natural to begin with, and you’ve got ten hours for extra practice and rest.”

“Nine,” Lyra corrected. “I have that thing with Trixie first.”

BonBon made a slight face, pausing in her own meal. “Shouldn’t it wait?”

“She promised it’d only take an hour, at most, and it has something to do with Princess Luna and Corona...”

Lyra trailed off, as a slight shudder went through BonBon’s frame, and she again paused in eating. For the briefest moment, her eyes glazed over slightly in memory. Lyra and BonBon were two out of less than a hundred ponies who had the dubious honor of having both met the Tyrant Sun herself, in person – but the difference was in the details. Lyra had struggled through the dangerous Everfree Forest itself to get to the artifacts necessary to combat the mad alicorn, and had emerged from the other side as the Element of Loyalty, and along with the other Elements had driven Corona off and saved Equestria. But BonBon, on the other hoof, had been kidnapped by her, along with about a dozen other adult ponies and around fifty foals. Corona had been intent on using them to secure Ponyville’s loyalty as she had attempted to take over Equestria – had been ready, willing, and certainly able to murder them all if Ponyville had done anything else.

Lyra had previously intended to spend more time at her parents’ house before fully moving in with BonBon, but the cream-colored earth pony still had nightmares about the experience – dreams of fire and hate and the blank, mad eyes of Corona, the Tyrant Sun. The nightmares were less frequent, however, and less vivid, when she shared a bed with Lyra.

“I…” BonBon said in a low voice. “I guess that means that it’s important, too.”

Lyra nodded. “But like I said,” she noted quickly, “she says it’ll be fast. She knows about the show and promised me that nothing would get in the way of it.”

“Trixie lies, though,” BonBon said, dragging herself back to the here and now. “Habitually.”

“Yeah, but she’s not as good at it as she thinks she is,” Lyra countered, as she glanced to the clock on BonBon’s kitchen wall, which showed that it was currently 11:09 AM. “I’ll get there by eleven thirty, and be an hour, tops. Then I’ll stop of here, get my stuff, and grab the one o’clock to Canterlot. Even if I miss it, there’s the three o’clock train. Plenty of time.”

“I hope so,” BonBon said, then smiled brightly. “I know you’re just doing a few pieces for the Academy, but still…your first solo show! You first serious solo show!”

Lyra matched BonBon’s smile as she tucked into her pancakes again. She’d need to hurry at this point if she wanted to keep to her schedule. “It’ll be a piece of cake,” she declared.

Lyra noted with some interest that the repairs for the Residency of the Representative of the Night Court of Luna – that title needs to be shortened, Lyra thought – had been completed between the last time she had seriously taken them in, and today. The building was largely unremarkable, a two-story thatched-roof home like most of the rest of Ponyville, with the only distinguishing feature being the chest-high iron fence that surrounded it, and the front gate that was marked with the Equestrian coat of arms. The garden was partially buried under snow – Winter Wrap Up would be coming in just a few short weeks, but until then the weather ponies of Equestria seemed to be determined to make up for the havoc that Corona had played with the weather back during the Longest Night, when she’d kept the sun in the sky for twenty straight hours, and made it burn hot and bright, like a midsummer day.

The seafoam-green unicorn was curious about whatever it was that Trixie needed her for. She considered the blue-coated, white-maned unicorn a friend, and indeed their friendship was the very thing that had given them the power to drive off Corona. However, Trixie, though she disguised it well these days, had something of a low opinion of Lyra’s choice of profession. Well…not a low opinion, precisely. Rather, Trixie seemed convinced that Lyra was in constant need of work to pay the bills, not understanding that musicians could actually live quite comfortably even if they weren’t super-famous. No amount of patient explanation – nor terse reminders – had yet been able to disabuse Trixie of that notion.

Lyra found both the front gate and the front door of the Residency unlocked, and so resolved to let herself in – Trixie was expecting her, after all, and Lyra had a schedule to keep to. As she entered, she hung her hat, a gray Gatsby, on the rack just inside the door, but opted to leave her wool cloak on. It’d be hot, but it would help impress on Trixie the point that Lyra had places she needed to be. She opened her mouth to call out to Trixie to let her know that she was here, when a voice from Trixie’s living room interrupted her.

“…and that’s what happened. Pause for laughter. By the way, I need your help. No…story’s too long, not very funny anyway…”

Curious, Lyra stepped forward as quietly as she could, up to the door of the living room. Glancing inside, she saw two unicorns. One, with her back to the living room’s door, was obviously Trixie – if the blue coat and white mane hadn’t been a giveaway, the fact that she was wearing a bright purple cape, studded with silver stars, would have been the clincher, while sitting on the couch was her matching pointed wizard’s hat. She was sitting on her haunches, facing a seafom-green unicorn, with a mane that was split between white and the same shade of green, with a cutie mark of a golden lyre. The unicorn had a bright grin plastered on her, and –

Wait a second, Lyra realized, blinking several times. That’s me!

“Okay,” Trixie said, not turning around and instead focusing on Lyra. “How about…so, you’re looking to make an easy fifty bits, right?”

Lyra – the real Lyra, the one sitting outside of the living room – bristled at that, while the one sitting inside of the living room didn’t react at all. Trixie, meanwhile, sighed. “Yeah, brilliant, Trixie. Insinuate the jobless bum thing again. That’ll go over well…”

So well, Lyra grumbled as her horn glowed slightly, and she extended her magical senses outwards, focusing on the mysterious other Lyra. Almost immediately, she was able to perceive a blue aura that hadn’t been there previously, surrounding the doppelgänger. The aura rippled slightly, and as Lyra observed it seemed that her opposite became partially transparent.

Ah…she mentally realized, withdrawing her magical probing as she recalled what she’d learned at Luna’s Academy of Magic. Illusion. Glamor, specifically. But why did Trixie make a glamor of me?

Trixie suddenly reared back on her hind hooves, casting one forward, towards the illusory Lyra, while the other was raised up as though she was holding something in it. “Help me Lyra Heartstrings! You’re my only hope!”

It was all Lyra could do to keep a surprised burst of laughter down at that, as she realized what Trixie was doing: practicing asking her for help on something, and using the false Lyra as a reference point. She idly wondered how long Trixie had been at this, and briefly wondered if she should think it more sad than amusing.

“No…” Trixie intoned, coming down onto her hooves and letting out along sigh. “Agh! Why is it so hard to confess your true feelings to somepony?”

“What?” Lyra demanded – or tried to demand, but even that single-word exclamation came out as little more than an inane syllable as the illusion of Lyra disappeared, dissolving into blue mist, while Trixie turned around, wearing a sly grin.

“Gotcha,” the blue unicorn noted, then nodded towards Lyra’s horn. “Felt the magic. Decided to have fun.”

“That wasn’t funny!” Lyra objected. She realized she was blushing furiously.

“It was for me,” Trixie countered indignantly, as her horn glowed, and she telekinetically lifted her hat and put it on her head. “And you were spying on me, anyway.”

Lyra grumbled slightly as she came into the living room. “So you need help with something,” she said, deciding to move the conversation forward.

Trixie grimaced, and shifted her weight from right to left and back again a few times at the statement. “Yes,” she said, as though saying it was physically uncomfortable.

“You know there’s nothing wrong with asking for help from somepony…”

“Sure there isn’t,” Trixie responded, looking behind her, to the living room’s table. There was a large, thick book there, looking relatively new, its cover marked with the seal of Equestria: the sun, trapped behind a crescent moon with its horns pointed downwards, and with a star placed between the horns. “There isn’t when it’s, I dunno, needing help with gardening. Or baking something. But this…”

Lyra stared at the book for a few moments, then back to Trixie. “Okay,” she said, “why don’t you start from the top?”

Trixie grimaced again. “Remember Zecora?”

Lyra blinked. Zecora was a zebra, a race of beings hailing from a far southern continent. They had met her back during the Longest Night, in the Everfree as she, Trixie, and their four friends had gone into the forest looking for the Elements of Harmony. Zecora had claimed to be a friend; in reality, however, it had turned out that she had been working with Corona the whole time.

“Yes,” Lyra answered.

Trixie fidgeted slightly again. “Zebras worship the sun,” she said. Lyra recoiled slightly at the statement, and Trixie pressed on. “But not Corona. It’s…it’s difficult to explain, especially since we don’t know much about them. But from what we do know, they don’t equate Corona with the sun. They have some kind of…I dunno…big sun-spirit thing, in their mythology. She – or he, sometimes – is basically viewed like Corona was back when she was Celestia. You know: caring, giving, wise and strong but gentle…”

Lyra blinked a few times. “But that’s wrong,” she noted.

“It’s one of the reasons why we don’t have much contact with the zebras,” Trixie said. “But it’s also something that has us - ‘us’ being the Night Court – worried.” She let out a sigh. “We don’t know what Corona is doing right now. Now, the ambassador from Zebrica swears up and down that Zecora was acting alone, without the support of his or any other zebra nation, that this isn’t part of some larger move on the zebra’s part to invade Equestria. As far as we know, he’s telling the truth. Zebrica has no navy to speak of, and a large navy would be needed to launch any kind of invasion.”

“But,” Lyra noted, “you don’t trust him. Or Princess Luna, rather, doesn’t trust him.”

Trixie considered, then offered a shrug. “We don’t know much about zebras. If Corona shows up in Zebrica and claims to be their…sun-spirit…thing…and drops a few solar flares to make her point, they’d probably believe her. She might be able to recruit them and lead them on an invasion of Equestria.”

Lyra thought about that. “Doesn’t seem her style…” she noted. “She’s kind of big on making sure everypony knows who she is. I am Celestia, I am the Sun. That thing.”

Trixie shrugged again. “Maybe. Probably, even. But it’s possible. Which brings us back to: we don’t know anything substantial about zebras. Not their culture, not their tactics, we barely understand their language…and we don’t know anything about their magic.”

Trixie waved the book she was holding around, reminding Lyra that it was there. “This is a translated copy of a zebra…spellbook? I guess it’d be called? Princess Luna wanted me to look it over, see if I could figure out how zebra magic works. Y’know, ‘cause I’m the Element of Magic, and magic is my special talent. Should be easy, right?”

“But I’m guessing it’s not?” Lyra asked, as her own horn glowed, and she reached out telekinetically, grasping the book. Trixie let her, and Lyra opened it as it neared. The writing within was in neat, elegant script, and seemed to mostly consist of lists of random – sometimes very random – ingredients, and how to mix them together, and what to do while one was mixing them together. If Lyra hadn’t known any better, she’d of thought that it was some kind of cook book.

Trixie was again shifting uncomfortable from hoof to hoof. “I don’t know the first thing about magic!” she finally exclaimed, probably much louder than she intended.

Lyra blinked a few times at that, eyeing Trixie. “Huh?” she asked.

“I don’t know anything about magic!” Trixie exclaimed again. “I just do it! Okay, that’s a lie, I know some general stuff, I know the eight schools of magic, I think, and I know all the illusion subschools, but I don’t know anything about actually what goes in to magic a spell, I can’t tell you anything about how to identify a spell as it’s being cast…”

The seafoam-green unicorn stared, wide-eyed. “But…but what was Luna teaching you all these years, then?” she asked.

“Spells.”

“But – ”

“Cast something. Something you don’t think I’d know, but something simple.” Trixie said, standing and watching Lyra intently, horn glowing slightly as she did.

Lyra stared a few moments, then nodded, horn glowing. A golden sphere appeared in front of her. After a second, it popped, and Lyra’s instrument-of-choice, her golden lyre that had been a gift from her parents – the very same one that had first inspired her to pursue music, and had helped her get her cutie mark – appeared from thin air. She caught it in her hooves at it fell.

Trixie nodded. “Okay,” she said, horn glowing blue. A moment later, Lyra’s lyre disappeared from her hooves, as a cerulean sphere appeared in front of Trixie – and a second later, the lyre appeared from it. Trixie elected to catch it telekinetically, then passed it back to Lyra, who was blinking in confusion.

“What?” Lyra demanded.

“That’s how Luna taught me spells,” Trixie said. “That’s how I’ve always learned spells.”

“You…you cast by ear?” Lyra asked, eyes wide.

“What?”

“It’s a music term. It’s when you learn how to play a song just by listening to it, rather than actually learning the notes.”

“Oh! Then yeah. I just…watch somepony cast something. I pay attention to what their auras are doing and how magic is moving around…then I can usually do it, too. Anything complicated I need to watch several times, but…”

Lyra tried to wrap her mind around that. “I hate you,” she said, though with no real malice in her voice. “Do you know how much studying I had to do at the Academy?”

Trixie used a hoof to draw a circle in the floor, looking embarrassed. “Magic’s my special talent,” she said. “And besides, that’s why I need you help! I have no idea what I’m looking for in zebra magic. I’m never any good with spellbooks. Writing down all the steps in a spell always seemed like…like writing down the moves of a dance. You know? Everything that makes the spell work is just lost.”

“So what do you need me for?”

Trixie took the zebra magic book back, holding it up. “I want to cast one of these on you. Well…cast is the wrong word, really. I don’t know, zebra magic is weird. But I want to do one, on you.”

Lyra stared. “On me.”

Trixie held up her front hooves. “I know exactly what you’re thinking,” she said, holding the book forward and indicating one of the spells in it. “I picked an easy one: all it will do is turn you into a zebra. I don’t really know why zebras have a spell for turning ponies into zebras, but it’s right here. And,” she flipped the book’s pages, towards the back of it, “here’s how to end it. Plus,” she flipped to a few pages later, “this spell…ritual…thing…is sort of like a zebra-magic eraser. So even if the first doesn’t work, the second will, no matter what.”

She closed the book, looking at Lyra intently. “I’ll be casting it to get a feel for zebra magic. You’ll be watching me cast it, so you can see all those little details. Then a quick counterspell, and we’re set. Won’t take fifteen minutes.”

Lyra grimaced slightly, looking at the clock hanging in Trixie’s living room. It was now 11:41. She took the book from Trixie again, reading the ‘spell’ in detail. It was…Trixie was right, zebra magic was strange, bearing no resemblance to earth pony, pegasus, or unicorn magic. For ponies, magic was just something that was part of them, and each tribe of pony had its own unique way of manipulating it: earth pony magic was inborn, giving them their strength and endurance compared to other ponies, as well as subtle, rooting itself in the earth that they lived on and promoting life and fertility in the soil. Pegasus magic was partially inborn as well, in their wings which allowed them to fly, but also something that could be projected outwards through their wings and hooves, letting them manipulate the winds and clouds and cause weather. Unicorn magic was almost entirely projected, raw magical energy focused through their horns to create spells and effects.

But looking over the zebra spell, it seemed as though zebras had almost no magic of their own, and couldn’t really manipulate it themselves. The ‘spell’ seemed more like an attempt on the zebra’s part to manipulate reality itself, to exploit flaws or loopholes in the laws of nature and magic by doing the right things in the proper sequence to achieve the desired result.

Lyra grimaced when she realized that her curiosity had been fully piqued at this point. There were any number of music academies in Equestria that Lyra could have gone to – she’d picked the magic academy over all of them for two reasons. First and foremost was the scholarship, but second, and perhaps just as important, was the magic aspect of it. She was a unicorn, she couldn’t not be intrigued by the chance to learn magic, even if it was this bizarre, formulaic version used by zebras.

“Okay,” Lyra said at length, handing the book back to Trixie. “Make me a zebra, then.”

Trixie smiled brightly. “Alright,” she said, trotting past Lyra and out of the living room. “Follow me to the kitchen, I’ve got everything set up in there…”

2. Don't Panic

Lyra fidgeted as Trixie used her telekinesis to apply the black paint to Lyra’s front and hind hooves. “It’s cold,” she noted, before a thought occurred to her. “And this washes off, right?”

“Yes, yes,” Trixie said, waving a hoof as she worked the paint across Lyra’s face now. “I tested it on myself, though the ritual says that the paint will disappear anyway. Um…hold still, I have to get your horn, too…”

Lyra kept her mouth tightly closed as Trixie applied the paint across her horn, coating it completely. She had to fight hard against the instinct to immediately use magic to clean it off as Trixie finished, stepping away from Lyra. The unicorn was now painted, hoof to head, shoulder to dock, in black paint, made from several natural ingredients that Trixie had prepared the previous day. Thanks to Trixie’s telekinesis, it had taken only a few minutes to apply it all. Only Lyra’s mane and tail were uncovered by the paint at this point.

“It’s not a terrible look,” Trixie said with a wry grin, grabbing a mirror from her kitchen’s counter and showing Lyra herself. “Very…bold, anyway.”

Lyra stared at Trixie. Hard. The clock on the wall read 11:57

“Okay, okay, time limit, I know,” Trixie said, levitating the spellbook over to her and looking it over. The spell they were casting was three pages long, most of it ingredients and how to prepare them, with the last being dedicated to the spell’s magic words. “Okay, most of this spell-thing is just in preparing everything. Paint, check, magic circle…” Trixie looked up from the book, glancing down at Lyra’s hooves. The mint-green unicorn was standing in a circle made from powdered coal, about five feet in diameter. Trixie examined it carefully, as did Lyra. “…no breaks, check. Candles…I think the candles are supposed to be a little closer to the circle.”

Lyra eyed the tall candles, five of them arranged evenly around the circle, warily. “They’re close enough as-is to the coal, thanks,” she said. “if they’re too far and the spell fails, then the spell fails.”

Trixie sighed. “Fine,” she conceded, looking the book over again. “Dust…” Trixie hefted a bag of dust with her telekinesis, levitating it over Lyra’s head. The musician let out an annoyed sigh as Trixie emptied it over her. “Sprinkle of pure water…” Trixie hefted a bowl, and used her telekinesis, again, to splash water across Lyra body, circling her as she did. “And last, the magic words…”

“That’s a really weird concept, by the way,” Lyra said. “I mean, I know that sounds weird coming from me…but words can’t hold magic on their own. They’re mnemonics. When I do my spells through song I’m really just using them to help me focus, the words themselves don’t usually matter…”

“Well, they matter to zebras,” Trixie said as she finished circling Lyra, looking her in the eye. “Okay, here goes…” Trixie closed her eyes, focusing, as Lyra readied herself as well. Both their horns glowed slightly. According to the spellbook, this was the most important part: it wasn’t enough to simply say the words, you had to believe in them.

“Nini ana miguu nne asubuhi,
“Miguu miwili katika mchana,
“Na tatu miguu jioni,
“Wewe!”

Trixie’s eyes were closed, so she didn’t probably didn’t notice the lights in the house dimming – but Lyra did. Her eyes widened as she channeled more magic into her horn. There was definitely something arcane happeing here. As she focused, to her eyes, she could see the magic taking shape around her. Strangely, despite Trixie’s chanting in zebra, the magic didn’t seem to be coming from her at all – but rather, from the paint on her body, which was glowing blue now, and the circle of coal dust, glowing green, and the candles, each of which took on a red aura. The auras seemed to reach out and coild around each other and around Lyra. Lyra was more than enough of an adult to admit that she was wrong: apparently magic words did have power, and she had to admit that the zebra magic seemed to have power to spare. It was as though the spell, rather than taking or even touching Trixie’s own magic, was being pulled from the very air itself and shaped by the words Trixie was speaking.

“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Kutembea kwa miguu miwili!
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Kushikilia kwa mikono miwili!”

She remembered after a moment that she was supposed to be observing and learning. Focusing, she tried to identify what the magic was actually doing. Definitely transmutation, Lyra observed. Despite the alien source, zebra magic was certainly working along familiar lines as it moved across her body. But…with elements of conjuration? Is this spell from two schools? Is that – is that possible?

Lyra had never heard of a spell somehow being part of two schools at the same time. As Lyra understood magic, it was fairly rigid: Everything could be grouped into the eight schools of magic. Then again, she knew that the schools of magic were, ultimately, created for conveniences sake, and had little to do with magic itself, instead having been named and organized by unicorn wizards long ago. It wasn’t impossible for there to be magic that Lyra didn’t recognize as being part of one of the eight schools, but it was certainly a jarring experience.

“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Ngozi yako ni wazi!
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Msimamo wako ni mrefu!”

Lyra wasn’t certain she could observe much more – magic positively flooded the air around her now, hurting her eyes and her horn to look at. She’d learned just about all she could, anyway, and so settled back, ‘turning off’ her horn, as it were, and waiting. The spell would take effect in just a few moments, and she’d get to see what it was like as a zebra. She didn’t imagine it would be too different…

“Wewe ni binadamu!
“Wewe ni binadamu!
“Wewe ni binadamu!”

Lyra convulsed at the last word. She had the very distinct sense that whatever was happening should have been immensely painful, but thankfully, it wasn’t – but that didn’t change the fact that all the magic in the room suddenly seemed to collapse into her, as though she had become a sinkhole for it – and began to shake her body around like it was a rag doll. That was when the first sickeningly wet crack split through the air. Lyra had just enough time to wonder if her neck had been snapped, when suddenly everything went black.

Hearing was the first thing to return, and the sound of paper rustling and books being thrown around and landing on a wooden floor.

“No,” Trixie’s voice said, clearly in panic mode. “No…no…no…!”

“Trixie?” Lyra asked, as her eyes fluttered open. Or she tried to ask, anyway – she couldn’t move her mouth, so all that came out was a muffled noise. Her eyes still worked, at least. She realized on opening that she was suspended in the air, held aloft by a blue glow – probably Trixie’s magic, seeing as her horn was glowing brightly.

The unicorn jumped at the sound of it, turning around and looking at Lyra, recoiling slightly as she did. “Oh,” the unicorn observed. At some point during her unconsciousness, Lyra had apparently been brought by Trixie into the unicorn’s living room, where a steadily increasing pile of books had been growing all around her. The blue unicorn’s eyes were wide, and she was shifting in place nervously for several seconds before walking forward, looking up at Lyra.

“Lyra,” Trixie said, in a slow, loud voice, as Lyra felt the telekinetic grip on her jaw loosening. “Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” Lyra responded. “Why woo...woush…” The unicorn-turned-zebra paused a moment, feeling around inside her mouth with her tongue. She hadn’t expected such a small mouth…nor the disturbing number of sharp teeth, four in particular at the front of her mouth. “Why wouldn’t I be able to?” she continued after a moment. “Also…ow.”

“You’re in pain?” Trixie asked, eyes somehow widening more.

“Not…not really…I feel like I should be, though. But no. Just…weird.”

Trixie nodded. “Weird. Right. That’s…yes.”

Lyra blinked a few times, moving her eyes around. She looked down the length of her…well, where her muzzle should have been. “What’s wrong with my face? Why can’t I see my snout? I’m still breathing through my nose…why is my nose tiny? And…” she tried to eye the tip of it, but found it was only just inside her field of vision. “And…pink?”

“Um.”

“Trixie…”

Trixie wet her lips, then swallowed, then wet them again, trying to buy time. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I want to take this slowly, okay? Keep in mind that as bad as this was for you, I…watched this happen. So it was pretty bad for me, too – ”

“Trixie!”

Trixie swallowed again. “Okay. I want to describe you to…you. Take this in tiny steps. Okay? So we prevent freak-outs. We can’t freak-out right now. Freaking out would be bad.”

“I’m getting pretty freaked out, Trixie,” Lyra noted.

“Okay,” Trixie said. “Okay. All in one go: your coat is gone, you’ve just got this kind of pinkish skin. You don’t have a tail. Your hind feet now have no hooves and five…I think the term is toes. Your hips are wider. Your front legs don’t have feet at all, they have hands with five…fingers…on them. Or four. Four and a half. Your…your barrel has…has some kind of lumps, I don’t know, they almost look like udders. You have two of them. And your face is…is…is something I really don’t want to describe. And you’re about twice as long as you used to be from head to…toe.” Trixie looked Lyra over. “Your front legs aren’t nearly as long as your hind legs. I think you’re bipedal now.”

Lyra blinked several times. She let out a nervous chuckle, which made Trixie back away slightly. “And you have a few sharp teeth,” the blue unicorn added when she saw into Lyra’s new mouth. “Um…not all of them, but a few.”

“This isn’t funny, Trixie,” Lyra noted.

“No,” Trixie agreed, before turning around, going back to her books. “But it’s fine. It’s fine! I just have to find out what you are now and then – ”

“Trixie, let me down,” Lyra demanded.

Trixie turned, wide-eyed. “You…you don’t want to see yourself.”

“Trixie, put me down!”

The blue unicorn backed away at the force of Lyra’s words. “O…okay,” she said. Lyra felt herself being lowered to the floor, slowly, on her barrel and stomach. It was then that she felt the two…lumps…that Trixie had described earlier, on her barrel. Slowly – very, very slowly – Lyra began extending her forelegs into her field of vision, as Trixie watched, biting her lip.

Lyra couldn’t stop herself – she let out a low groan when she saw her foreleg, what had happened to it. It was…it was just wrong, the forearm, the knee, the pastern and fetlock…and her hooves! Trixie was right, they were just gone, replaced by things that looked like nothing so much as the front paws of a raccoon or squirrel. The fingers on them were trembling slightly – Lyra let out a gasp of surprise and shock when she found she could move them, though it was an incredibly bizarre feeling to do so. Flex them in, bend them back out, one at a time or all at once…

Lyra closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath.

“Discord's mismatched horns, Trixie, what in Tartaros did you do to me?”

“I don’t know!” Trixie exclaimed. “Everything was – look!” Trixie’s horn glowed, and she brought the spellbook over to Lyra. “Look! I did everything right! I double-checked! I triple checked! You saw too!”

“Well, you better – wait. Wait. How long was I out?”

Trixie blinked a few times, glancing to the clock on her wall. “Five minutes,” she said. Lyra turned to look, and saw that, indeed, it was only 12:09. Taking the ritual’s time into account, it really had probably only been five minutes.

Lyra tried to stand, but let out a slight yelp of pain as the unfamiliar shape of the limbs made her stumble and fall onto her side. She glared down at her treacherous hind legs, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Among other things, she got her first look at the fleshy lumps on her barrel that Trixie had mentioned. They didn’t look a thing like udders, except insofar as she was fairly certain that the pink points to them were probably teats. Further down, her hips were wider than they should have been, leading to long legs that ended in hoof-less feet, instead possessing only five small, useless toes. And her hind legs' shape! It was completely wrong, her hocks having somehow inverted so that her lower leg would bend backwards rather than forwards.

“Trixie…!” Lyra exclaimed, turning to face Trixie, forcing her forelegs and hind legs to work. She ended up on her hands and inverted hocks – knees, now, she guessed – and glared at the blue unicorn. “This is not what a zebra looks like!”

“I know!”

“Will the counterspell even work?”

“I don’t know!” Trixie fidgeted. “Wait here! We’ll try it!” The unicorn dashed past Lyra, out of her living room and into her kitchen.

Lyra closed her eyes again. Transmutation, she reasoned, falling back into what she’d learned in the magic academy. This was a transmutation. A polymorph. It turned me into another creature. My consciousness remained separate – I am still Lyra – but my subconscious has been completely rewritten. I need to stop thinking about what I want my limbs to do. Stop thinking. Just do it.

Lyra took a few deep breaths. “I want to sit down,” she said aloud, then simply willed herself to sit. She didn’t think about how her hind legs were bending wrong, she didn’t think about how her forelegs couldn’t be used for balance, she didn’t think about trying to bend her spine the wrong way. She simply told her body to assume what it considered a sitting position, and then sat.

As it turned out, a sitting position for her body was sitting on her buttocks, hind legs crossed in front of her, almost wrapped around herself, while her forelegs – or whatever they had become – were simply crossed over her barrel and the two bizarre udders. “Okay,” Lyra said, breathing in and out steadily, slowly opening her eyes. “Okay. Keep calm, Lyra. Keep calm. Freaking out will not help. Freaking out will nooooaaaaaahhhhh!”

Lyra had the misfortune of opening her eyes, and seeing herself reflected in the glass door of Trixie’s record cabinet. She recoiled in shock, falling backwards as she saw her face, now completely, utterly different. Her horn was gone, but that had been expected. Her muzzle was gone, too, and her face had been flattened against her skull. Her nose now consisted of a protrusion sitting in the center of her face, over a pair of pinkish lips, and her chin had become incredibly prominent. Her eyes remained gold, but had shrunk – they were maybe half the size they were before. Her mane, too, was identical, still the combination of white and mint green – a part of Lyra wondered if this was because it hadn’t been covered in paint – but it no longer travelled down the entire back of her neck – that had shortened considerably as well – instead stopping just at the base of her skull. And her ears, they had moved down as well, to either side of her head, and now were rounded and completely unable to move – wait, no, not quite. Lyra found she would wiggle them a little, albeit pathetically.

Slowly, Lyra crawled towards her reflection, and against her better judgment, she smiled – and saw the teeth. White and pearly, the teeth in front were basically the same, albeit much smaller – but she also saw the sharp teeth that Trixie had mentioned and which she had already felt in her mouth, the four pointed ones, two on top and two on the bottom.

Lyra hadn’t done particularly well in biology classes, but she knew for a fact that those were the teeth of a predator. “Trixie…?” Lyra called.

“Yes?”

“You might want to hurry up…”

“I’m going as fast as I can!”

“It’s just that, I’m getting a little hungry…”

Trixie double-, triple-, and then quadruple-checked everything, Lyra helping, though all the while glancing at the clock. By the time Trixie had set up everything, it was 12:17, and Lyra was once again covered from head to toe in black, cold paint, except for, once more, her mane.

“Okay,” Trixie said, looking back and forth from the book to Lyra and the magic circle. “Okay. Circle of coal. Black paint. Water. Candles. Dust. Dust? We got dust, right?”

Lyra glared at Trixie. “You just poured it on me!” she exclaimed indignantly. Indeed, sticking to the paint that covered her body was a sizeable amount of dust. Against her better judgment, as well, the candles were now exactly as close to the circle of coal powder that the ritual proscribed.

“Dust! Okay. Okay. Um…okay. Here goes…

“Kupoteza kupigwa yako
“Na kuchukua pembe yako
“Wewe ni tena pundamilia
“Kuwa nyati tena!”

Lyra, sitting cross-legged and with her forelegs crossed over her barrel within the circle, found that she was tapping one finger on her arm as she waited.

And waited.

And…

“Trixie…”

“That’s it!” Trixie exclaimed, grabbing the book and looking it over. “That’s all there is!”

“Is it all there? There isn’t a missing page or something?”

“No!” Trixie exclaimed, holding the book up so Lyra could see. She once again found her body moving of its own accord, comfortably grabbing the book with both hands and reading. “See?” Trixie continued. “Page hundred and twelve, then hundred and thirteen, then hundred and fourteen! They’re numbered! And half of fourteen is empty because the spell ends there, it even says that it ends there, so it’s not like we’re missing the last page!”

Lyra glanced up from the book. “Then what did you do wrong?” she demanded.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“What about those…those magic words. Did you pronounce them right?”

“Yes!” Trixie exclaimed, then paused. “I…I mean, probably…there’s a phonetic guide, I practiced it over and over again, it has to be right!”

Lyra flipped through the book – not easy with fingers as compared to unicorn telekinesis, she found – and returned to the original spell that was supposed to turn her into a zebra. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. So…so something must have gone wrong here. It must have, right? That’s why the counter-spell isn’t working, because you did something wrong – ”

“No I didn’t!”

“ – you did something wrong, Trixie.”

Trixie fidgeted. “Maybe…” she said. “Maybe you did something wrong!”

“How?”

“I don’t know! Maybe it’s because you were using magic inside of the circle! Maybe it didn’t interact well with the zebra magic.” She stomped a hoof on her kitchen’s floor. “Or maybe it’s because you wouldn’t have the candles closer to the circle!”

“An extra two inches of space changes the spell from zebra to…to…this?” She waved a hand up and down her new body. “And I was only examining the spell because you told me to!”

Trixie shook her mane, whickering and taking the book back into her telekinetic grip, looking it over as Lyra looked to the clock on the wall, now reading 12:22. “We need to do the other counter-spell,” Trixie decided. “The zebra magic-eraser…thing.”

“Okay! Get moving!” Lyra said, throwing her arms up in the air. When she wasn’t actively thinking about moving her body around, she was apparently very emotive with her gestures. “I’ve still got a show to get to!”

Trixie glanced up from the book, offering a pained smile. “Eh…um…” she intoned, looking like a foal caught with her hooves in the cookie jar.

Lyra’s eyes widened at the expression, before narrowing to slits. “What?”

“I…don’t have all the ingredients for the other counterspell on hoof.”

“What?”

“I didn’t think we’d need them! And…and I didn’t even know where to find chickens, and – ”

Lyra pointed a hand at Trixie’s door, single finger on it outstretched. “Fluttershy’s,” she said. “Everypony in town knows that Fluttershy keeps chickens! She supplies the Cakes with the eggs for baking!”

Trixie paused. “Fluttershy…Fluttershy…I know that name…”

Lyra again threw her hands in the air in exasperation. “I don’t believe…Fluttershy! Remember? I introduced you to Ditzy Doo so that she could take you to her cottage?”

Trixie considered. “Oh!” she remembered. “Oh yeah! I remember her! Wait…wait, how could that introvert sell anything to the Cakes?”

“I don’t know!” Lyra exclaimed, standing up fully for the first time since being forced into her new body. “I think Rainbow Dash is involved in some way. I don’t care! Just…just get galloping before I see how good I am at kicking now!”

“Okay!” Trixie exclaimed, holding up a front hoof defensively. “Okay. You stay here and keep reading that book, see if you can find out what went wrong. I’ll be back with a chicken. Stay away from windows!”

Lyra sneezed. Without her coat of hair, and covered as she was in black paint, she was freezing. “This?” Lyra asked, standing as best she could in what was now the small, confined space of the Residency, making her way forward and searching for Trixie’s bathroom. “This paint is coming off before I freeze.”

At first, as Trixie galloped, she tried to think of what could have gone wrong. She knew for a fact that she had gotten everything right. She knew she wasn’t the best at friendships, but even she knew better than to try out an unfamiliar spell from an alien system of magic on somepony without making sure everything was right.

No, the only explanation she had was that Lyra’s magical examination of the transmutation had somehow done…something…to the spell, and turned her into that giant, pink, misshapen monstrosity.

Or, Trixie’s subconscious pointed out, maybe it was your own telekinesis. Zebras don’t have telekinesis, maybe that interacted with the setup of the spell.

“Then it’s both our faults!” Trixie exclaimed to nopony in particular as she galloped. Lyra used telekinesis too, plus that would mean that her examination had to of done something wrong, since it’s not like zebras could do that either…

But it didn’t matter, because she could fix this. She had the general counter-spell in the book, she just needed chickens. Lyra missing the one o’clock train to Canterlot was inevitable at this point, but there was the three o’clock, she’d arrive with plenty of time…

She could fix this.

There weren’t many ponies on the street as Trixie galloped. Due to having had a mad alicorn trapped inside of it for a thousand years, most ponies sought shelter indoors during the noontime, wanting to get out from the point in the day when the sun was directly overhead and shown brightest. Traditionally, one stayed indoors for a full hour, but necessity meant that some ponies nevertheless ventured outside sooner than that.

But it did serve to spur Trixie on as she ran as fast as her hooves would take her, trying to ignore the burning feeling in her lungs, the pain in her canons and fetlocks as she ran from Ponyville, down the road that lead towards the edge of the Everfree Forest and towards Fluttershy’s cottage. She slowed down only when she spotted a mare walking along the road as well, a gray-coated, blonde-maned mare wearing the blue uniform and cap of a mail pony…

“Trixie?” Ditzy asked, as the unicorn skidded to a halt in front of Ditzy Doo, the Element of Kindness, mail mare, and probably the only pony that Trixie ever made special effort to be nice to, for reasons even she didn’t understand. “What’s wrong?”

Trixie tried to speak, but could only suck in air for a few moments – unicorns were frail compared to the other two pony tribes to begin with, and Trixie was frankly used to a life of relative comfort and luxury in Canterlot. She waved off Ditzy’s concern with one hoof, however. “Nothing!” The unicorn lied when she could speak. “Nothing. Everything’s fine. Everything’s in hoof. In hoof." She emphasized that point when she remembered the hands and feet that Lyra's hooves had become. "Fluttershy has chickens, right?”

Ditzy stared, or at least turned her head slightly so that one of her eyes was looking at Trixie – the pegasus was afflicted with strabismus, after all, meaning that even as one of Ditzy’s eyes focused on Trixie, the other was wandering, looking at the clouds overhead. “Trixie, normally you’re a lot better at lying than this.”

“Lying?” Trixie asked, eyes wide at the implication. “Moi?”

“Vous,” Ditzy confirmed.

Trixie was somewhat surprised that the mail mare knew Prench, or even just a single Prench word, but then she had been full of little surprises ever since Trixie had first met her. “Alright, I’m lying,” Trixie admitted, “but it’s almost certainly nothing permanent as long as Fluttershy has chickens and I get them to Lyra in…” beneath her hat, Trixie’s horn glowed as she closed her eyes, performing a minor time-telling cantrip. It failed, though, due to the mild panic that was gripping Trixie. “Soon,” she settled on.

“In soon?” Ditzy echoed, concern obviously mounting.

“Yes. Chickens? Fluttershy?”

“What did you do to Lyra?”

Trixie cursed herself for even mentioning Lyra rather than just letting herself come across as being in some kind of vague panic over nothing. “Probably nothing but I don’t really have time to explain it,” Trixie half-lied. “Unless Fluttershy doesn’t have chickens. Then I guess I have time.”

Ditzy’s concern peaked at that. “Yes, she has chickens – ”

“Great!” Trixie said, getting ready to set off again.

“Wait!” Ditzy interrupted. “You’ll probably need me to talk to Fluttershy if – ”

“See, that assumes I’m asking permission, which I don’t have time to do,” Trixie said as she took off at a gallop, horn glowing as she cast her favorite spell, turning herself invisible. To Ditzy, it would look as if some invisible eraser was simply rubbing her out of existence. She paused, though, turning around, though Ditzy Doo couldn’t see her. “Don’t worry!” her voice, now without an obvious point of origin, called back – and lied, once more. “All I need are a few chicken feathers!”

3. Learning Curve

After a series of bumbling attempts to make it upstairs, Lyra learned a few things about her current body, which essentially boiled down to it somehow being awful at navigating stairs. Lyra wasn’t sure if it was because she was thinking about it too much, or because the stairs were made for a quadrupedal pony half her height, or what, but she slipped twice just trying to climb them with two legs. She blamed it partially on her hoof-less feet and paws. Hands. Whatever – it was, regardless, a miracle that she didn’t slip and break her neck, which she was pretty sure would be considered bad no matter what body she was in.

She made a point of ignoring the fact that the bath was actually easy to handle. Whatever had happened to her front feet, whatever creature she had become, it was obvious that her paws were made for grabbing and manipulating things, and they were almost as good as unicorn telekinesis in that respect – she had no problem turning the faucet to start the shower water flowing. Drying off would be an interesting experience, though; she had no idea how she was supposed to use what was now a tiny towel to that effect, not to mention the cramped quarters in Trixie’s bathroom that already meant that she was mostly kneeling in the shower as she scrubbed off the paint. At least the bathroom had only one small window with its curtain already drawn; no pegasus pony would be flying by and chancing upon the sight of a pale-skinned monster taking a shower.

Once she’d washed the paint off and used a couple of towels to dry herself, she chanced another glance at herself in the mirror. She couldn’t be precisely sure, but she was fairly confident that the face that was looking back at her was not happy.

“I don’t believe this…” she intoned as she began trying to navigate her way down the stairs. It was easiest, she found, if she simply sat down and scooted down them one step at a time. “And of course it would be today. You couldn’t have turned me into a…a…”

Lyra paused in her descent, looking herself over. “A naked bear?” she asked. “No, even bears have muzzles and tails…” with a sigh, she resumed her descent. “Couldn’t of been tomorrow, couldn’t of been yesterday, nooo…”

A notable part of Lyra pointed out that she was the one who had been stupid enough to agree to a transmutation ritual only a few hours before her show in Canterlot, that it wasn’t like Trixie had the book on loan from somewhere, and that this whole thing most certainly could have waited until tomorrow and it was Lyra's own fault that they hadn't.

Lyra told that part of herself to go to the sun at around the same time that her stomach grumbled. She was getting hungry…Lyra made her way into Trixie’s kitchen, the paused, arms one more crossed, as she considered the room and the food she knew was inside.

“Okay,” she intoned. “What do I eat now…?”

Fluttershy’s day, so far, was wonderful. She’d had a great and full breakfast with her animal friends, written a letter to her family back in Cloudsdale and sent it off with Ditzy Doo, while also spending some time chatting to the mail mare who was one of her two best (and, admittedly, only) friends. Ditzy Doo had looked like she’d needed the brief break at her house, too – she worked so hard for Dinky Doo, her little foal. Or not really so little anymore! The pegasus pony smiled as she went outside. Foals grew up so fast…which, Fluttershy supposed, was only putting extra strain on Ditzy. She had tried, several times, to work up the nerve to offer financial help to Ditzy Doo, but had never been able to go through with it.

Fluttershy’s pleasant thoughts were interrupted when she saw the door to her chicken coop was open. “Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed, wings fluttering to lend her extra speed as she dashed over to it. “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, how did this happen? How long was it open?” The coop was quite warm, she knew, as long as the door was kept closed, but if it had somehow opened up during the middle of the night…the sound of them all squawking and chirping in panic, however, put even more speed behind her step.

“Mister Fox!” Fluttershy exclaimed as loudly as she could. “If you broke into my chicken coop after how nice I’ve been to you, I’ll…I’ll…”

Fluttershy hadn’t been entirely certain what she’d do if the fox had tried to get to her chickens once more, but on reaching the chicken coop and looking inside, she found a distinct lack of foxes. What she did find was a chicken suspended several feet off of the coop’s floor, wrapped in an unearthly cerulean aura as it flapped and cawed like mad.

“Uh…” a voice said. “Nopony in here but us chickens…”

Fluttershy stared.

“Us smelly…loud…chickens…” the voice said.

Fluttershy stared.

“Are you okay?”

Fluttershy stared.

The chicken began advancing, slowly, hovering towards Fluttershy. There was the sound of hoof-steps on the ramp that led into the chicken coop. A few moments later, a large cloud of blue smoke seemed to appear from nowhere, and just as quickly flowed away in the slight breeze, revealing a blue-coated, purple-eyed unicorn pony, wearing a purple, star-studded cape and matching wizard’s hat. The unicorn raised a hoof slowly, waving it in front of Fluttershy’s face.

Fluttershy stared.

“Okay,” the unicorn said, looking behind her. She closed the chicken coop’s door securely, then reached out with telekinesis and lifted Fluttershy, then brought the pegasus back to her home, where she set her down inside.

“Um,” the unicorn said, holding the still-squawking chicken forward. “I have to borrow this, um…chicken. Borrow. Every intention to return.” After a moment of waiting for a response, the unicorn shrugged. “Um…nice talking to you.” The unicorn turned around, closed Fluttershy’s door, and left, galloping off back towards Ponyville.

“Ngh…hng…stupid…useless…paws!” Lyra exclaimed as she continued trying to unscrew the jar of honey, to no avail. If she’d had a horn, it would have been easy: she’d just work the ethereal energy of her telekinesis under the cap. It might have taken a few moments, but the jar would have been open by now.

But these paws (hands, whatever) were useless! Trying to open the jar with what constituted ‘normal’ pressure in her new body hadn’t worked. Trying to apply more had just made her hands get sweaty. The sweat had made it more difficult to open the jar! She didn’t understand how hands could be so great at fine manipulation and so useless at it, at the same time!

“Fine!” Lyra exclaimed after a moment, glaring at the jar of honey before setting it back where she’d found it. “I won’t have any, then!” Lyra glared at the pantry, looking it over before settling on a breadbox. That, at least, was easy to open, and she found a loaf of pre-sliced bread inside. She sniffed it a few times, found that it wasn’t offensive to her nose, and took a bite out of it, chewing and considering.

Well, whatever her new body considered a ‘normal’ diet, it didn’t react violently to bread. That was probably a good sign. She grasped several more slices, then set to work experimenting with various ingredients.

Hay – no. Daffodils – no. Alfalfa – most certainly not. Lyra managed to make it to Trixie’s bin and spit out the alfalfa she’d tried to eat before her new body took it upon itself to throw up.

Lettuce – yes. Tomatoes – yes. Cheese – still good. Pickles – just fine.

“Good,” Lyra decided, as she finished assembling a pair of sandwiches and biting into them. I won’t have to starve. Or kill somepony. That was a major piece of good news: like many bears, it seemed that whatever Lyra was now, it was omnivorous, and she wouldn’t have to become some horrible monster living in the Everfree, stalking and killing animals for their meat.

“Of course,” she said as she took an experimental bite out of a pear and found it fine, “I won’t have to do that anyway because I’m not going to stay like this.”

Lyra set her pear down on a plate, on which she’d set her sandwiches as well, and made her way into Trixie’s living room, sitting down on the floor and grabbing the translated zebra spellbook, beginning to look it over as she ate, trying to find out what went wrong.

And the first thing, she decided as she flipped through the book, was that whoever had translated the spells, but not translated the magic words, had made a huge mistake in deciding to not include a translation for them anywhere. The former-unicorn-now-naked-bear-or-whatever grit her teeth as she paged through the book with one paw-or-hand-or-whatever. Even if the magic words somehow lost their power if spoken in Equestrian, the translator should have at least included a translation somewhere, in an appendix or something.

“Okay,” Lyra said, turning back to the spell that had started this mess. “Okay…wewe ni binadamu. That phrase keeps coming up, so it’s got to be important.” She considered. “It’s probably…probably, like, the core of the spell. Right?” She flipped to the first, failed counter-spell. “Wewe ni tena pundamilia. Okay, so that wewe ni keeps popping up…”

Lyra paused, considering. She turned to another transformational spell, this one supposedly how to turn a zebra into a bird. The phrase wewe ni ndege stood out immediately. Flipping through the book again, she found the counter-spell for that one, and found that the last lines in its magic words were nearly identical to the last lines of the initial counter-spell:

Wewe ni tena ndege
kuwa pundamilia tena

“Okay,” Lyra said, finding another spell, this time turning a zebra into a snake. Strewn throughout its incantation was the phrase wewe ni nyoka…and, turning to its counter-spell, she found the lines wewe ni tena nyoka, kuwa pundamilia tena.

“Okay,” Lyra repeated. “Okay…so if I were guessing…wewe ni whatever has to mean something like ‘turn into this.’ Wewe ni tena whatever is ‘stop being this,’ and kuwa pundamilia tena is…”

Lyra paused as she considered. On a hunch, she started paging through the spell-book, finally finding a spell that would turn a dog into a cat. Sure enough, the phrase wewe ni paka was found – when she turned to its counter-spell, however, the phrase kuwa pundamilia tena had been replaced by kuwa mbwa tena.

“Pundamilia means zebra,” Lyra reasoned, as she turned, once again, to the spell that had started this entire mess. The word pundamilia was not to be found, anywhere, in the spell that was supposed to turn a unicorn into a zebra.

“Great,” Lyra said with a sigh, putting the book down and finishing her pear and second sandwich. “So…so all the steps in the spell were fine, we were just casting the wrong spell. And the counter-spell didn’t work because I wasn’t a zebra, so of course a spell to turn me from a zebra back into a pony wouldn’t work.” She eyed the spellbook, and the magic words that made up the spell. “This is why I hate you,” she informed it, when she heard the door burst open.

The former unicorn let out a yelp as she stumbled over her own malformed front and hind legs trying to dash and hide behind something, succeeding just as a blue-coated, white-maned unicorn dashed into the living room, an incensed-looking chicken in her telekinetic grasp.

“Lyra!” Trixie exclaimed in between gasps for breath, looking right at Lyra’s hiding spot behind the couch. The former unicorn poked her head up at the sound. In response, Trixie pushed the chicken forward, showing Lyra. “Chicken!”

Lyra stared at Trixie, then glanced at the clock. It read 12:45. “Twenty minutes?” she asked.

“You…galloping…try…hate…” Trixie heaved, swaying back and forth a few moments before letting herself fall onto her side. Lyra stood to help, but Trixie waved her away even as she did, barrel heaving. Her horn still glowed, though, holding the chicken suspended in the air. It was still flapping and cawing madly. The unicorn and the thing that had once been a unicorn did their best to ignore it.

Lyra shook her head at Trixie’s objection. “No, I mean I’m impressed. I thought it’d be nearly one o’clock before you made it back.”

“Oh…well, no…back now…”

Lyra considered, biting her lip, a remarkably pony-like action as she considered Trixie. “It’s not your fault,” she said after a moment. “What happened, I mean. I was paging through the spellbook and I think the spell was mislabeled or something. I don’t think it was ever going to turn me into a zebra. So…it’s not your fault.”

“Yay…”

“But that’s a pretty big oversight…who translated it?”

“Dunno,” Trixie admitted as she climbed to her hooves and half-trotted, half-stumbled to the spellbook, looking down at it. “Somepony who clearly needs to brush up on their Zebra. I’ll tell Luna to fire them.” She considered. “Twice.” She paused. “With real fire.” Trixie frowned. “She won’t listen. But I’ll tell her.”

Lyra nodded. “So…Zebra cure-all, then, right?” she said. “How does that work?”

Trixie sighed, looking to the chicken, as did Lyra. The chicken paused in its flapping and cawing, staring back.

“Fluttershy is never going to forgive us,” Lyra said as she plucked the last of the feathers from the chicken’s back. Held in place as the chicken was by Trixie’s telekinesis, it was incapable of stopping Lyra as she put her fingers to use. “I’m never going to forgive us. This chicken didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

“Fluttershy doesn’t even know you’re involved,” Trixie noted. “And feathers grow back.” She considered her words for a few moments, looking to Lyra. “Right?”

“How should I know?”

“Because you grew up in Ponyville.”

“Trixie, I’ve never seen a real, live chicken in my life before today.” Lyra grimaced as the hen continued squawking in defiance. “And now I’m plucking the poor thing…”

“Not all of it, just from the back…”

“I still feel bad.”

Trixie nodded, eyeing Lyra. “The spell says that the chicken feathers have to have been plucked within two hours of casting. So that’s why I didn’t have them ready.”

“Makes sense…” Lyra intoned as she gathered the plucked feathers and began laying them down as a second magic circle, just inside of the first one. She looked at the chicken. “What now?”

Trixie considered, moving the bird onto the floor and staring at her, horn glowing brighter as the unicorns’ eyes seemed to turn into spirals for a few moments. The chicken, staring back due to not having any other choice, stopped cawing, blinking a few times before settling down, tucking its head into its wings and going to sleep.

Lyra blinked a few times as Trixie leaned back from the chicken, shaking her head to clear it. “You know a spell for putting chickens to sleep?” she asked, making a face. Enchantments such as the one Trixie had just cast could almost never be applied to any given creature, due to major differences in how brains worked.

Trixie looked to Lyra, shrugging. “I do now,” she said.

Lyra stared. “You…made a spell up on the fly,” she stated.

Trixie shook her head. “No…I just took a sleep spell that I did know and changed it to work on chickens.”

“On the fly.”

Trixie blinked a few times. “Um…yeah,” she said, as though it were both obvious and easy. She pointed to her cutie mark. “Special talent.”

Lyra grunted a little. “So glad you didn’t actually go to the Academy…” she said. “You’d have been hated by everypony. But especially me.”

Trixie shrugged, trotting over from where she’d left the hen and to the spellbook, frowning as she read. “Okay,” she said. “Magic circle of salt this time…candles…chicken feathers…silver. We need a pound of silver inside the circles.”

“A bit coin is about a third of an ounce,” Lyra noted. Trixie grimaced at that, leaving Lyra alone in the kitchen for a few moments as she went into her office and her desk there, opening the bottom drawer and retrieving a bag full of bits. Returning, she began counting out silver pieces, then lay them in a pile at the center of the magic circle.

“Okay, silver,” Trixie said, sighing.

“What, turning me back into a unicorn isn’t worth a few bits?”

“It’s worth forty-eight bits, not a few, and yes, it is worth it, but I wish it didn’t have to be.”

Lyra shrugged. “Guess I can understand…”

“So, anyway. Silver…now let’s see…asphodel flowers wrapped around quartz crystals and soaked in lantern oil – ”

“Who came up with these?” Lyra demanded. “I mean, our magic is right there in us. Learning to use it is like learning to speak, you know? But how the hay did some zebra come up with all this? Who looks at a perfectly good flower and thinks ‘I’m gonna wrap that up and soak it in oil and say some ridiculous junk’!”

“I don’t know,” Trixie admitted as she finished dipping the flowers into oil and put them into the magical circle. “Last, but not least, the pony we’re trying to cure.”

Lyra stepped into the magic circle, careful not to disturb it as she did so, and stood in place, arms crossed. “No paint this time?” she asked.

Trixie shook her head. “No. Okay…here we go…

“Mara tatu paka brinded kwa sauti
“Mara tatu na mara moja, nguruwe ua kuitwa
“Mchezaji analia ni wakati! Ni wakati!
“Pande zote sufuria kwenda
“Katika matumbo sumu kutupa
“Chura, kwamba chini ya baridi jiwe
“Siku mchana na usiku ina thelathini na moja
“Jasho sumu kulala alidai
“Chemsha wewe kwanza katika sufuria uganga!
“Mara mbili, mbili, taabu na shida
“Moto kuchoma na sufuria chemsha!”

Lyra blinked. She may not have had a horn, but she could still feel the magic beginning to work as she stood in the center of the circle, and couldn’t help but smile. Yes, okay, this day had been…interesting. But this was about to end, she was about to be turned back into a unicorn, and then this whole mess would just become some funny story she could tell at parties in the future.

“Kipande cha nyoka kuumiza vichwa vya
“Katika sufuria chemsha na kupika
“Jicho la mjusi, na toe ya chura
“Pamba ya popo, na ulimi wa mbwa
“Uma fira, na minyoo kipofu kuumwa
“Mguu mjusi, na bundi wa mrengo
“Kwa ajili ya charm ya taabu nguvu
“Kama mchuzi kuzimu kuchemsha na chemsa!
“Mara mbili, mbili, taabu na shida
“Moto kuchoma na sufuria chemsha!”

The air was visibly glowing now, a silver fog as the silver coins and oil-soaked-and-flower-wrapped quartz coins dissolved into mist that rose straight up, completely filling the magic circle. Lyra held her breath.

Come on, she urged mentally. Come on, come on, come on…

“Mara mbili, mbili, taabu na shida
“Moto kuchoma na sufuria chemsha!”

There was a flash, and the mist suddenly burst out from the magic circle, becoming a long line…it soared around the kitchen as Lyra and Trixie watched…its argent form whipped around, aiming straight for Lyra…and at the last moment it turned, and instead plunged into the still-sleeping hen.

Needless to say, the hen woke up, eyes glowing brightly as she was lifted up off of the ground, arcane power pouring into her, filling her up…there was a second flash, and the hen landed, shaking itself slightly. Except, it was now slightly larger, and sported a much more impressive-looking comb and wattle.

As if to emphasize what had happened, the former hen stood up proudly and let out a cock-a-doodle-doo.

Trixie and Lyra both stared at the rooster. The rooster stared back at them.

“…so I’m guessing it wasn’t just the turn-unicorns-into-zebra spells that were mislabeled, then,” Trixie noted.

4. Insecurities

It was 1:17 PM, and there was a unicorn, something that might have been a naked bear, and a whole lot of panic in the Residency of the Representative of the Night Court of Luna. There was also a hen-turned-rooster, but he seemed tuckered out from his new predicament and so had settled down in a corner of the kitchen in order to go back to sleep.

“What are we gonna do?” Lyra demanded, running her paws through her mane. “If that spell was mislabeled and the original spell was mislabeled, how many others were? And who did the translating?”

“I don’t know!” Trixie exclaimed. “But Luna herself gave me the book so I just assumed everything was fine! Wouldn’t you?”

“Not anymore!” Lyra exclaimed, then did the most peculiar thing without thinking about it – placed two of her fingers together, the shortest one and the longest, and flicked them against one another, making a snapping noise. She pointed at Trixie. “Luna!” she exclaimed. “The Princess has more magic in one hoof than every zebra in Zebrica combined! She has to be able to help me! You have to get in contact with her!”

Trixie stared wide-eyed. “I can’t.”

“Trixie, this is not the time for you to be worried about what Luna will think of – ”

“No, Lyra, I mean I literally can’t. Luna isn’t in Canterlot right now, she’s in the Griffin Kingdoms. With Corona back, she’s extending a hoof to all of our neighbors and making sure that if Corona attacks again, they won’t pounce on Equestria or one of her allies while we’re in the middle of fighting – nor support Corona if she does manage to take the throne somehow.”

Lyra was stunned at that statement. “Who would support Corona?”

“Corona isn’t feared outside of Equestria, not as much, anyway. The point is, I can’t get in contact with Luna for the next week. My letter-sending spell? It only teleports things to her office in Canterlot, not to her directly. We…we might have to wait until Luna’s back.”

“Trixie, I can’t wait a week. I have a show tonight. Tonight! My first solo show! I can’t miss it!”

Trixie shook her head. “I don’t think there’s much of a choice…”

Lyra moved up to Trixie, getting down onto her hands and knees so that she could look the unicorn in the eye. “I. Cannot. Miss. This.” she stated in a voice that would brook no argument.

Trixie argued anyway. “It’s not even really your first show,” Trixie pointed out. “Back during the Longest Night you played, remember?”

“I played a single tune for five minutes on a night which nopony is going to remember for the music,” Lyra stated. “This? This is for the incoming students for both the Academy and the Canterlot School of Musical Arts. It’s showing off the dual-study program and the results of it. A lot of very important ponies are going to be expecting me there, important to the music industry and important to me. So I don’t care what it takes. If…if I have to go like this, then I will.”

Trixie blanched. “I…don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“No, Trixie, it’s not, but I'll do it anyway if I have to."

The unicorn looked away from the former unicorn. In the corner, the rooster let out a slight cluck-cluck-cluck noise in its sleep, one wing twitching slightly. “Okay,” Trixie said after a long while, looking to the zebra spellbook and levitating it to her side. “We know that the spells in here work, they’re just mislabeled. But they work. Meaning that the counterspell has to be in here, somewhere.”

“It’d be a lot easier if one of us could read Zebra…”

Trixie grimaced. “But not every spell is mislabeled,” Trixie pointed out. “They can’t have all been mislabeled, nopony is that criminally negligent. So I think what we need to do is take another tack with this. We need to find out what you are.”

“Binadamu,” Lyra said.

“Gesundheit.”

Lyra rolled her eyes, taking the spellbook and flipping to the original spell, then holding it open to Trixie. “Wewe ni binadamu. All the transmutation and counter-transmutation spells have wewe ni and then something. I think that it’s basically ‘turn into this thing.’” And the thing I turned into, in Zebra, is called a binadamu.”

Trixie read, then smiled brightly. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “That’s perfect! So all we need to do is go through this and find all the spells with the word binadamu in it. One of them has to be the counter-spell!”

Trixie looked to the spellbook, as did Lyra. They considered the thick volume for several minutes.

“One…out of about four hundred spells,” Lyra noted.

BonBon looked at the clock on the wall of her candy shop. When twelve-thirty rolled around, and Lyra hadn’t shown up to pick up her things, she had been concerned. When it had been twelve-fifty, too late to consider trying to catch the one o’clock to Canterlot, she had grown to be worried, but she didn’t let that worry overtake her: Lyra was a grown mare and was perfectly capable of looking at a clock and knowing what time it was. She would be aware of missing the one o’clock to Ponyville, knew the risks, was perfectly capable of running her own life. And, somehow, BonBon managed to convince her of the same thing when the clock struck three.

When the clock struck three-thirty, however, BonBon left worry behind and passed into anxiety, enough so that she was fairly certain she had misread a scale and accidentally let a bag of jelly babies go at just over half price. The stallion who had bought them certainly hadn’t minded.

“Where is she?” BonBon demanded.

“Who?” her current customer – an orange earth pony named Rick Shaw – asked, even as he finished giving her bits for the toffee he was buying.

BonBon blinked a few times at the question, then shook her head. “Er – nopony. Sorry, I’m…distracted.”

Rick Shaw let BonBon’s concern go at that, finishing his purchase and leaving. With him gone from her store, it was now empty. Biting her lip, the earth pony trotted over to her store’s door and switched the sign on it from open to closed, locking it, then turned around and headed upstairs. She would grab Lyra’s things, head over to Trixie’s, and no matter what interesting spell they were in the middle of, make sure that Lyra was on the next - and last - train to Canterlot.

“Huh, this is interesting,” Trixie noted as she read the spellbook. “Poison joke is an ingredient in this spell…it’s called the truth is a scourge. Some kind of truth serum, except…” Trixie’s eyes scanned the page as she read the description. “Oh…oh, that is so mean! I love it!”

“Will it turn me back into a unicorn?” Lyra asked with forced politeness, as she paged through a different book.

Trixie blushed slightly, glancing up at the former pony. “Er,” she remarked. “Not as such…no.” Lyra glared at her. Trixie quickly turned the page, looking at the next spell, though not before using telekinesis to indent the truth is a scourge. It was – assuming that it had been correctly labeled – more of a potion than a spell, and one that she was going to try out, assuming Lyra didn’t steal the zebra spellbook and burn it to ashes after this whole ordeal was finished.

The two were sitting in Trixie’s office. Given that there was only one book, only one of them could be looking for occurrences of the word binadamu at a time, a task that had fallen to Trixie. Lyra, meanwhile, had been trying something else: using the limited number of books in Trixie’s collection – specifically, a tome on strange and exotic creatures, the Monster Manual – to try and find out just what she had turned into.

So far, neither search had given them results.

“Athatch?” Lyra wondered aloud, before noticing the three arms in the description. She continued flipping through pages “Grimlock? No, they don’t have eyes…troll…ogre, maybe…why isn’t this in here…?”

“Ha! Got one!” Trixie exclaimed suddenly. In less than a second, Lyra had dropped the Monster Manual and was next to Trixie, looking over her shoulder.

“Poison of the wind spider,” Lyra read the spell’s name aloud. “I don’t like this spell already, Trixie.”

“It’s mislabeled,” Trixie said with certainty, as she read through the ingredients and ritual. “Nothing about it suggests spiders, or poison, or wind…”

“Oh yeah? And what about silver, quartz, and chicken feathers suggests gender change?”

“Point,” Trixie admitted, before pointing out the magic words with one hoof. “But look here: binadamu. That’s the word we’re looking for, right?”

Lyra thought. “Assuming that the zebra-to-unicorn spell is accurate,” she confirmed after a moment. “I mean…I think. Right? Probably?”

Trixie looked at Lyra. “You’re asking me?”

Lyra sighed, pointing to Trixie’s flank. “Special talent,” she remarked.

Trixie considered. “It’s worth a shot,” she said, standing and stretching as she read the ingredients. “I…okay, from the looks of things, I’m going to have to go out and buy some of these things. I’m out of quartz, for one thing, and I don’t have any linen lying around, either.”

“Bedsheets,” Lyra pointed out.

Trixie opened her mouth to object, but thought better of it a moment later when she saw the look on Lyra’s face. “Well, I don’t have quartz,” she said, looking back to the ingredient list. “Or enough coal dust to make another magic circle. So I have to – ”

There was the sound of a door – the front door – opening. “Hello?” a mare’s voice called from the Residency’s hallway. “Lyra?”

Lyra opened her mouth to respond, and at almost the same time put one paw/hand/whatever to her mouth to stop herself. She tried to scramble backwards and hide behind something even as her muscles locked up at the familiar-sounding voice. For some reason, there was a flash of blue. The net result of all of this was that Lyra found herself on the floor, staring at the entrance to the living room as BonBon came into view, wearing saddlebags. Her eyes glided over Lyra…

…and passed over her…

…and settled on Trixie.

“BonBon!” Trixie exclaimed. “Uh…hi!”

BonBon looked around as if nothing was wrong, as if seeing a giant, naked bear (or whatever) was a normal thing for her. “Hello, Trixie,” she said, her voice lacking most of its usual sweetness as she looked at the unicorn. “Where’s Lyra?”

Lyra blinked a few times, still frozen in place in shock. Couldn’t BonBon see her? Wasn’t she curious about the hideous, giant creature that just happened to have the same eyes and mane colorings as her marefriend?

“Oh…” Trixie responded, waving a hoof. “She’s, um…I don’t know where she is. We wrapped everything up a few minutes ago. Must have just missed her.”

Lyra made to pick herself up – to move into a more comfortable position. BonBon jumped at the sound of the floorboards squeaking – but, oddly, still didn’t look at her. It was only then that Lyra realized that she couldn’t look at herself – she looked to her forelegs, her barrel, her hind legs, but all she saw was the living room – no trace of her.

They were invisible, but Lyra’s brows nevertheless rose as she realized what the blue flash from moments ago must have been. Way to go, Trixie, she thought, impressed. She had known that Trixie knew how to turn herself invisible; she hadn’t known that she knew how to turn other ponies invisible, as well, nor expected her to be able to do such a thing so quickly.

“What was that?” BonBon asked at the sound of the floorboards

“Probably just the house…settling,” Trixie lied. “Houses do that.”

BonBon eyed Trixie. “There’s no need to be condescending.”

Trixie traced a circle in the floor with one hoof. “Right. Sorry.”

BonBon blinked at the apology, and the fact that Trixie wasn’t looking directly at her. “Alright,” she said, stomping forward. “What have you done with Lyra?”

“Nothing!” Trixie continued, moving as though to back away, then realizing that all that would do was push her against Lyra, who couldn’t move without creating more out-of-place noises. She held up her hooves. “She’s not here! She left!”

“Oh really?” BonBon demanded as she got close to Trixie. The unicorn’s eyes wandered everywhere other than meeting the earth pony’s own. “Trixie. Where. Is. Lyra?”

“I don’t know!” Trixie exclaimed.

“Then why are you being so evasive?”

Trixie tapped a hoof on the floor. “I’m – I…I heard you two a few weeks ago and now it’s really awkward!”

BonBon blinked. Lyra did too. Trixie, for her part, focused on the floor, her face having begun to turn from blue to a very rosy shade of pink.

“Heard us?” BonBon asked, not understanding.

“Just after Corona…did her thing…” Trixie explained, haltingly. “Um…that night…remember how my house had the consistency of Skyrosland cheese? Well…I was looking for a place to stay, and I went to your place, and…I heard you. And Lyra.” She tapped her front hooves together, blushing furiously at this point. “Together.”

BonBon, by now, had turned a similar shade of pink as Trixie, while Lyra could feel heat on her own face as she looked away, rubbing her left arm with her right in embarrassment. “Oh,” BonBon said.

“Yeah,” Trixie offered.

“I see.”

“I heard. It was really loud. I almost filed a noise complaint – ”

“We weren’t that loud,” Lyra objected, then gasped, then had both her paws covering her mouth in shock of what she said while she contemplated whether or not being turned into a naked bear (or whatever) had somehow affected her judgment and ability to not be a moron.

There was a long pause. BonBon stared hard at Trixie. Trixie turned her head slowly, looking to Lyra, eyes meeting with the former unicorn’s own. “Thank-you," she said through gritted teeth. “And yes you were,” she added quickly, just before BonBon grasped Trixie with her forehooves and turned the unicorn to face her once again, glaring at her.

“Trixie?” she demanded. “Was that Lyra?”

The unicorn’s eyes were wide. “Yes.”

“And why can’t I see her?”

Trixie glanced at Lyra. “She’s invisible,” she said. “Well, not to me, of course not to me – who casts an invisibility spell on somepony if they can’t see through it? That’s just asking for trouble – but to everypony else.”

Lyra stared at Trixie. “Y…yes,” Lyra confirmed.

“I needed help with zebra spells,” Trixie continued. “The Princess asked me to try and understand their magic, and I needed Lyra’s help with that.”

BonBon glared at Trixie.

“The Princess,” Trixie repeated, as her horn glowed and she telekinetically brought the zebra spellbook over. “And…and so, I thought I’d cast a spell on Lyra – with her permission – and now we can’t figure out how to cancel it.”

BonBon blinked. “Lyra?” she asked, “is this true?”

“Yeah,” Lyra responded, mostly truthfully. There had been a Zebra spell cast on her, it had been with her permission, and they couldn’t figure out how to counter it. The only untruth was that Trixie’s wording made it sound like it was the invisibility spell that couldn’t be countered. “It’s not Trixie’s fault.”

“She did this to you!” BonBon said, releasing Trixie and looking towards Lyra, though her eyes were slightly too far to the right, and a little bit too low. Lyra moved so that she was looking at them. “How is it not her fault?”

“We don’t know much about the Zebra language,” Trixie responded. “A lot of the spells in this book have been…mislabeled. So we can’t find the counter-spell.”

BonBon shook her head. “It’s still your fault!” she said, turning to Trixie again. “You knew she had a show tonight and yet you did this! Why couldn’t this of waited? Why would you risk something happening to her?”

Trixie’s mouth opened and closed a few times, as she looked between BonBon and Lyra. “Lyra!” she exclaimed. “Help!”

Lyra grimaced. “She, uh…BonBon does kind of raise a good point.”

Trixie glared at Lyra. “You consented. It is not my fault and I am trying to fix it!”

“I get that!” Lyra said, holding up her hands. Apparently, Trixie could see her, so the gesture wasn’t wasted. “But you shouldn’t have asked me…and I shouldn’t have said yes! There’s a lot of blame to go around!”

Trixie glared at Lyra, before her eyes widened at the sight of BonBon reached a hoof forward, trying to find Lyra. She grasped the earth pony’s hoof with two of her own, letting out a nervous laugh. “Ah,” she said, “er, BonBon, don’t touch Lyra.”

BonBon’s look could have curdled milk. “Trixie, let go of me before I – ”

“N-no!” Lyra said, thinking quickly for the sake of keeping Trixie’s teeth inside of her jaws. If BonBon touched her, she’d notice the changes to Lyra’s body immediately. “No, BonBon, this is…it’s a magic thing. This is a spell gone wrong.”

“Earth pony magic might interact with zebra magic in weird ways,” Trixie added.

“We don’t know what it’d do.”

“Bad things, probably.”

“Terrible things.”

“Unspeakable things.”

“Like…like turn me into some kind of giant naked bear – ”

“Unspeakable,” Trixie finished, glaring at Lyra, “things.”

Lyra once more found her hands covering her mouth in shock – apparently, she did not handle stress nearly as well as the other unicorn in the room, and Trixie was hardly the most collected of ponies to start with. BonBon, at least, had no idea what Lyra had just let slip, and looked between Trixie and where she thought Lyra was. “I…I don’t believe this!” she shouted.

“Look,” Trixie said, grimacing, “we just need to find the right counter-spell. Here,” she held up the zebra book, holding it out BonBon. “In my office, top drawer, there’s a bag of bits. Grab it, then go out and buy everything on this list of ingredients.”

BonBon stared at the book, then back to Trixie. “And this will work?” she asked.

“Yes,” Trixie lied. Or maybe she was telling the truth. Lyra hoped that circumstances would prove that she was telling the truth after all.

BonBon took the zebra spellbook in her front hooves, looking the ingredient list over. “I can’t remember all of this,” she objected. “I’ll need to – ”

Trixie grimaced closing her eyes and letting her horn glow. There was a pair of blue flashes, from Trixie’s horn and BonBon’s eyes. The earth pony blinked a few times after them, looking to Trixie in confusion. “What was the fourth ingredient?” Trixie asked.

“Apple skin,” BonBon answered, then paused. “All I did was glance at the page! What did you do to me?”

“You’ll perfectly remember that page for about a day, that’s all,” Trixie said, holding up her hooves defensively. “I need to keep the book so I can start memorizing the spell’s words.”

BonBon stepped closer to Trixie. “Don’t cast spells on ponies without their permission!”

“I’m sorry, I assumed that permission was a given since we’re talking about making Lyra visible again for her Canterlot show!”

BonBon opened her mouth to shout something, but then saw the clock on the wall. It was 3:49. There was only one more train leaving Ponyville for Canterlot today, the five o’clock. It would be Lyra’s last chance to reach Canterlot in time for her show. And it was leaving in just over an hour. “Okay,” BonBon said, “okay, I’ll go, I’ll buy the ingredients. But we are going to have words, Trixie, when this is all over!” With that, the earth pony turned around, dashing to Trixie’s office. In another few moments, she was out the door, bag full of bits clasped in her mouth.

Lyra fidgeted, as Trixie turned to glare at her. “What is the point of turning you invisible if you’re going to talk?” she demanded.

“I’m sorry!” Lyra exclaimed. “I wasn’t thinking!” She paused a moment as she looked to her hands, or rather, looked through her hands. “But she’s right. I should never have let you do this to me.”

“But you did, and now we’re here, and we have to deal with it,” Trixie stated. “Passing blame around helps nopony!”

Lyra glared at Trixie. “You’re just saying that because part of the blame goes your way.”

Trixie threw up her hooves. “It wasn’t my fault! You said it wasn’t my fault!”

“Well…like I said, BonBon raised a good point. Getting me stuck like this? No, that’s not your fault…but we never should have tried it today. I shouldn’t of let you talk me into it – ”

“That’s your fault – ”

“ – and you shouldn’t of tried.”

“It is not my fault!” Trixie exclaimed, eyes wide. “You consented, you knew that I was using unfamiliar magic, it is not my fault that this happened to you and I am trying to fix it!”

“I know you are.”

Trixie was silent, shifting around uncomfortably as she regarded Lyra. “I…” she said, looking around, at anything but Lyra, like she had when first trying to admit to Lyra that she had needed her help, “I…okay. Okay. It’s my fault. If you don’t want to…you know, see me ever again after this…don’t want to be my friend…it’s not the first time. I’ll get it.”

Lyra blinked. “Why would I want that?” she asked.

“Because…because look at you! Look at what I did to you! BonBon’s right, I should never of cast the spell, you’re right to take her side – ”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Lyra interrupted, moving forward, “slow down there, Trixie. What do you mean, BonBon’s side? Who said that there were sides to this?”

Trixie blinked. “Why wouldn’t there be?” she asked.

Lyra’s own eyes were wide at that statement. “It’s…wow, Trixie, I thought you were going into politics. Haven’t you ever heard of gray areas?”

“Of course I have,” Trixie stated indignantly. “That’s basic. Sometimes ponies in political positions have to do morally questionable things for the good of – ”

“Stop,” Lyra instructed. “That’s not what I meant. What I mean is, there aren’t sides to this, Trixie. There’s just a whole lot of blame going around to everypony. Mostly you and me, and whoever mislabeled everything in the spellbook.”

Trixie considered that, looking down at her hooves. “Oh,” she said, making a slight face at the concept. “I…I guess that makes sense…”

“Do you really think that I wouldn’t want to still be your friend just because of this?” she waved a hand up and down, indicating her changed body. “It was an accident. You didn’t mean for it to happen. And I know you’re trying to fix it, Trixie, that you’re trying as hard as you can.”

Trixie nodded, and the two were silent for a few moments after that, before Lyra decided to break it. “So…noise complaint?” she asked.

Trixie blinked, then offered a nervous laugh, as she began to turn red again, tapping her hooves together. “I didn’t, though,” she said. “But, um…soundproofing. You should invest in soundproofing, if you’re going to be so…vigorous.”

Lyra blushed slightly as well, but was honestly surprised to find how embarrassed Trixie seemed by the whole situation. “I’ll look into it,” she confirmed, picking up the zebra spellbook and holding it out to Trixie. “You should probably get to work on this.”

“R-right,” Trixie said with a blush, holding the book aloft and staring intently at it. Her horn glowed and her eyes flashed. “Okay, memorized. Now I’ll just…um…start looking for other possibilities. Because this one might not work, the last two haven’t, shouldn’t make assumptions. Right?” She glanced at Lyra for a moment, nodded, and got back to the book. “Right.”

Lyra blinked a few times, staring intently at Trixie, until something finally clicked in her head. “Oh, I get it!” she exclaimed. “You’re a – ”

Forty minutes later, Lyra sat in the middle of yet another magic circle, holding an ice pack to her head as Trixie circled around her, inspecting the magic circle closely and looking for any problems with it, while BonBon kept a close eye on Trixie, seeing as she still couldn’t see Lyra.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Lyra noted.

“We have to be sure,” Trixie countered. “Don’t want to make any mistakes. I don’t even know what will happen if the circle is wrong.”

“No, I don’t mean the magic circle. I mean there’s nothing wrong with being – ”

“La la la nopony can hear Lyra!” Trixie exclaimed as she skipped away from the circle and threw dust at Lyra, as the spell conveniently commanded her to do anyway. Lyra coughed, even as she tossed the ice pack aside, getting ready for the spell.

BonBon looked to Trixie less like she was the pony responsible for turning her marefriend invisible, and more like she was a member of an exceedingly rare and endangered species. Lyra had told BonBon of her suspicions, which Trixie’s vehement avoidance of the issue were all but confirming. “You’re still young,” she noted, “and frankly I think it’s a good thing that you’re waiting until – ”

“Nopony can hear BonBon either!” Trixie exclaimed, dumping the remainder of the dust over BonBon’s head. The earth pony sputtered and sneezed a few times, but there wasn’t much dust left.

“We didn’t wait,” Lyra pointed out to her marefriend as she finished sneezing, Trixie scurrying around and sprinkling salted water over Lyra. The unicorn’s face was almost entirely pink.

“Well,” BonBon countered, looking in Lyra’s direction – she was still invisible – as Trixie busied herself with setting up and lighting the candles, “that’s true, but who else would we have been waiting for?”

“Mmn,” Lyra conceded, a warm feeling in her chest at BonBon's declaration of love. Trixie, meanwhile, took off her cape – little wonder given how flustered she seemed to be. “Remember our first time?”

BonBon laughed. “You tried to use honey but it just got stuck and – ”

“Right, magic time now! So you two can shut up!” Trixie exclaimed, standing on her hind legs and waving her forelegs around as she chanted.

“Binadamu matatizo kwenda mbali,
“kupata nafasi bora zaidi ya kukaa!
“Mahali ambapo utakuwa na furaha,
“Nitakuwa na furaha,
“na pande zote utakuwa na furaha!
“Mahali nafuu, mahali nzuri,
“Mahali bora zaidi ya kukaa!
“Hivyo muda mrefu kama ni mbali nami na yangu!
“Binadamu matatizo kwenda mbali!”

There was a brilliant flash and a surge of magic across Lyra’s body, then after a moment, it was gone. Lyra looked down at herself, and saw…pale skin, the odd lumps on her barrel, paws, and in all other respects, exactly what she had been turned into. The spell had done nothing…

…wait, wasn’t she supposed to be invisible?

Lyra glanced up to Trixie, who stared back. Both slowly turned their gazes to BonBon, and found the cream-colored earth pony to be staring at Lyra, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, one hoof extended. Occasionally, small sounds would escape her throat, but nothing that suggested that she was capable of any kind of intelligent thought.

At least not until BonBon's neck turned with such force that Lyra was surprised it didn’t snap, as the earth pony began to bear down on Trixie, muscles tenses, nostrils flaring in anger.

“What did you do to my Lyra?”

5. To Canterlot

“N-now, BonBon,” Trixie said as she backed away from the advancing earth pony, hooves scrabbling on the wooden floor of her kitchen, “calm down – ”

“Calm down?” BonBon demanded. “Calm down? What did you do to her?”

“Nothing!” Lyra said.

BonBon jumped, as though surprised that Lyra was still capable of speech, and turned to regard the former unicorn. On laying eyes on her, she unconsciously backed away several steps, then caught herself. “Lyra?” she asked in a small voice.

“It’s still me,” Lyra said, holding up her paws slowly. “I’m still me. I’m…” she let out a slight sigh. “Okay. Remember how Trixie made you think that I was invisible and stuck like that? That’s because we didn’t want you to worry. That’s also why we didn’t want you touching me. And I’m sorry we lied, and we shouldn’t have.”

BonBon stared, wide-eyed. “S…so this is what happened?” she asked, eyes darting over Lyra’s form, taking in the inverted hocks, the paws, the compressed face – the pointed teeth.

“It’s not my fault!” Trixie cried out. “The spell was mislabeled in the book! It was from Princess Luna, I thought everything was correct! I thought I was going to be turning Lyra into a zebra, not a…a…a whatever this thing is!”

“Bear,” Lyra supplied.

“You’re not a bear. You don’t look anything like a bear.”

“Well, I have to be something, and until we know what I might as well be a bear!” Lyra exclaimed, before looking back to BonBon. “We can fix this, BonBon. Trixie and me are going to fix this, no matter what.”

“Worst-case scenario, she’s stuck like this for a week,” Trixie said. “Princess Luna will – ”

“I don’t care about Princess Luna!” BonBon shouted, turning to face Trixie again, advancing slowly. “How could you do this to her?”

“I didn’t mean to!” Trixie exclaimed, backing away again.

“Her show is in three hours! What is she supposed to do, Trixie?” BonBon jabbed a hoof at Lyra for a moment, before she continued her advance. “She can’t go to Canterlot looking like that!”

“I know! I’m trying as – ”

“You’re supposed to be her friend!” BonBon exclaimed. By now, Trixie had run out of space to back away, and was pressed up against the wall as BonBon bore down on her. “What kind of a friend turns somepony into a…a…a bear! A bear, right before one of the defining moments of her – ”

Trixie, backed into a wall and with a seemingly equicidal pony bearing down on her, did the only thing she could think of: her horn glowed, and she shoved BonBon away from her telekinetically. She had intended it to only be a foot or two, and relatively gentle at that, but her panicked state saw to it that BonBon was instead pushed halfway across the room, hard enough to make the earth pony stumble. When she got her hooves under her again and looked to Trixie, there was no doubt as to her intention.

“C’est des conneries,” Trixie cursed.

“N-now, BonBon,” Lyra tried, starting forward. “Sweetie, wait a moment, Trixie didn’t mean to – we don’t have time to – ”

BonBon charged.

Against all odds, Trixie remembered to turn Lyra invisible again as both dashed out of the Residency. Trixie closed the door as soon as the both of them were out, horn glowing brightly as a cerulean aura surrounded the portal, holding it fast as BonBon slammed into it. She had probably intended to break it down, but Trixie managed to hold it in place, though the shock travelled straight down her horn. She grimaced against the pain as she heard a dazed thump from the other side of the door.

“That sounded like it hurt,” Trixie noted. She had managed to grab the zebra spellbook during her second pass through the kitchen, after having run out of it and into her living room, where she and Lyra had tried – and failed – to reason with BonBon.

“BonBon?” Lyra asked, leaning up against the door. “You okay, sweetie?”

“She’s fine. Earth pony,” Trixie said, frowning slightly as she noticed Lyra beginning to shiver in the cold winter afternoon. The sun was already halfway down the horizon, and the temperature, not very high to begin with, was dropping. She turned around, getting ready to make a beeline for the train station with Lyra – she had a plan that might work, if they couldn’t find some ritual in the book for the train ride – when she noticed that the two of them weren’t alone. Standing in the front yard of the Residency, looking at Trixie in confusion, was a small, gray unicorn filly, bundled up in a winter cloak and hat and carrying her school bag.

“Oh! Dinky!” Trixie exclaimed, then after a moment adding "Hi!" as she tried to figure out why the daughter of Ditzy Doo could be coming to see her. She was fairly certain that she hadn’t made any arrangements to see Dinky today, so this was likely just a social call, or perhaps Dinky coming by to see if Trixie could help her with her telekinesis more. Normally unicorn foals could count on parents or older siblings to help them master that skill, but all Dinky had was her mother, a pegasus. Ditzy Doo was a wonderful mother in all other regards, but she simply couldn’t help Dinky out in that case, so Trixie had stepped in.

Plus, Dinky was a really adorable kid. Trixie sometimes wondered if being adorable was going to end up being Dinky’s special talent.

“Hi, Dinky,” Lyra’s disembodied voice added, from next to Trixie. That broke Trixie from her reverie, as she shot a glare at Lyra, who had the good sense to look embarrassed again, as she put her hands to her mouth in embarrassment.

Dinky stared. “Hi,” she responded, slowly creeping forward and looking to where Lyra was, though it was fairly obvious that the filly couldn’t penetrate Trixie’s invisibility spell. “Miss Heartstrings?”

“You can just call me Lyra,” Lyra said.

Dinky jumped in surprise at the sound of a voice from, as far as she could tell, nowhere. “That’s…it’s really weird talking to nothing…”

Trixie’s brow furrowed at that, and her horn glowed as she waved a hoof. In front of Dinky, a facsimile of Lyra seemed to materialize from nothing, a bright grin on her features. “My horn is not that short,” Lyra objected, as Dinky looked to Trixie in confusion. The illusion of Lyra, meanwhile, hadn’t moved its mouth.

“Illusion,” Trixie explained to the filly, before glancing at Lyra – the real Lyra. “And yes it is. And we don’t have time to argue right now.”

“Did…did you turn Lyra invisible and now can’t make her not invisible, and only you can see her?” Dinky asked, as she mulled over the information in front of her. “And make her giant, since you keep looking up to talk to her?”

There was a pause, as Trixie and Lyra looked to each other. “Sure,” Trixie said after a moment. “That’s what happened.”

Dinky eyed Trixie. “No it isn’t,” she objected to the obviously transparent lie.

“No it isn’t,” Trixie echoed, as she and Lyra began walking towards the front gate, Dinky following and the illusion of Lyra keeping pace, trotting along normally, though her bright grin didn’t move and her movements were exaggerated, more like a puppet moving than a pony. Still, Trixie thought it was a pretty good figment for something she’d thrown up on a whim.

Trixie opened the book in front of her, looking it over. “Look, we've narrowed it down to just these three, all we need to do is – ”

“The last ritual took half an hour to set up and it didn’t even do anything!” Lyra exclaimed. “The train leaves in fifteen minutes!” There was a pause, and Trixie glanced to Lyra. The former unicorn was using her forelegs to hug her barrel tightly, while she hopped from one foot to another against the cold ground. “And my hooves are freezing! Or whatever these things are called!”

Trixie opened her mouth to say something unkind, but then paused. “I feel I’m forgetting something – ”

Crash.

Dinky and Trixie both turned around at the sound of glass and wood breaking, and saw a cream-colored, blue-and-pink maned earth pony rising from the garden in front of the Residency. Without thinking, Trixie’s horn flashed blue, and she covered herself in the same invisibility glamor that she had wrapped around Lyra. After a moment, she remembered Dinky, and made to coat her in the same spell, but by then BonBon had leapt over the iron fence that surrounded the Residency and landed almost on top of Dinky Doo, a look of pure rage on her face – but a look which was, fortunately, not directed at the filly, instead focused first to her left, then her right, as though she was a predator looking around for prey.

“Where’d she go?” BonBon demanded. She looked down to Dinky, her gaze softening a little. “Dinky Doo? Sugar? Where did Trixie go? I’ll give you free candy for a month if you tell me.”

Trixie held her breath, not daring to exhale. Dinky was a smart filly, she’d know that Trixie had turned herself invisible, and Trixie wouldn’t blame her at all if she told BonBon that in the face of such unbridled fury from the earth pony mare.

“That way,” Dinky Doo told BonBon, pointing down a street. In a flash, BonBon was off. Trixie felt her heart flutter at that, surprised at the filly’s choice – not that she was complaining.

As soon as BonBon was out of sight, Trixie let herself bleed back into reality, the invisibility glamor she’d woven over herself falling off of her in a blue mist that quickly dissipated into nothingness. She didn’t re-create the Lyra figment, nor make Lyra visible, instead looking to Dinky. “Thanks,” she said, her gratitude entirely genuine. “I owe you, kiddo.”

“She is going to be so mad at me…” Lyra’s voice mourned, as her teeth chattered. Being a naked bear outside in winter was not looking like it was working out for her.

Dinky looked to Trixie. “I…I actually came needing a favor,” she said. “See, there’s this new jewelry store, and I need to get something there today for my momma but my momma can’t know or else – ”

“We don’t have time,” Lyra’s interrupted.

The blue unicorn looked to the invisible-to-everypony-else Lyra, then back to Dinky. The filly seemed distraught – but Lyra was right. Whatever was troubling Dinky could not have compared to the situation that she and Lyra were currently in – she was only a filly, after all, and Trixie had to prioritize. “We don’t,” Trixie said, unable to keep the pained tone from her voice. “I’m sorry, kiddo, I really am, but me and Lyra need to hoof it…leg it…whatever…to the train station. She has a show in Canterlot she can’t miss.”

Dinky stared, wide-eyed. “But…” she objected. “But, I need – ”

“I’m sorry, I'm so sorry,” Trixie said, as she turned. If she let Dinky get any further than that, she knew for a fact that the filly would be able to convince her to stay, and that wouldn’t be fair to Lyra. She did look behind at the foal as she ran, though, calling “I’ll make it up to you, I promise!”

“T-Trixie!” Lyra called as the unicorn ran. “S-slow down-n!”

Trixie glanced behind her. She wasn’t running particularly fast, but Lyra had fallen significantly behind, and she was stumbling, teeth chattering. Trixie stopped, and Lyra did as well, bending over, hands on her knees as she breathed and shivered. “I c-can’t run as fast…” the former unicorn stated. “And I-I-I’m f-freezing…”

Trixie grimaced at that, regretting that she had taken off her cape back at the Residency, which had, among other enchantments, magic woven into it that allowed the wearer to retain all body heat, making it excellent proof against cold weather despite being made of very thin material. Lyra could have used it right now…she tapped a hoof on the ground a few moments, thinking. “Okay, hang on,” she said, closing her eyes and thinking back to the spell that Lyra had shown her earlier today, the one that had summoned Lyra’s lyre.

First, she cast that same spell, refreshing it in her mind. She caught the lyre as it fell, then passed it to Lyra, who stared in confusion, wondering how a musical instrument was going to help against the cold.

Trixie had her eyes closed again, as she thought about the spell in her mind, the way it moved. In her mind’s eye, she saw it as a string of raw magical energy, one end tied around her horn, the other end tied around the lyre. With a slight twitch of her head, she mentally untied the end wrapped around the lyre.

Next, she cast out her magical senses, reaching towards her home. The Residency would have been too far away under normal circumstances, but what she was looking for in it – her cape – was intimately familiar to her, something she wore every day and had owned for years. The fact that the cape was magical as well helped her find it, sitting in the kitchen where she’d left it.

Ha, Trixie mentally proclaimed as she wrapped the business end of the calling spell around her cape, and tugged. In front of her, a cerulean sphere appeared, and after a moment it popped, and Trixie’s cape fluttered to the ground. She picked it up with telekinesis and held it out. “Here,” she said.

Lyra took the cape and tied it around her neck, then picked up and held her lyre close, though she looked disappointed as she did. “I’m g-gonna need m-more than j-just this,” she said.

“It’s magic. It’ll take a few minutes to kick in, but trust me, you’ll be fine in no time,” Trixie said, casting a second invisibility glamor over her cape, and a third over Lyra’s lyre – it wouldn’t do to have it look like she was being stalked by a floating musician-cape, after all. She then turned around and resumed running, Lyra following as best she could.

As Trixie galloped, she shook her head a little. The zebra spells had drawn magic from the very air, and so hadn’t been taxing in the slightest – but between a modified shield spell to hold her front door in place, several invisibility spells in quick succession, the figment of Lyra conjured for Dinky, Lyra’s lyre-summoning spell, and now her modified version for her own cape, Trixie was beginning to feel slightly lightheaded. Despite magic being her special talent, Trixie didn’t have any deeper a reservoir of magic to draw upon than anypony else – in fact she suspected that, though she’d never tell the other unicorn, Lyra had more raw magic inside of her.

Further, casting her new summon cape spell had cost valuable time – a minute or two at most, but now any delusions she had harbored about gathering ingredients for a final ritual on the train were dashed. That meant that Trixie’s only option, as long as Lyra was so insistent on not missing her show, was one she was certain was going to end up landing her in a hospital.

“I th-think the cape’s starting to w-work,” Lyra chattered, as they neared the train station. Her eyes widened. “Trixie, how are you going to p-pay for tickets?”

“Ticket,” Trixie corrected, as she grimaced again, knowing exactly how she was going to. “Also? Shut up! You’re invisible! Don’t talk! That defeats the entire purpose!”

Lyra pressed her lips together as Trixie stopped just inside the train station with five minutes to spare. The five o’clock train was, thankfully, looking like it was going to be only sparsely occupied. There were maybe a half-dozen ponies waiting near the track, and no line leading up to the single teller, who was too busy reading a newspaper to notice Trixie’s entrance. Even as Trixie and Lyra entered, they heard the hoot of a train’s whistle nearby, and five o’clock train to Canterlot began to pull into the station.

Trixie’s horn glowed beneath her hat, and she cast an illusion of saddlebags over her back. Having created them, she pulled her hat down lower over her head, obscuring her horn entirely, and trotting forward, to the teller, Lyra following close by. “Excuse me,” Trixie said as she came up to the counter, and the teller looked up from his newspaper, revealing a yellow-coated earth pony who regarded Trixie with a board look. “One ticket to Canterlot, please. Private cabin.”

The teller glanced at the clock that hung on the train station’s wall, then back to Trixie as he went to work making up the ticket. “That was close,” he noted.

“You have no idea,” Trixie breathed.

The teller also didn’t look like he cared much, but didn’t say so as he finished using a hole-puncher to stamp out Trixie’s ticket, marking her destination and number of passengers. “That’ll be thirty bits, ma’am.”

Trixie nodded, looking to her illusory saddlebags, the glow of her horn comfortably obscured beneath her hat. This was the easy part: open the ‘bag,’ ‘levitate’ out thirty ‘bits,’ and set the ‘bits’ down on the counter. The ‘bits’ she set down looked old and worn, but the face of Luna was still visible on one side, the Equestrian coat of arms on the other, and the sides were ridged, as normal. Nopony could have told, at a glance, that they were fake.

But the teller wasn’t going to just glance at that them, and that was the hard part. As he reached out a hoof for them, to scoop them into the open, waiting drawer, Trixie focused on the bits, and at the same time, on her memory of every time she had held bits in her hooves: the feel of the silver face, the raised image of Luna, the ridges on the side. She focused on her memories of the sound of them clinking against each other, the sound they made on a wooden countertop as they were dragged along it by a hoof, the sound of them falling comfortably into a cash drawer. As she focused on the memories, she pushed them forward, and down, and into the coins themselves.

To Trixie, it felt like she was trying to lift a mountain. Fooling sight or hearing by themselves, or even both together, was relatively easy, since in neither case did the victim ever actually interact with the illusion or ghost sound directly. Fooling the sense of touch was a whole different proposition, and would have been trying if all she had been figmenting was a single coin, nevermind thirty of them – but it was a challenge she met as the teller slid the bits into his cash drawer and closed it. Trixie immediately dispelled them once they were out of sight, suppressing a gasp of relief as the earth pony passed her ticket to her. She took it in her mouth, giving her horn a break for a few minutes as she set off for the train finished pulling into the station and the conductor stepped out to announce the train’s destination.

To her relief, she saw that the train’s private cabins were built in the modern style, each one opening out onto the platform itself rather than requiring her – and Lyra – to walk through the train car to their destination. She quickly handed off her ticket to the conductor and stepped into the cabin he directed her to, Lyra following silently the whole time, clutching her lyre close. She had stopped shivering, at least, but was looking around furtively, as though worried that Trixie’s spell would collapse at any moment.

As soon as the conductor closed the door to her cabin, and Lyra had squeezed her giant form into the cabin’s back, Trixie drew the curtains to the cabin’s window closed and dispelled all her maintained illusions – first her false saddlebags, then the three invisibility glamors over Lyra, her cape, and Lyra’s instrument. She breathed out a sigh of relief as she did, swooning a little before quickly settling down into one of the private cabin’s benches.

“Can I talk now?” Lyra asked.

“Probably,” Trixie replied. “Keep your voice down, though, in case the conductor walks by.”

Lyra nodded. Even though they had succeeded in boarding the train – even though they were on their way to Canterlot – Lyra looked anything but happy, a fact that was obvious even despite her changed face. She looked to her lyre, then to Trixie. “So…so this is it, then,” she said. “I’m going to Canterlot like this. I’m going to play…like this. Assuming everypony doesn’t run away from me in horror, anyway…and then afterwards, BonBon will…” she trailed off as she thought of her marefriend, and the consequences of running away from her.

Trixie eyed Lyra, specifically her hands. “I have a question,” she said, as the train began to move, “but you’re not going to like it.”

“What?”

“Can you play?”

Lyra snorted slightly at the question, before pausing and looking at her hands. Her eyes slowly began to widen. “Oh, stars above, I didn’t think about that,” she said, grasping her lyre. She held her hand in a slightly cupped position, trying to imitate the shape of a hoof, and attempted to strum out a few notes. What resulted was certainly sound, and not even unpleasant sound – but it was not music. “Oh no,” Lyra breathed. “Oh no, oh no no no no no…”

“Calm down,” Trixie said quickly. “You’ve got two hours to practice, music is your special talent – ”

“Is it?” Lyra asked, somehow managing to keep her voice down despite her panic. She looked to her hips, her flank, which was bare. “My…I don’t have my cutie mark anymore. I don’t have my cutie mark anymore! Do I have a special talent?”

“Everypony has one,” Trixie stated firmly.

“But I’m not a pony! I’m a two-legged, naked, hoof-less freak!”

“No, you’re not,” Trixie counted, jabbing a hoof at Lyra. “You are a pony, you just don’t look like one right now. But music is still your special talent. You are still Lyra Heartstrings.” She waved her hoof. “You just need to practice and figure things out, but we are not going to Canterlot just for you to give up.”

Lyra stared at Trixie, before gritting her teeth – somewhat scary given the presence of incisors – and nodding at Trixie’s words. “Right,” she said. “Right. This can’t be for nothing.”

“It won’t be,” Trixie said, as she looked to the zebra spellbook, then sighed. “We don’t have the time, the stuff, or the room for another ritual. So I’ve got a plan for getting you onstage without anypony knowing that you’re…this,” she waved a hoof up and down to indicate Lyra’s changed body.

Lyra nodded, though she didn’t look up. She was staring at her hands, moving them around as she tried to figure out how to make them work for her lyre. “What is it?”

Trixie considered. “First,” she said, “I need you to describe to me exactly what you were planning on wearing…”

6. The Majestic and Lovely Lyra Heartstrings!

“Just make sure to get my horn length right,” Lyra requested while she continued trying to play her lyre, as the train’s conductor announced that there was only ten minutes until Canterlot. She’d managed to produce actual music by using the knuckles of her fingers, but they were clumsy, and the shortest finger tended to keep getting in the way. She was trying – and failing – to not let it get to her.

“Your horn,” Trixie responded, “is this short. It’s about an inch shorter than mine, making it about an inch and a half shorter than normal for a mare your height.”

Lyra had previously had her eyes closed, but they snapped open at that. “It is not that much – whoa.”

The former unicorn hadn’t been watching Trixie work, keeping her eyes closed as she had tried to figure out how to play her lyre, trying to not be distracted by Trixie working glamor after glamor over herself. As a result, she was completely taken aback by what she saw. Normally, if one knew what one was looking for, one could always tell an illusion from a real image, as illusions rarely got all the fine details right.

This was one of those rare occasions. Trixie had done everything right: she hadn’t just replicated Lyra’s coat color, she had also replicated its appearance, the slightly shorter-than-normal, somewhat thicker hair. Trixie hadn’t simply recolored her own mane and done it up, she’d duplicated the ponytail that Lyra had described to a tee, and as Trixie moved the false mane moved and shook and stretched like a normal mane. Trixie had gotten every detail of Lyra’s golden eyes correct, the length her snout, the curve of her hooves, the lines on her face, the thickness of her eyebrows and lashes – and yes, even the length of her horn, and the details of the spiral that wound their way up its length.

But surpassing even that was the dress illusion that Trixie had woven over her cape. At first, it didn’t move right as Trixie picked up what looked like a full white-and-gold dress and attached it around her throat like a cape, but then the dress seemed to shimmer, and everything fell into place: the golden brooch with a stylized lyre on the front, the white saddle with aquamarine lines running across it, the fine details of the fabric folding over her croup and dock, and the complimenting golden shoes that went over each hoof appeared – Lyra was one of the few ponies that could wear gold and pull it off without reminding ponies of the Tyrant Sun.

Trixie looked to Lyra, smiling a little with one eyebrow raised, mimicking an expression that Lyra often wore when looking for praise. Her horn glowed, gold, not its normal blue, and a golden aura appeared around her wizard’s hat, which was unchanged. Trixie put the hat atop Lyra. “Well?” she asked. Trixie had even gotten Lyra’s voice right.

“Um…” Lyra responded, blinking. “Uh…great. Yeah.”

Trixie pouted. It was strange for Lyra to see her own body making such a face, without her wanting to. “Great?” she asked. “Great? That’s it? Princess Luna herself wouldn’t be able to see through this!”

“I’ve never seen an illusion this complicated,” Lyra observed, leaning forward and inspecting Trixie. The detail stood up to any scrutiny, no matter how close Lyra got or what angle she looked at the illusion at.

Trixie grinned brightly. “That’s better,” she said, satisfied. “And it’s not all one illusion. There’s about a half-dozen over me, plus another four or five in the cape, all working together to support each other. Mind, I can’t disguise something like this – if anypony tries to detect magic on me, they’re probably going to go blind.”

“That’s alright, you can just say there’s some magic in the dress,” Lyra observed, gently putting a finger on Trixie’s coat. Lyra knew that her coat was a little coarser than normal, but Trixie hadn’t done anything to affect her own softer hair. Then again, Lyra supposed that wasn’t likely to be a problem. “How long can you maintain this?”

Trixie grimaced. “As long as I have to,” she said, shifting from one hoof to the next and back again for a few moments. “But…Lyra, as long as I can look like you, I really think you should re-consider me ‘having an accident’ and needing to miss the show. The blame won’t be on you if we fake you, I dunno, getting hit by a carriage.”

Lyra shook her head. “Can’t,” she said. “That would involve doctors and paramedics and just too many ponies to keep the fact that you’re…well, you, and not me…a secret.”

“Maybe stage a kidnapping!”

Lyra didn’t dignify that idea with a response, instead sitting back against the inner door of their cabin and getting back to her lyre, which she told herself in no uncertain terms was not a hopeless struggle, that she could still play it, no matter what. At the moment, the plan was to have Trixie appear on-stage, disguised as Lyra, and pretend to be playing Lyra’s lyre via telekinesis. The fact that she was using telekinesis would disguise that in reality, Lyra would be on stage, invisible, and actually the one holding her lyre and playing. It was certainly more likely to succeed that Trixie’s offhoof suggesting of using her photographic memory spell to try and memorize the entire piece and the play it.

Somewhat more likely, anyway – Lyra’s latest attempt to try and use her knuckles to string two chords together failed once again. “I don’t believe this…!” she groaned. “I can’t even play ‘Smoke on the Water!’ Everypony can play ‘Smoke on the Water!’ It’s the string equivalent of ‘Moonlight Sonata!’”

“I don’t know what that is,” Trixie admitted as she removed her hat from Lyra's head and looked it over, horn glowing – its normal blue, not Lyra’s gold – and pushing magic into it.

“You know,” Lyra said, humming out the tune for a few moments before continuing, “the piano piece? By Beet Root?”

Trixie considered the music for a moment, pausing in imbuing magic into her hat. “I can play ‘Chopsticks,’” she stated, smiling as though in accomplishment.

The look of a Trixie-like grin, appearing on Lyra’s face, when stating that she could play out something that barely qualified as an actual tune, was almost enough to make Lyra put her hands to use in trying to strangle Trixie. For that matter, it was possible that it would have been enough, had the inner door to their cabin not chosen that precise moment to slide open.

Bon Bon was aware of the fact that she could, sometimes, be a very moody pony, difficult to get along with. However, at the moment, if she were to –

– for example –

– be angry enough to beat a certain blue unicorn to death with that unicorn’s own dismembered hind legs, she was fairly certain that this would not constitute one of her “normal mood swings” so much as “perfectly justifiable equicidal rage and temporary insanity.” At a guess, she would probably get off with twenty years in jail for voluntary ponyslaughter – she might, in fact, even be able to argue for involuntary ponyslaughter. Maybe ten years, if she could get a commendation for good behavior. When she opened the cabin door, she felt that there was probably a fifty-fifty shot of her enacting her murderous plan.

But there was a flash of blue – which was strange in and of itself, as Bon Bon had always heard that ponies with deadly intent saw red, not blue – and Bon Bon found herself face-to-face with Lyra, actual Lyra, in her normal pony body, bedecked in her toga-like gown that she wore to formal occasions, looking at her with wide eyes.

“ – ! – ” Lyra began. Before she could get any further, Lyra was pressed against the cabin’s outer door, Bon Bon’s lips pressed firmly to hers.

The cream-colored earth pony drew away after a few moments, stifling a relieved giggle. “The spell wore off?” she asked, rage at Trixie forgotten as she again kissed Lyra’s lips. “Oh, thank Luna – you know, you gave me the fright of my life – ” another kiss, her marefriend wasn’t returning them for some reason, “but it’s fine now and – and…” another kiss, this one held for several moments as Lyra continued to not return it. Bon Bon paused at the lack of affection, pulling back from her marefriend and looking her in the eye. Lyra, herself, was frozen in place, eyes wide and blushing furiously. Behind Bon Bon, there was a cerulean-tinged glow for a few moments, and a few wisps of blue smoke.

“Um,” Lyra said. Without moving her lips. Looking behind her, Bon Bon found herself staring at the pale-skinned, naked bear that Trixie had turned Lyra into, who had just shut the inner cabin door, and was holding up her forelegs as though to ward off a buck.

“Um,” the naked bear Lyra repeated.

Bon Bon turned back to the fake Lyra – Trixie in disguise, some distant part of her mind reasoned – and stared at her. Trixie stared back, frozen in place. For several long moments, there was only silence in the cabin, as outside the train whistle blew and the train’s conductor announced one minute until their arrival at Canterlot Central Station.

Bon Bon let out a slight giggle. She didn’t know why. After a few moments, the giggle returned and didn’t go away. Behind her, Lyra began to chuckle as well, while Trixie joined in a few moments later, though she stopped as she noticed Bon Bon’s front hooves both reaching up and pressing against her neck, harder – and harder – and harder – Bon Bon still giggling like a school foal all the while.

“Um – ” Trixie gasped out as Bon Bon bore down on her, her own forelegs flailing and horn glowing, though her blue-tinged telekinesis wasn’t helping as much as it might have otherwise. “She – choking– help – !”

Bon Bon felt her hind legs being grabbed by something, and found herself being dragged away from Trixie. For some reason she was still giggling. “N-no!” she gasped out between fits, forelegs working to try and pull her back to Trixie. For whatever reason, she didn’t buck with her hind hooves. “S-see? I have to – ha – I have to kill Trixie! That will undo the spell! Heehee! Right? ‘Cause that’s how magic always works in all those old stories!”

“Um, no,” Lyra said, pulling Bon Bon back. “No, sweetie, magic doesn’t work like that. It never has. Those stories are just holdovers from back when pegasi and earth ponies didn’t know much about unicorns – ”

“W-well,” Bon Bon chuckled, “haha, well, I’m gonna try it! Because – because otherwise it looks like you’re….well, if I had to guess…Trixie is going to play? Or what – or – or you’re going to be on stage? Invisible, right? Ha! That’s…that’s…nope. Gonna kill Trixie. Heeheehee!”

Bon Bon felt forelegs wrapped around her barrel. Lyra was hugging her, as best she could with her strange new front legs, her cheek pressed to the top of Bon Bon’s head. “Bon Bon, you’re…calm down. Please? This is the only thing I can do!”

“No it isn’t!” Bon Bon exclaimed, wriggling and struggling until she was out of Lyra’s grip and turning to her marefriend, her giggles forgotten. “No, it isn’t. You could…you could cancel!”

“That’d be a death sentence to my musical career,” Lyra said, “at least if I want to do anything more serious than park concerts and weddings and birthday parties.”

Bon Bon pointed at Lyra. “No, Lyra, that is a death sentence to your musical career! Trixie is a death sentence!”

“Bon Bon – ”

“You don’t even have hooves! How are you going to play? Can you play? Where’s your cutie mark? You need to – ”

“Bon Bon!” Lyra shouted. The earth pony stumbled slightly at the volume, eyes somehow managing to widen more as she noticed that the muscles in Lyra’s new body were tensed, her face set in a look of determination, mouth open slightly and teeth – her predator teeth – gritted. After a moment of stunned quiet, Lyra continued. “I’m not missing this. No matter what.”

Bon Bon’s mouth opened and closed a few times of its own accord as she regarded Lyra and took in her statement, her absolute determination. “I…” she said. “I…I’m just trying to protect you…”

Lyra blinked. “I know,” she said after a few moments, leaning forward and pressing her head to Bon Bon’s own, eyes closed. Bon Bon’s own eyes closed as she leaned into the nuzzle, imagining that it was her Lyra that she was touching, not…not whatever Lyra had become. “I know…you’re scared for me. I’m scared for me. But this has to happen.”

Bon Bon nodded in understanding. Lyra put absolutely nothing in front of her, she knew – but there were some things that stood on equal ground with their relationship. Her musical career was one of those things, or at least her intended musical career, the dream of it she’d had for as long as Bon Bon had known her. If Lyra said that backing out of this concert in some way would leave that dream stillborn…

No. No matter how crazy this Lyra’s intentions were, no matter how stupid, Bon Bon couldn’t do that do her. “Okay,” she whispered softly, leaning up and kissing Lyra’s changed lips, ignoring that they felt completely different, that her short, pointed nose got in the way. “Okay. How can I help? What can I do?”

“Help Trixie.”

Bon Bon leaned away at that, opening her eyes and regarding Lyra incredulously. “But…” she objected. “But she’s the one who got you into this mess!”

“And she’s trying to help get me out of it,” Lyra countered. “Okay? So just…just lay off her for a little bit. At least until the concert is over. We can deal with things from there. Okay?”

Bon Bon grimaced, mulling over Lyra’s request in her head before sighing. “Okay, alright.” She turned around, looking to Trixie, ignoring that she had done far too good a job creating her Lyra disguise. “What do you need?”

Trixie considered. One hoof was at her neck, as it looked like she was still trying to get over Bon Bon kissing her and trying to kill her in rapid succession. “Okay,” she said – even her voice was disguised as Lyra’s; Bon Bon idly wondered if Trixie would now be able to actually hold a tune, “okay, um…right. First, I need to know this or else it’s going to be bugging me all night – how did you get aboard? Me and Lyra barely got aboard on time, and you ran off in the wrong direction!”

“I had a seat reserved,” Bon Bon informed her. “Once I realized that Dinky had probably lied to me, I rushed as fast as I could to the station.” She made a face. “What, did you think I was going to miss this?”

Trixie shrugged, conceding the point. “And this is a two-hour train ride. Why’d it take you so long to find our cabin?”

Bon Bon’s eyes widened a little. “Er,” she realized. “I…well, I looked through the normal passenger sections first, then tried to get into the private cabins, but there were some railway marshals who tried to stop me. Um…could you, maybe, use that magic of yours to disguise me when we’re getting off? I might have given one or two of them concussions.”

Lyra and Trixie stared.

“Maybe three,” Bon Bon conceded.

Trixie ended up simply turning Bon Bon invisible, while giving her hat – into which she had woven a temporary invisibility enchantment – and her cape – which retained its heat-retaining enchantment and was, along with Lyra’s lyre, rendered invisible by Trixie’s hat – to Lyra. As soon as the three of them were a block from the train station, she dispelled the invisibility spell that surrounded Bon Bon, and the trio began making their way to the Princess Luna Academy of Advanced Magic and Higher Learning – usually just shortened to Luna’s Magic Academy, or simply the Academy.

By now, a dull twinge had begun to manifest at the base of Trixie’s horn, the result of her maintaining her perfect illusion. Compared to how she’d no doubt be feeling in a couple hours from maintaining the illusion, and Lyra’s invisibility, for so long, the twinge was practically nothing.

“Okay,” Lyra said, ignoring Trixie’s glare at the fact that she was talking while invisible while walking to the gates of the Academy. “Once we’re inside, just duck into a closet or something, and I’ll give you your cape back, and my lyre, then go and see a pony named Troubadour, he’s the one in charge of the night. He’ll show you to your seat, we’ll just stay there until it’s time to perform.”

Trixie shook her head, even as she caught sight of a clock perched inside of the Academy – it read 7:14. Just over forty-five minutes to showtime. “Close. You need to hold onto your lyre to practice.”

Bon Bon jumped a little at that, glancing to Trixie. “She…she really can’t play?” the earth pony demanded.

“No,” Lyra stated morosely.

“Not yet,” Trixie countered, offering a smile to Bon Bon as they passed through the Academy’s gates and started making their way towards the concert hall. “That’s why she needs to practice. She’ll figure everything out in time for the show.”

Bon Bon stared at Trixie, before nodding. “Right,” she agreed. “Right. You will, Lyra. I know you will.”

Trixie nodded in confirmation. As they approached the concert hall, Bon Bon had to leave them: she was part of the audience, not the show, and so had to enter through the main door rather than the side door that Lyra directed Trixie to, which was flanked by a pair of the university’s security. They let Trixie through without stopping her, though, apparently recognizing Lyra on sight.

“Okay – ” Lyra began in a low voice, or started to begin, but almost immediately on entering Trixie and Lyra found themselves face-to-face with a red-coated unicorn stallion, with a dark blue mane that had a shock of bright pink running through it, and a cutie mark of two crossed mandolins. He was wearing a dinner jacket and bowtie.

“Lyra!” the unicorn exclaimed, coming up to Trixie and extending a hoof. “You made it! I was starting to get worried!”

Lyra opened her mouth to respond, but put a hand to it before she could ruin things. Trixie, for her part, didn’t miss a beat, taking the pony’s hoof and shaking it. “Sorry, train was slow,” she said, glancing to Lyra as she did. The former unicorn mouthed out that's Troubadour to Trixie, pointing at him. Trixie nodded, though whether to Lyra’s information or simply to go along with what she had said, Lyra didn’t know.

“One day Luna will get them to run on time,” Troubadour said.

Trixie’s eyes narrowed. “She tries,” she said. “But really, that’s a ministerial problem – ”

“Sure,” Troubadour interrupted, looking Trixie over. “You’re not…planning on going on-stage like that, are you?”

The disguised unicorn’s eyes narrowed a little further than that. “Of course not,” she said.

“Well, um…where’s…?”

Trixie reared up slightly, horn glowing – gold now, not Trixie’s normal blue – and Lyra felt magic at her throat. Trixie’s cape was taken from her shoulders, becoming visible again – or at least the dress it had been glamored to look like – and slinging it around her own shoulders. To Troubadour, it would have looked like Lyra had conjured it from nothingness. He took a step back as Trixie grinned brightly, repeating the process with Lyra’s lyre. “Ha!” she proclaimed, bringing one hoof across the strings of the lyre in a single brisk movement. “Behold! The Majestic and Lovely Lyra Heartstrings is ready to play!”

Lyra very nearly resumed the murder of Trixie that Bon Bon had started earlier. She settled, instead, on covering her face with the palm of one hand, as though the inability to see would somehow wipe what had just occurred from reality.

Troubadour seemed taken aback as well. “Are you alright?” he asked.

“Of course,” Trixie said, getting down off of her hind legs and regarding Troubadour. She frowned slightly. “Don’t all musicians have stage personas?”

Lyra’s other hand joined the first one in covering her face.

“…sure,” Troubadour responded. “Um…maybe tone things down a little. We don’t want to give the wrong impression. We’re looking for new students, remember.”

Trixie pouted. “Fine.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Of course!” Trixie said firmly, smiling brightly. “It’s not like I haven’t done this before.”

Lyra was all of five seconds away from planting her foot somewhere firmly in Trixie’s flank.

“I thought this was your first solo show,” Troubadour said.

Trixie waved him off. “My first solo show, sure. But it’s not my first show. And it’s not like I haven’t played by myself before, in a park or out on the Academy grounds! This really isn’t any different, except that I’m getting paid this time.”

Troubadour, again, seemed confused. “Um – ”

Trixie realized her mistake almost immediately, and again waved off Troubadour. “In recognition!” she exclaimed, once again rearing up and strumming every string on Lyra’s lyre. “In all the ponies that will see me perform tonight! My name will get out there to record companies and orchestras and such!”

“Ah,” Troubadour responded. The stallion had backed away several more steps from Trixie. “Well. Um…you can just take your seat over there, on stage…I need to…um…” after a few moments of trying to think up what to do, he turned and walked away at a brisk pace.

Trixie watched him go, before looking to Lyra. “You’re not getting paid?” she demanded.

7. The Show

Author's Note

They say to write what you know. But what do they know? I've never written about anything I have more than a passing knowledge of! ...And sometimes, that can bite me in the ass if, for example, I choose to write about a lyre-playing pony when I know almost nothing about music, other than the fact that it sounds pretty. I had planned to stumble my way through this, but apparently amongst my readers are people who actually know about music - would realize that I'm just stumbling blindly.

So, I asked for help - and got it. GrassAndClouds2 is probably the best person I've ever read at taking music and putting it on paper. A computer screen. Whatever - the point is that he's good at it and I'm not. As a result, a significant portion of this chapter was actually written by him, not me, and this is the part of the chapter where I give him full kudos and props. The part that GrassAndClouds2 wrote will be noted by having the beginning and end of the section briefly in green text.

Anyway, on with the show!

7. The Show

What had been only a dull throb hour ago had grown and blossomed, as though tended-to by an earth pony gardener, into a beautiful flower of driving pain at the base of Trixie’s horn and travelling its length. Trixie was doing her best to ignore it, focusing instead on Lyra as the pony-turned-naked-bear sat, in that bizarre cross-legged fashion, in front of Trixie, holding her lyre in both hands as she continued to try and stroke and play it. Trixie had cast two more illusions, one of a golden aura around the lyre and another aura around her horn, to make it seem to any passers-by that she was holding it up the lyre telekinetically and practicing herself.

On any other night, Trixie probably would barely have even noticed the drain on her magical reserves that those two most minor of glamors were creating. Tonight…tonight was a little different.

Didn’t need to disguise my cutie mark, Trixie thought as she closed her eyes, trying to will the pain in her head and horn to go away. She imagined that she succeeded a little. Should have just worn the cape all the way here…I’m sure Lyra would have been alright for the fifteen-minute walk, it’s barely freezing out.

The worst part of it all was that she really had outdone herself in the illusion department, to her own detriment: she couldn’t, now that her cutie mark was safely covered, simply dispel the illusion disguising it, as she had looped the magic of that glamor into the other half-dozen or so that she’d cast upon herself, each illusion feeding into the others to make the whole that much more complete and real-seeming. But the drawback was that she couldn’t disentangle one illusion from the other: they either had to all go at once, or else…

…or else I’m going to overchannel and pass out, Trixie reasoned. And then all her magic would collapse anyway – including the invisibility spell around Lyra.

Trixie shook her head, banishing that thought from her mind. Opening her eyes, she saw that time trying to convince herself that the throbbing in her head was just illusion had, at least, helped to pass the time. She and Lyra were sitting in the very front of the concert hall, directly in front of the stage; behind them, however, the audience for the show had begun to trot in, gradually filling up the seats. Lyra, meanwhile, had stopped practicing her lyre. She was watching the audience file in as well, her now much smaller eyes as wide as they could get as she bit her lip nervously. She was sweating, too – not much, but it was perceptible.

Trixie wondered, for the briefest moment, how everypony in the auditorium would react if – or when, it was looking increasingly likely – Trixie’s spells failed and Lyra became visible to all. She once more, however, shook her head and banished the thought from her mind.

My special talent is magic, she informed herself. Not just magic, either – doing magic for others. This is exactly what I earned my cutie mark for. Lyra can do this, and I can do this for Lyra.

Trixie heard Lyra’s name being called; looking, she saw Troubadour waving her towards the stage.

It was time.

Lyra stared out at the audience as she walked onto the stage, holding her lyre in one hand so that it looked like the illusory Lyra was moving it telekinetically, while her other hand adjusted Trixie’s invisibility-bestowing hat that lay atop her head.

That’s a lot of ponies.

The auditorium was absolutely packed. There were students, and prospectives – a lot of prospectives, actually – and teachers and staff. She recognized a couple junior members of the Court who fancied themselves patrons of the arts and often showed up at school functions. Bon Bon was there too, looking…well, unhappy was putting it mildly, but also concerned. She gave a nervous smile at Bon Bon, only to remember too late that Bon Bon couldn’t actually see her, and sighed quietly. Great.

Her gaze fell over another pony sitting near the front of the auditorium. A gray mare with black hair and –

Oh no. She’s here too?

Octavia Philharmonica, her mentor from the Academy, had shown up to see her prize pupil’s first performance.

I can’t even play with these stupid paws yet! I can’t impress the students, much less the teachers, the Court, or freaking Octavia! She’ll think I got lazy and haven’t practiced since I graduated!

Trixie-as-Lyra reached the center of the stage. “Hello!” She called out. “Silence, please! I am about to astound and amaze – ”

Okay, that was it. She might be about to crash and burn, but she wasn’t going to look like a total idiot doing it. Lyra used one of her freakishly large paws to poke Trixie in the side. “Just go,” she hissed, as quietly as she could.

“… so have fun!” finished Trixie lamely, sitting and emitting a strong golden glow from her horn. The lyre, still in Lyra’s hands, glowed too. Now it would look like Trixie was playing it.

Provided Lyra could figure out how to use the stupid thing.

Troubador began to introduce Lyra, describing the recitals and small performances she’d given while at the Academy. “…one of the most remarkable students we’ve had, the first graduate of the dual music-magic program, and all around an incredible performer! Please give a warm welcome to Lyra Heartstrings!”

The crowd politely clapped their hooves on the ground.

“Alright, Trixie,” muttered Lyra. “Just… just keep everything going, okay? I’ll handle the rest.”

“Sure you will,” whispered Trixie. “You’re Lyra Heartstrings. You’re a great musician. You’re – ”

“Trixie.”

Trixie chuckled quietly, then smiled and raised her head. Her horn glowed a little more brightly, and the string moved just slightly.

Lyra began.

Okay, think! I can use these weird joints as fake hooves. This piece starts easy, I can do this. Come on.

Lyra bent the strange joints on her right paw so that the hard, bony parts were jutting out. She passed them near the strings once, checking the range, then brought them closer in. This would have been much easier if she could have actually seen her paw, but then again that would have meant she was visible, and then she’d have a whole separate set of problems.

She passed her paw against the first note. It played, a bright, clean tone that echoed through the air.

Okay, that’s the first note. Right, second note, same as the first.

She played the second note, then a small sequence. It was slow going, but the opening could be a little slow, that was just a phrasing thing. She’d make it up on the next sequence. It was coming, she moved her paws –

Wait. Forward or backwards? She still couldn’t judge the distance between her paws and the lyre like she could with her hooves, and she wasn’t sure how to move her paw to prepare for the next part. She froze for a moment, paralyzed in confusion, and as she jerked her paw to compensate, she accidentally brought it into the wrong note. A sharp, dissonant tone sounded, breaking the pure and clean atmosphere that she’d been building up.

No!

Trixie opened her mouth to babble something at the audience, so Lyra poked her in the side – harder this time. Come on! I can recover! Even Professor Eighth Note missed notes now and then!

She started again, but thoroughly flustered, her notes were uneven and arrhythmic. A staccato, bouncing tone – intended to be bright and spritely, winding up frantic – resounded, as Lyra tried to control her paws.

She was staring at her lyre, worried that, if she looked up at the audience, she would see scorn. She was crashing and burning, just like she’d feared – as she thought this, she missed a note, widening the interval between those surrounding it and giving them an unpleasant, incongruent feel – and she was out of time to practice or improve. Why in the world had she thought she could do this?

Because I’m Lyra Heartstrings.

It was a sudden thought, and it caused her pause just before she restarted the piece for the second time.

I’m Lyra Heartstrings, and I’m a great musician. Music is my special talent; it doesn’t matter that my cutie mark’s not visible. I’ve played this piece so often I know it in my sleep. And I’m going to play it now. She took a deep breath. I am.

First – calm myself. I’ll get through this, but I need to relax. She took a few deep breaths, ignoring Trixie’s whispered frantic comments and the murmurs of the audience. Okay. My teachers and Tavi always taught me to focus on the music during a performance, that if you’re still working out the mechanics of how to hoof each note you’re doing it wrong. I need to hear the music, not just think of how to play it. My body knows how to take it from there.

With a conscious effort, she forced thoughts of the audience, her body, even the lyre from her mind. She recalled the melody as she’d played it last night, before zebra magic had gone horribly awry. The first note was a C.

She let the ‘C’ fill her thoughts, picturing the perfect, clear quality. It needed to be bright, smooth, strong, energetic, with just the right volume. She listened to it in her inner ear, hearing it as perfectly as it playing it again. Play it, she thought.

And her body moved.

It wasn’t the bony joint of her paws, but the very tip, which extended and – in a move that Lyra wouldn’t have understood if she’d been thinking harder about it – stroked the string. The ‘C’ sounded.

Perfectly.

Lyra smiled and brought to mind the next few tones.

The piece started simply, with a few isolated notes and then a series of increasingly fast sequences. Lyra listened to them in her mind, felt them, and her body reacted accordingly, her oddly floppy claws reaching out and plucking at the correct strings. Then came a few simple chords, which were no more difficult. Lyra smiled as she felt her claws plucking multiple strings simultaneously – it actually felt just slightly easier than if she’d had to use hooves to do that – and the peppy major chords followed as a matter of course.

As she continued through the introduction, she missed an occasional note. Her muscle memory still wasn’t working perfectly in this form, and she would occasionally either focus too hard on the mechanics of playing or come across a section that was just a bit too hard to do instinctively. But she moved past it, playing around the rare error and making up for it with the next sequences of notes. And, as she played, her clawing grew more sure, and she played the last eight measures of the introduction perfectly. She was getting the hang of this!

The next section was much harder, but Lyra didn’t even think of that.

The chords were coming more quickly now, spreading out over the lyre, and ornamentations were starting to show up. Lyra’s longest claw slipped on the first trill, making a faint twanging sound which wasn’t supposed to be there, but she recovered and kept going. The grace notes and arpeggios led into the chords, giving them a faster and brighter energy and adding more movement to the piece. It was moving quickly now, not quite racing but at a faster clip than the ambling pace of the introduction. Still, Lyra was more than up to the challenge, and she couldn’t help but smile as she heard the piece building up.

The chords sped up again, now with extremely rapid note sequences between them. Lyra’s claws danced almost of their own accord over the strings. She knew, with the small amount of conscious thought that wasn’t devoted to focusing on the music, that if she tried too hard to focus on what she was doing it would all fall apart. But she didn’t let that give her pause. She just wouldn’t think about what her paws – claws – whatever were doing; she’d just let them go. She had more than enough to do thinking about the music –

A faint sound next to her made her glance away. Trixie had shifted her weight slightly, as if starting to buckle under the strain. Her horn still glowed a bright yellow; the lyre still seemed to play by magical power, but Trixie herself was almost shaking with exhaustion. Lyra’s eyes widened slightly. If Trixie collapsed, her illusions would fail too, and –

Thwump. Lyra’s distraction had cost her, her claws tangled on one of the strings and dragged it into another, ending the sequence with an atonal screech and forcing her to untangle and start it again.

Focus! I trust Trixie. She’s my friend, and she won’t fail me. She began the sequence again. I know it.

The sequence segued right into a very rapid chromatic section that raced – and it was indeed a race now – over the lyre, an alternating ascending-descending series that stretched the range of the lyre to its limits, as if to demonstrate the instrument’s full capacity. And, to keep it from being boring, there were all kinds of little ornaments in the chromatic section – grace notes, trills, faint echoes of the other previous themes.

Lyra met the challenge head on.

The resulting sequence of notes was a dizzying upwards and downwards spiral that seemed to carry the listeners up high into the air before a rapid descent back to the ground. The ornamentation added another dimension to the music and eventually grew into a melody all on its own, which first remained in the background behind the chromatic series before surging forwards and taking an equal share of the prominence. To balance two melodies, one chromatic and one tonal, was extraordinarily difficult, but for Lyra it seemed as natural as putting one hoof in front of the other. The chromatic section represented the full range of the notes Lyra had available to her; the tonal section showed how she could choose them to craft something beautiful. Materials and final product, together, in perfect harmony.

And so it continued. The piece had seven sections, and Lyra carried herself brilliantly through all of them. After the chromatic part was a long, slow, almost romantic movement which required the most subtle of shading, and then a staccato scherzo with extremely jumpy notes seeming to shoot out of her lyre as if fired from a cannon. Then came a part at medium speed, and with medium dynamics, but with the notes so tightly wound against each other that Lyra needed highly intricate clawing just to play them all without her claws and strings getting hopelessly tangled. The result, though, a rich melody that hovered amongst a few frequencies yet continually seemed to deepen and grow, was perfect.

The final section was a series of powerful chords and cadences, a sort of reward for the musician and audience for having the fortune to get this far and hear such beautiful music. The chords boomed out, resounding and echoing through the hall, and building into a massive climax that seemed to blast from the lyre. The music was bright but not blinding, energetic but not hyper, and powerful without quite being overwhelming. It was a perfect, beautiful ending that seemed to represent the entirety of the song – the intricacies of the romantic section, the rapid energy in the scherzo, the full range of notes introduced by the chromatic part – and bring them to their logical, and glorious conclusion.

Lyra ended with a perfect authentic cadence, then quickly lowered the lyre. “Bow,” she whispered.

Trixie, looking rather tired, jerked herself to her full height, then bowed.

The thunderous applause was even louder than the music.

Lyra grinned, both in relief – she’d done it! She’d played a piece while in this screwed up, crazy, zebra-addled form! – and in excitement. Canterlot had heard her now! This would be huge for her career. She could get auditions in orchestras, private concerts, recitals –

“Thank you!” said Trixie, in an unusually exhausted voice. “Thank you! And now the, uh, Lyra must leave you. Until next time!” And she ran offstage at full speed.

What? Hey, get back here! Lyra chased after her.

Trixie took off through the back rooms, Lyra chasing her. “Trixie, come back!” she hissed. “We need to bow more! They might want an encore!”

Trixie didn’t answer.

When Lyra finally caught up to Trixie, they were in a back alley, outside. The cold stung at Lyra, but she ignored it. “Trixie, we – ”

Trixie collapsed.

“Trixie?”

“Hi,” managed Trixie, rolling around so that she could see Lyra. “See? Told you I’d make sure everything was okay.”

Lyra rushed to her fallen friend’s side. Even as she did, a shudder passed through Trixie’s body – then all the illusions around it collapsed, either simultaneously or else so close to it that Lyra couldn’t tell. There were audible pops as they were transmuted into blue, wispy smoke that quickly floated up and away. The illusion disguising Trixie’s cape followed suite immediately thereafter – though the invisibility spell imbued into Trixie’s hat held out, at least, its magic imbued directly into the accessory rather than being constantly fed by Trixie.

“That’s not good…” Trixie moaned a little at the sight of her illusions all failing, as her eyes closed.

“Oh no,” Lyra said, grasping Trixie’s head and lifting her up slightly. As near as Lyra could tell without her horn, it looked like her friend had just overchanneled – expended nearly all the magic in her body, a dangerous proposition that could send a unicorn into a coma for days or weeks – or longer. “Oh, no, no, no, Trixie, you have to stay awake, you overchanneled and if you go to sleep you’ll – ”

Trixie opened one eye in annoyance. “I didn’t overchannel!” She exclaimed, then winced, putting a hoof to her head. “Ow…inside voice…I didn’t overchannel. Magic’s my special talent. I can’t overchannel.”

“That’s not true, Trixie. Not even a little.”

Trixie harrumphed. “Well,” she said, “it’ll take a lot more than that to bring down the Great and Powerful Trixie!”

Lyra blinked a few times, then let out a relieved chuckle as she sat down on her shins, wrapping her arms around her transformed body and trying to ignore the cold. After noticing this, Trixie’s horn glowed as her telekinesis wrapped around the clasp of her cape, or started to before her magic faltered and failed.

“Hang on, I’ve got it,” Lyra said, undoing Trixie’s cape herself. To her immense surprise, the unicorn didn’t object, instead just shifting so that Lyra could get her cape out from under her, then tie it around herself. Once done, she looked to Trixie, who had moved to sit on her stomach. “Thank-you,” she said.

Trixie eyed Lyra. “For what?” she asked. “You did all the work in there.”

“I’m not the one who collapsed from strain, though.”

Trixie considered. “That’s true…” she agreed, prompting another chuckle from Lyra, as she took off Trixie's hat in order to run one paw through her mane, getting an itch that had been bothing her. “We’ll call it a…a team effort, then. The illusioncraft of the Great and Powerful Trixie, and the musical talents of the Majestic and Lovely Lyra!”

Lyra glared at Trixie.

Trixie, to her surprise, matched it. “And I can’t believe you’re not getting paid – ”

The door to the alleyway opened with a bang as its metal struck the brick building it was attached to. “Lyra!” Troubadour called, looking around. “Lyra, you have to come back in, they’ll want an en…”

Troubadour stared at Lyra and Trixie.

Lyra and Trixie stared at Troubadour.

“…core…” Troubadour finished, just before something heavy from inside the building – it looked like a Prench horn – came flying out the door and struck him in the back of the head. The unicorn fell to the ground without a sound after that, and Bon Bon – after looking out the door to see if she needed to remove the burden of consciousness from any other ponies – came out from the concert hall

“Try not to be unconscious for too long, it’s super bad for you,” Bon Bon stated as she dragged Troubadour inside, then came back out and looked to the other two occupants of the alleyway, who had both gotten to their feet.

Hooves.

Whatever.

“Okay,” Bon Bon said, looking between the two of them, Lyra scrunching and un-scrunching Trixie's hat in her paws as she wondered if Bon Bon was about to resume her equicidal intentions towards Trixie. “It’s just about nine o’clock. We’re in an alley after having just committed assault and battery on a perfectly innocent pony – ”

“Where’s this we coming from?” Trixie demanded. “And how did you know where we were?”

“ – and Lyra is still stuck as a naked bear,” Bon Bon finished, ignoring Trixie’s demand. “So…what’s the plan?”

“I don’t think we have a plan,” Lyra mourned, looking to Trixie.

To her surprise, however, Trixie smiled. “Of course there’s a plan,” she said. “It’s even a good one this time!”

“Yes?”

“We go to the castle!” Trixie said, smiling. “I’m Luna’s personal student, they’ll let me in no problem, same with you, Bon Bon, you’ll be my guest. Heck, we can probably stay in my old room. Then we’ll just start looking for all the ingredients for the counter-spells we haven’t tried yet!”

Bon Bon considered for a moment, then nodded. “Okay,” she said, “good plan. How many counter-spells are left to try?”

“Two or three, can’t remember,” Trixie said. “I dunno, check the book, I marked the pages.”

There was a moment of silence, as Bon Bon stared at Trixie. There was a conspicuous lack of any kind of book either on or near her. There was an equally obvious lack of one on Trixie, while all Lyra held was Trixie’s hat and her own lyre.

“Huh,” Noteworthy said, as the blue earth pony picked up the book that was stamped with the Equestrian seal, which had been sitting on the seat of the cabin, carelessly forgotten by its owners. He paged through it, setting aside his cleaning tools for a moment as he looked it over, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and more than half didn’t seem to be in Equestrian.

“Well, something else for the lost and found,” Noteworthy decided as he tossed the book onto his cart, where it sat next to several hats and scarves, as well as a lost wallet (sadly, empty when Noteworthy had found it). “Honestly, I can’t believe how forgetful some ponies can be…”

8. (Threats of) Violence Solves Everything

The front gate of Canterlot was, by night, guarded by a pair of Luna’s personal soldiers, the Night Guard. At present, those two guards consisted of a pair of pegasus stallions, their coats blackened, the eyes yellow and slit like a dragon’s, their ears tufted and sharp, their wings transformed to resemble those of a bat, and their teeth sharpened. This was not their normal appearance, but the armor they wore, imbued by the magic of Luna herself, transformed them, granting them extra speed, strength, and endurance. The goal was one of intimidation – to be so physically imposing that the mere sight of them would be enough to end any fight before it began, or stop one that was in progress.

But for crimes that took place on the grounds of Canterlot Castle itself, or else involved one of its residents, the Royal Guard of Canterlot did not normally involve themselves in normal municipal policing duties, leaving that in the capable hooves of Canterlot’s normal police force. Of course, they did make exceptions if they saw a crime in progress – they would hardly just stand aside and watch if a pony was in danger.

Such as, for example, a blue unicorn, panting and struggling and in all ways looking exhausted and haggard and at the end of her rope, was seen charging (or, really, trudging, as she seemed too exhausted to run) towards the gates of Canterlot, being followed at a steady, relentless pace by a cream-colored earth pony who’s intentions towards the unicorn could not have been more obvious had she been singing about it.

The two pegasi looked to each other, before one, in silent agreement, stepped forward as the unicorn approached. “Ma’am, are you in need of assistance?” he asked.

The unicorn opened her mouth to answer, but all she could do was suck in breath. “No…fine…just…ha…gimme…second…”

The other Night Guard stepped forward as well, head tilting to the side a little as he regarded the disheveled unicorn. “Miss Lulamoon?” he asked.

Trixie looked to him, glaring for a moment, before deciding that, for once, she didn’t care. “Yeah,” she said, as her horn glowed, sputtered, then glowed again, a cantrip dancing from it as she cast the spell, thankfully a simple one, that would allow her to see past the transformation caused by Luna’s boon and regard the pegasus ponies beneath it and, more importantly, the invisible-to-the-naked-eye nameplates on their unifroms. “Um…officers Moonlight Smiles and Frolicsome Meadowlark. I’d like to go in, please. One guest.”

At the moment, Trixie was too exhausted from running from Bon Bon while magically running on empty to note the vast incongruity between their names and their chosen professions. The two pegasi considered Trixie, and Bon Bon as the earth pony finally stopped in her advance, directly behind Trixie, and continued to glare at her. Lyra was standing right beside her, stilled bedecked in Trixie’s warming cape and invisibility-bestowing hat, clutching her lyre tightly. Unlike Trixie’s earlier invisibility spells, the enchantment she had woven into her hat was rendering the lyre invisible.

The two pegasi Night Guards looked to each other, before looking back to Trixie. “ID, please,” Moonlight Smiles requested.

Trixie froze, as she felt Bon Bon’s eyes boring into her. “Um…” she said. “ID? Come on, officers, you recognize me, I’m Luna’s student…”

“Procedure is procedure,” Frolicsome Meadowlark responded.

“I’ve never needed it before.”

The stoic façade of the two Night Guards broke at that, as each offered thin, but toothy, grins. “That was when you lived here, ma’am,” Moonlight said. “But visitors are required to have some form of ID, as I’m sure you well know.”

Trixie blinked rapidly at that. “Oh, come on!” she exclaimed. “You know who I am!”

“Yes,” Moonlight confirmed. It dawned on Trixie that it was precisely because they knew who she was that they were doing this to her. “Where’s your hat and cape?”

Trixie resisted the urge to look at Lyra. “Occupied,” she said.

“Probably lost them,” Frolicsome said, before looking slightly sympathetic. “I know what that’s like. Lost my helmet recent in a flood.”

Trixie grimaced at that. She had a strong suspicion she knew exactly where this was going, why the guards were giving her a hard time.

“I suppose we could test her, somehow.” Moonlight added, looking to his companion.

“Got something in mind?” Frolicsome asked.

“Not really. Shame she melted the entire ice palace, otherwise we could just – ”

“Oh, ha ha ha,” Trixie interrupted. “Look, can we please just skip the part where you give me a hard time? We all know that you’re going to let me through because if you don’t, I’ll tell Luna!”

The two guards’ expressions did not change as they once again regarded each other. “Sure sounds like Trixie,” Frolicsome noted. “But it’s difficult to tell because there’s still water in my ears.”

“From the ice palace melting? Same here.”

“I think she threatened us a little.”

“I think so too. But I’m pretty sure that the Princess won’t reprimand us for not letting a pony through that didn’t have a proper form of ID. That sound about right?”

“It does. No matter how much we recognized the pony in question, we can’t let personal feelings get in the way of duty, after all.”

“Trixie…” Bon Bon hissed, sliding up next to the unicorn and ‘gently’ putting a hoof over her shoulder. Trixie seized up at the touch. “You said that this wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Ha…” Trixie breathed, looking intently at the two Night Guards, who had turned around and trotted back to their posts. “S-seriously, guys, she’s going to kill me.”

“That would be unfortunate,” Frolicsome noted.

“But funny,” Moonlight added. “However, we would stop her if she tried.”

“Eventually.”

“So don’t worry.”

Trixie glared at the two of them. She shrugged off Bon Bon’s foreleg, stepping forward as she looked between the two guards intently, muscles tensed as though she expected to have to leap into action at any second. “I’m Trixie Lulamoon,” she said. “Representative of the Night Court of Luna to Ponyville. The personal protégé of the Princess Luna herself. Element of Magic. Savior of the entire world from the fires of Corona, the Tyrant Sun. Let. Me. Through!”

There was a pause.

“Sorry,” Moonlight said, shaking his head slightly and tapping it with a hoof. “Still a little waterlogged. Could you repeat that?”

“This is an emergency!”

The two Night Guards looked once more to each other, their grins dropping somewhat. With a long-suffering sigh of the knowledge that they couldn’t just outright ignore that kind of proclamation, they looked back to Trixie. “What kind of emergency?” Frolicsome asked.

Trixie paused at that, biting her lip. She hadn’t meant to exclaim that, but then she was not at her best at the moment. “Personal,” she said. “Not…well, not really for me. A friend of mine. Magical accident. That’s all the detail I can go into.”

The two once more looked at each other. “We’re going to need more detail than that.”

Trixie blinked, looking behind her, at Bon Bon and Lyra. The earth pony still looked like she was on the verge of an equicidal rampage, while the latter was looking on with deep concern and mounting annoyance. “Um,” Trixie stated. “I can tell you that it was brought about by a mistranslated zebra spellbook. And that I need to get access to the Royal Library.”

“Sorry, that doesn't really sound like much of an emergency.” Moonlight stated. “And it must not be too great a problem since you’ve been wasting all this time with us.”

“Why don’t you just run on back to Ponyville and get proper ID. Then we can move forward from there,” Frolicsome finished.

Trixie glanced between them “But – ”

“No.”

“I just – ”

“Rules are rules.”

“If you don’t, I’ll – ”

“Please,” Moonlight said, wings raising a little in threat, “finish that sentence.”

“Discord’s mismatched horns!” Lyra exclaimed, drawing a look of ire from Trixie and Bon Bon both – at least until the two saw that she had taken off Trixie’s hat, rendering her visible. The guards’ reaction was instant, wings – sheathed in sharp blades – spread wide and ducking down into combat postures at the sight of something suddenly becoming visible, followed by whickers of surprise when they saw what had appeared from nothingness.

“Lyra…!” Bon Bon hissed, looking around. Fortunately, the streets of Canterlot were almost entirely empty in front of Canterlot’s gates. What few ponies there were dropped what they were holding and bolted in fright.

Lyra, meanwhile, stomped up to the two guards. “Look. I have had the worst day of my life just now! I’ve been covered in freezing paint, transformed into a big hairless bear, had to deal with Trixie’s insecurities and panicking and Bon Bon’s equicidal side, which by the way,” Lyra turned around to look at Bon Bon, “is a major problem and you’re going to have to get anger management,” she turned back to the two guards, “and all of this was on what was supposed to be a huge career day for me since it was my first solo show but no, I had to spend the whole day panicking instead of practicing and, yeah, the show turned out great, but that was in spite of everything! Right now, all I want to do is get back to normal and go to sleep! So! If you don’t let me and Trixie and Bon Bon through right now so that we can find some way to turn me back into a pony, I swear I am going to put the sharp pointy teeth in my mouth right now to good use! I will – Trixie get off of me!”

Trixie had positioned herself in front of Lyra, front hooves pressed to Lyra’s shoulders as her hind hooves worked to try and push Lyra backwards. “Lyra?” she asked. “Put my hat back on.”

“But – ”

“Now, Lyra.”

The once (and hopefully, future) unicorn mare glared at Trixie before doing so. To Trixie’s eyes, there was a slight blue shimmer across her body, while to everypony else, she would be rendered invisible once more. Once that had been accomplished, she turned back to the guards, who, no longer having Lyra to stare at, now turned their aggressive posturing on Trixie.

“So,” she said. “Magical accident. Angry, invisible bear. Can I go in now, please?”

“Ow,” Lyra’s voice said as the three of them walked through Canterlot Castle, towards the Royal Library. Bon Bon had apparently found her despite her being invisible, and had started hitting her with one hoof. “Ow – ow – Bon Bon, stop it, this is – ow!”

“Stupid – invisible for a reason – ”

“Thank-you, Bon Bon,” Trixie said.

“I’m still mad at you too!”

“It got us in, right?” Lyra demanded as she skipped away from Bon Bon. The earth pony, however, heard her hoof-steps – foot-steps – whatever – on the tiled floor of the castle and continued to chase after her. A earth pony courtier, who had been walking through the halls, stopped and stared at the display “Trixie was failing – ”

“I was not failing – ”

“You were too failing – ”

“Magical accident, invisible naked talking stupid bear,” Trixie informed the courtier as the three of them passed on by, before looking behind her at Lyra and Bon Bon “and this defeats the purpose of turning you invisible as well!” she looked to the courtier. “What’s your name?”

“M…Meadow Song,” he said, raising an eyebrow as he watched Bon Bon chase nothing, and that nothing talked back to her.

“Meadow Song. What is the point of an invisibility spell?”

“Um,” he said. “To…not be seen?”

“Good! Now if you were turned invisible, wouldn’t it also make sense to not talk?”

“I guess – ”

“And if a friend of yours is invisible for a very good reason, shouldn’t you refrain from talking or hitting – ” Trixie began, when she was thwacked upside the head by Lyra. To Meadow Song, it just looked like she stumbled forward, mane tossed around for no reason.

“I’m under a lot of stress!” Lyra exclaimed.

Trixie turned around, glaring at Lyra. “Oh, it is on,” she exclaimed, lunging.

“Don’t you dare put a hoof on my marefriend – ” Bon Bon exclaimed, reaching Trixie first and lunging, her teeth clamping down on Trixie’s tail. The unicorn let out a yelp as her forward speed was suddenly stopped and she landed unceremoniously on the floor. She rolled over in time to avoid Bon Bon’s descending hooves.

“Meadow Song!” Trixie cried. “Help!”

“He ran away,” Lyra noted, pulling Trixie away from another attempted hoof-stomp from Bon Bon, though she began running when Trixie got her hooves under her and charged at her, horn down. “And I’m not stupid! I’m not the one who forgot the spellbook!”

“Yes! Yes you are! You totally are!” Trixie exclaimed as she chased Lyra, the two longer hind legs of the transformed unicorn giving her a slight speed advantage over the shorter, and more importantly exhausted, four legs of Trixie. “I can’t be expected to maintain six illusions on me plus five more on my cape plus weave one into my hat and try to keep you from slitting your frogs in despair and remember the spellbook! All you had to do was practice your special talen – ow! Bon Bon! You’re supposed to be mad at Lyra right now!”

“Maybe, but I can’t see Lyra!” Bon Bon exclaimed, hitting Trixie a few more times for good measure. She was easily keeping pace with Trixie, but couldn’t put much power behind her swings while also running at the same time.

“She’s right in front of my horn! Just give me a moment to gore her, you can follow the blood leaking everywhere then!”

“For the Love of Luna, this is a library!” A fourth voice shouted.

The three mares – well, two mares, and a female of some variety – stopped, and looked around. Somehow, without noticing, they had ended up in the library of Canterlot. Surrounding them on all sides were rows upon rows of bookcases taking up the circular room of the castle, ascending three stories upwards. The library’s walls and shelves were a mixture of blue and red, while its eastern wall simply didn’t exist, instead housing a vast window that overlooked the city of Canterlot. The entire place was lit by expensive glow-gems rather than candles, bathing the room in soft, warm light.

While Canterlot Castle never truly went to sleep, especially seeing as the government of Equestria, the Night Court, convened and operated at night like its ruling Princess, parts of the castle did tend to have ‘off’ hours. The library was one of them; at this time of night, the only occupants, other than Trixie, Lyra, and Bon Bon, were a trio of ponies, all of them unicorns, two stallions and a mare, each of them quite incensed looking. They were all various subdued colors, and all had cutie marks related to books and scrolls. The one who had shouted was a severe-looking stallion, tall and thin, wearing thin glasses and with a short-cropped mane and tail.

“Star’s sake!” the stallion exclaimed. “You are a pair of grown mares gallivanting through the castle like it’s a playground! I and my colleagues are in the middle of vital research into zebras for the Princess, and we will not stand for this interruption! I’m going to have to demand you leave the library, at once, or I will call the guard!”

Trixie looked at Bon Bon, then to Lyra. “Research into zebras?” she asked.

“Yes!” the stallion continued. “It is vital for the security of…in order to secure the safety of…why are you looking at me like that?”

Trixie wasn’t entirely certain how the three of them had done it – it probably helped that Lyra was invisible, and so could hurl things at the three other unicorns to break their concentration while they were casting spells – but somehow, working together, the three of them had managed to overpower and tie up the scholars, using curtains torn down from the large widow to wrap them all up and lie them on their sides with their hooves all tied together. By the end of it, Lyra was panting, Bon Bon was panting, and Trixie felt like she was on the verge of passing out.

“You’re going to die,” Bon Bon stated, starting forward. The mare of the other group let out a panicked yelp at that. Bon Bon’s advance was stopped only when Lyra grabbed a hold of her marefriend’s tail and dug the balls of her strange feet into the floor.

“No,” Lyra ordered. “No. We need them alive.”

“Probably not all of them!”

“I am uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation,” one of the stallions commented.

“Just the conversation?” The other stallion of the group demanded.

“Shut up,” Trixie ordered, sitting down in front of the three of them. “Alright. What are your names?”

“Regal Tome,” answered the first stallion, the one who had spoken originally. He nodded to his comrades. “My companions are Vast Volumes and Glitter Scrolls.”

Trixie looked to the other stallion. “I hope you gave your parents a lot of pain for naming you Vast Volumes,” she said.

“I’m Glitter Scrolls,” he answered, then nodded towards the mare of the group. “She’s Vast Volumes.”

Trixie blinked a few times. “Okay,” she said. “Well, that would lead to a fascinating conversation on any other night. Tonight? I don’t care, and neither does Lyra, and Bon Bon isn’t right in the head so we can’t trust what she thinks anyway.”

“Keep digging, Trixie, keep digging,” Bon Bon insisted.

“I will, thank-you. Now, you said that you were doing research into zebras. Did that, perchance, including translating a certain zebra spellbook for Princess Luna? A spellbook that she intended to give to her student, the Element of Magic, the savior of Equestria, and probably somepony you should properly translate for?”

“Yes,” Regal Tome responded, after taking a moment to realize that Trixie was, in fact, Luna’s student. “Well…it was more of a team effort.”

“Oh yes, Regal, throw us under the stampede…” Vast Volumes requested, rolling her eyes, before looking at Trixie. “He translated the spell descriptions. Glitter was the one who translated the spell ingredients and steps, while I singled out the zebra magic words – they were originally mixed in quite a jumble with each spell – and matched them up with Glitter’s spell steps. Then Glitter matched up the spell descriptions with what Regal translated.”

Trixie looked to Lyra and Bon Bon, both of whom were staring at the three captives in stunned silence and disbelief. “That…” Lyra said. “That…that is the most inefficient, accident-prone system imaginable!”

The three glared at her, or where they thought she was, anyway. “As near as I know,” Glitter Scrolls said, “we three are the only ponies in all of Equestria who are fluent in Zebra.”

“And Princess Luna,” Regal Tome added, looking behind him at the table they had been sitting at, which was covered in books, papers, ink wells, and quills, “Gave us a considerable workload!”

“How would you have dealt with it?” Vast Volumes demanded.

“I’d have split one book into three parts and had each of you translate a third, that’s how!” Lyra demanded. “No wonder the spells are mislabeled! Hey, is there a fourth one of you idiots who deals with punctuation? A fifth one for translating capital letters?”

“Zebra doesn’t use punctuation,” Regal Tome said, eyes half-lidded. “Nor does it distinguish between capital and lower-case letters.”

“Whatever the problem was,” Vast Volumes added, “I doubt it was that bad.”

Lyra took off Trixie’s hat.

The three translators of Zebra to Equestrian screamed.

Then they stopped for breath.

Then they screamed some more.

But Trixie, though it had taken immense effort given how magically exhausted she was, had put a silencing enchantment over the doors of the library – so nopony outside heard them. The blue unicorn, cream earth pony, and naked bear drank in the sounds of their screams of terror like it was a fine wine. “Right,” Trixie said, when the three had finally run their throats ragged. “So. Lyra is a…this thing now…because a group effort towards failure on your part. This entire day has been a lesson in group failure for me. It has not been fun for anypony.”

“Not. At. All,” Lyra insisted.

“Please don’t eat us,” Regal Tome begged.

“We’re going to untie you,” Lyra stated. “You are going to go over to that nice pile of zebra books and find the original copy of the spellbook. Trixie is going to tell you the magic words and you’re going to find out what I turned into, and then find the counter-spell. And I make no promises about not eating one of you because I am getting hungry again.”

Trixie’s horn glowed, and the bonds around the three unicorns loosened. They swiftly extricated themselves from their bonds and dashed over to the library tables, getting to work on finding what the angry naked bear wanted before she put her mouth of sharp, meat-piercing teeth to work on one of them.

9. Papercut

Trixie stared intently at the papers that had been given to her by Regal Tome. Regal Tome alternated between staring intently at the four-page translation – double-checked by Glitter Scrolls and triple-checked by Vast Volumes – and glancing at Lyra, who was standing her full towering height over him, forelegs once more crossed over her barrel, tapping out a rhythm of five quick beats.

“I don’t know what you’re looking for,” Regal Tome said after a moment. “It’s not like you can read Zebra to know whether or not I or…my…”

The glare that Trixie affixed Regal Tome with shut him up. Her horn glowed, and she levitated a quill, inkwell, and sheet of paper over to her, then began scribbling down some instructions before turning to Bon Bon, who was busy staring down Glitter Scrolls and Vast Volumes. The latter had made the mistake of threatening to bring legal action against the three of them for assaulting them.

Bon Bon had started laughing at that, though she had stopped fairly quickly and without trying to harm anypony, at least. To tell the truth, it disturbed Trixie to no end. Note to self, she thought, do not ever stress out Bon Bon, ever again. Also, get her help.

“Alright,” Trixie said, trotting over to Bon Bon with the translated spell. She also telekinetically grabbed a quill, inkwell, and sheet of paper, and started transcribing the ingredients. When she was finished, the handed them over to the earth pony. “Two flights down you’ll find a basement with a pony named Hex Node; he’s the Royal Apothecary and is in charge of the castle’s stock of magical reagents. Everything we need to cast the counter-spell should be there.”

Bon Bon nodded, taking the sheet of paper into her hooves and looking over the ingredients. “And he’ll just let me have them?”

“He’ll just be happy that a mare is in the same room as him.” Trixie grimaced. “Uh…don’t mention me. If he even asks, just say that one these idiots needed the reagents.” She waved a hoof at the three so-called translators.

Bon Bon nodded, though she couldn’t help but give Trixie a sidelong glance as she did. “Somepony else you brought an ice palace down on top of?”

“That was you?” Vast Volumes demanded.

Trixie ignored her. “No,” she told Bon Bon. “He…look, it doesn’t matter. Just get moving, sooner or later somepony might come in here and then see Lyra and then there’ll be more craziness.”

Bon Bon rolled up the paper, taking it into her mouth before setting off. Once she was gone, she turned back to Lyra. “Nearly there,” she promised. “Provided these idiots did everything right.”

“Princess Luna will be hearing of this assault,” Glitter Scrolls said, in no uncertain terms. “I don’t care if you’re her student. She won’t stand for assault happening within her own castle!”

“How about criminally negligent translating?” Trixie asked. “More than a few of those spells are curses, you know. What if I had cast one on Lyra and she had ended up seriously injured or dead because of you three?”

“Curses aren’t real,” Vast Volumes said, turning up her nose at the thought. “They’re just ignorant earth pony misconceptions about how magic works.”

Lyra looked like she was about to kick her, not the least of which due to Vast Volume's tone of voice conveying everything the pony thought about earth ponies - which Bon Bon happened to be. “Magical effects that cause lingering pain or discomfort or otherwise produce unwanted effects for the recipient,” Lyra stated, leaning forward. Vast Volumes shied away. “Those exist and might as well be curses.”

“But they’re not somehow different from other spells,” Regal Tome ventured, before looking back at Trixie. “And it doesn’t matter. Princess Luna will hear about this. You’ll be banished!”

Trixie was impressed by Regal Tome’s sense of self-importance. Clearly there was nothing wrong with his self-esteem. “Nah, I don’t think so,” she noted. “More like chewed out. I’ve been chewed out before. And what do you think she’ll do to you for turning Lyra into…that?” She leaned forward. “Because that’s not my fault. Right, Lyra?”

“Casting the wrong spell?” Lyra asked. “No.”

Trixie smiled a little at that, grateful for the reassurance, before looking back to Regal Tome, Vast Volumes, and Glitter Scrolls. The three were looking at Lyra, or rather looking through her, almost as though they could see how incensed Luna would be with them. “Perhaps,” Glitter Scrolls ventured, “maybe…we won’t say anything? And you won’t either? Call things even?”

Lyra blinked at that, looking to Trixie, who had a hoof to her mouth, before the unicorn trotted away, towards the window looking out over the city of Canterlot, motioning for Lyra to join her. She did, glaring at Trixie. “You can’t be seriously considering that,” she said in a low voice. “Those three shouldn’t be allowed to look at Zebra books, never mind translate them!”

Trixie snorted. “Oh no, I agree,” she whispered back, “Just let them think we agreed to it, though. Then when they try to bring up us attacking them, Luna will think they’re just exaggerating to try and cover their flanks, which will make them look worse. And will help get me off the hook, at least a little.”

Lyra considered. “That’s…that’s evil.”

“Yes.”

“I like it.”

Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Really?” she asked. “I thought you’d have some kind of problem with it.”

“Not really. Not after the day I’ve had.”

The two turned back to the unicorn ‘scholars.’ “Okay,” Trixie acquiesced. “Once Lyra’s a pony again, we’ll be even. A unicorn pony,” she quickly added, as she trotted back over to the table where she’d left the spell, and started memorizing its magic words the old-fashioned way, being too tired to even consider casting her photographic memory spell. She idly wondered, as she did, what this spell had been mislabeled as in the original spellbook.

Which reminded her. “Oh, and one more thing,” she said, looking up from her work. “I also want a translated copy of a spell called the truth is a scourge…and one that will turn a rooster into a hen.”

The three ‘scholars’ stared at her.

“Don’t ask, just do,” she insisted.

Bon Bon stared at Trixie as she returned an hour later, having acquired a small saddlebag and all the ingredients that her list had specified. She didn’t look equicidal, she didn’t look angry, she looked…bemused. Kind of the same look she had affixed Trixie with earlier in the day, back when Lyra had found out that Trixie was –

“Oh no,” Trixie intoned.

“I,” Bon Bon said as she removed her saddlebag, looking at, “had a chat with Hex Node. He’s a pleasant little stallion, isn’t he?”

“No,” Trixie stated firmly.

“Now I didn’t say that you were in the castle,” Bon Bon pressed on, “but I did mention Ponyville, and wouldn’t you know it, he asked after you, Trixie!”

“No,” Trixie said again.

Lyra, on the other hoof, leaned forward, one brow raised. “Really?” she asked. “That sounds…that sounds downright friendly of him, Trixie.”

Bon Bon pressed on, tapping her front hooves together as she looked back to Trixie. “And you will never guess how he knows Trixie! Did you know that Trixie’s been to the Grand Galloping Gala? Five times?”

“No, no, no, no – ”

“Yeah, she mentioned it,” Lyra stated, before her eyes widened. “Oh, I think I see where this is going.”

Bon Bon nodded enthusiastically. “And the first time she was convinced that she couldn’t go alone, that she had to have a date, and at the time Hex Node was the apprentice apothecary and even though he knew that it was only because she couldn’t ask somepony named Edle Hjerte because he wasn’t around – who is Edle Hjerte, by the way? He sound quite foreign – ”

“No no no no no shut up shut up – ”

“So Trixie asked Hex Node!” Bon Bon finished, before looking to Trixie. “He seemed quite enamored of you, Trixie.”

Trixie was bright red, though whether form embarrassment or anger, neither Lyra nor Bon Bon could tell. “And,” she added through gritted teeth, “he smelled bad, his suit was tacky beyond all belief, and he…he clearly wanted to…expected to…with me…gah! I ditched him as fast as I could and just hid out in the royal garden the rest of the night.”

Bon Bon put a hoof to her mouth, hiding her chortle. “Oh, come on, now,” Bon Bon said. “He doesn’t seem so bad! And I’m sure the smell is just from all the regents he has to deal with every day.” She wrinkled her nose. “Though…I admit it was distinctive.”

Trixie shuddered. “It was a mistake, I’ve gone alone to the Gala every year since then.” She looked between Lyra and Bon Bon as she walked up to the shucked saddleback and opened it, pulling out the various regents and ingredients that Bon Bon had acquired. “Can we please not discuss it and instead turn Lyra back into a pony now? Maybe?”

“If we have to…” Lyra said with a false sigh, joining Trixie as the two of them removed and inspected over each ingredient. Lyra paused a moment as she did, looking at her paws and flexing the claws on them a few times. “You know,” she said, picking up the list of ingredients and comparing it to what was on-hoof, double checking it, “I…I think I’m actually almost used to these things now that I’ve figured them out. I think I was actually better with my lyre than I was with my hooves once I got the hang of – ow!”

Lyra dropped the paper from her paw, staring at one finger, the longest one on the right hand. There was a thin line on it now, seeping a tiny amount of red blood. It was nothing major, but… “ow, ow, ow, why does this hurt so much?” She stuck her finger in her mouth, sucking on the wound.

Trixie raised a brow, looking at the dropped list. “Did…did you cut yourself…with paper?”

“Yes! And it hurts like a…ow! Okay, forget it. I. Hate. Hands!”

Once more, Lyra was covered, head to toe but for her mane, in paint, this time white rather than black. She stood in the center of a magic seal, a triangle of salt inside a square of coal dust inside a pentagon of sand inside a circle of earth. Surrounding the circle at ten points were ten tall candles made from beeswax, each of them lit. Quartz stones sat at the foot of each candle, while Trixie used a bowl filled with purified water to splash Lyra as she circled her three times.

Lyra, having recovered from her paper-cut, had the two longest fingers on each of her hands crossed – she didn’t know why – as she shifted and shivered uncomfortably in the circle, hoping against hope that this nightmare would soon be over. She glanced at Bon Bon, who was standing well away from Trixie, her marefriend’s eyes focused on her own. She offered a thin-lipped, hopeful smile, as did Bon Bon. The ‘scholars’ were also watching, apparently eager to see zebra magic at work.

At length, Trixie finished her circling of Lyra. She had dispelled the enchantment in her cape and hat, and now wore both again. She glanced at Lyra, grimaced for a moment, then offered a weak smile of her own. “Okay,” she said, closing her eyes and rearing up onto her hind legs, while she waved her forelegs around in front of her as the spell instructed her to do.

“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Sio ulimwengu wa eneo la ajabu;
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Kila mahali kwenda, uso kenyuliwa;
“Kukimbia na kuruka; kwa furaha kuanguka
“Kuangalia asubuhi kufunua –
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Hatma ya baadaye inasemaje!”

The candles flared, the flames on them shooting up to be several feet tall, though they let out no additional heat, as the rest of the room outside of the magic circle that Lyra was in seemed to visibly darken. The once-and-future unicorn hunkered down onto one knee at the sight, looking worriedly to Trixie. She, for her part, had her eyes closed as she wove the spell. Behind her, however, Lyra and the three scholars looked around in surprise – the darkening room, it seemed, wasn’t simply something that she was perceiving solely because she was at the epicenter of this zebra spell.

“Hakuna ishara ya matatizo mbele
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo;
“Ili wote siku yako kuwa mkali!
“Ili wote siku yako kuwa mkali!”

Inside the magic seal, the coal dust began to pick itself up off of the ground and swirl around Lyra. She grimaced as it did, feeling sweat on her body as it drifted dangerously close to the now much larger candle flames, though after a moment it began contracting, pressing itself to her body, covering her in black spots. The salt was next, wrapping around her body in spirals and complex patterns. Lastly, the simple earth crept along the floor, crawling up her body in another round of complex patterning.

“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Je, ni wakati sisi ilianza nyumbani!
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Mwenye ndoto jinsi mbali tunatarajia kwenda!
“Ndege ni wito; jioni ni kuanguka
“Zaidi ya meadow na shamba
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Wakati mimi kuona tena!”

The flames of the candles suddenly died, and the normal light returned to the room. Lyra opened her eyes, and saw…that she still had a ridiculously small nose. She still had paws. She still had those ridiculously tiny fingers – toes – on her hoof-less feet.

“Oh come on – ” she began, when the quartz crystals suddenly all began to flash bright, painful light – and then pick themselves up and collide with her from all sides. She was certain the speed should have been enough to shatter bone, or she would have been certain, anyway, had one of the quartz crystals not collided with the center of her forehead and plunged her into unconsciousness.

Trixie opened her eyes just in time to watch, just like she had the first time at the start of this mess. Lyra’s limp form was lifted up off of the ground, surrounded by eldritch, sickeningly green light. Bon Bon came rushing forward, but Trixie held out a hoof to stop her. “You might not want to look,” she said softly. Bon Bon glanced at her for a moment, before locking her eyes firmly onto Lyra. After a moment, Trixie did likewise.

Lyra convulsed. Wet, sickening snaps came from throughout her body as her bones shifted and twisted. It started at her hind legs – her toes curling in on themselves and fusing together even as the nails on them grew and shifted together as well, blackening as they did so and became proper hooves once more. The knuckles on the toes shifted and moved as well, becoming her pasterns and fetlocks, while the tiny ankles of her feet lengthened, becoming proper hocks. Her knees shifted and twisted, travelling further up her leg, even as her hip’s edges seemed to snap and fold, collapsing and becoming not nearly as comparatively wide as her body shifted to accommodate what would, once more, be a quadrupedal rather than a bipedal form.

The transformation continued up her barrel and back. From the base of her spine, a tiny tail emerged, which was swiftly covered in sprouting white and seafoam-green hair. The fleshy lumps on her barrel were re-absorbed back into her abdomen – her teats presumably appearing back in their proper place, though neither Trixie nor Bon Bon checked at the moment, having other things on their minds – while her shoulders did the same twist as her hips had, collapsing forward and shifting. The ripples of the alteration continued down her forelegs, in many ways duplicating the twisting and lengthening of her hind legs. Her hands disappeared last, becoming normal feet and hooves once again.

Lyra’s neck, meanwhile, had lengthened, along with her face, her eyes growing in size, her ears travelling up her skull and lengthening. Her nose became her muzzle, her prominent chin melded more cleanly into her lower jaw, and bursting from her forehead came her horn. Her mane didn’t change as much, but it did sprout additional growth down the back of her neck, nearly to her withers. Even as this occurred, her coat began to re-appear, mint green and short, but hiding her paling flesh; and she shrank, twisting in place as she did, until she had once more resumed her normal size. The last thing to appear was her cutie mark, appearing much like it did on a foal who had just discovered their special talent – in a flash of light and a glowing shape that swiftly realized itself as a golden lyre.

The eldritch glow surrounding Lyra disappeared, and she collapsed to the floor on her side, curled up into a ball. Bon Bon was at her side in and instant, Trixie nearly as fast. “It took her a few minutes to wake up last – ” Trixie began.

Bon Bon didn’t hear her, as she cradled her marefriend’s head, her proper, pony head at last, in her hooves, leaning down and nuzzling her. “Lyra?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Lyra? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

“She’s breathing fine,” Trixie said, looking Lyra over, cautiously running her own hoof across Lyra’s back. “Coat feels right, cutie mark’s good, tail is…tail-y…hooves look right, horn…” she used two hooves to measure Lyra’s horn, then compare it to her own. “Short.”

“Mmph,” Lyra mumbled, eyes fluttering open. “Not short…not…taller than you anyway…”

“Lyra!” Bon Bon exclaimed, pulling her marefiend up into a tight hug. Lyra returned it eagerly, forelegs hooked around Bon Bon’s shoulders and withers, head laid across each other’s necks – a proper hug, unlike what she’d been able to manage on the train earlier. It didn’t last long, of course, as the two pulled back from each other, but only so that Lyra’s lips could find and sink into Bon Bon’s own.

Eventually, their kiss ended, and Lyra pulled away, waving her hooves in front of her face. “Ha,” she stated. “Ha! Hahaha! Hooves! Let’s see paper cut these! And – and – ” she looked up, at her horn, and squinted slightly. It glowed gold, and she lifted Bon Bon into the air with a yelp. “Ha! And my magic’s back on! No more fumbling with honey jars, I don’t know how you do it, sweetie, but me, I could not live without this!”

She levitated Bon Bon in front of her and drew her marefriend into another kiss, setting her down slowly as she did so. Bon Bon returned it eagerly, breaking it off only when she noticed Trixie was sitting behind Lyra, looking dejected. “Come here,” she said, trotting up to Trixie.

Trixie’s eyes widened as her horn glowed defensively, though weakly given how magically exhausted she still was. “N-no, wait, what did I do now, she’s back to normal and – !” Trixie was cut off when Bon Bon embraced Trixie, tightly, but not so tight as to suggest malevolent intent. After a few moments, Trixie let out a long sigh of relief, returning the hug, as well as Lyra’s when the other mare joined in.

“I’m sorry, Trixie,” she said. “I…I was just so worried for Lyra, seeing her like…like that…I don’t know what came over me.” She looked Trixie in the eye. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

Trixie grimaced. “Not all of it,” she admitted.

Bon Bon’s eyes widened. “Who are you, and what have you done with Trixie Lulamoon?”

Trixie just shook her mane, then turned to Lyra. “I got you into this mess. I shouldn’t of asked you to do the spell today. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Lyra said, though after a moment she considered the day she’d just had. “Well…do be, but not too sorry…I mean, I agreed to the spell in the first place. So be a little sorry.” Trixie nodded. Lyra hugged her again, and she returned it fully. “Besides,” Lyra considered. “You may have…sort of…gotten me into this mess, but you’re also the pony who got me out of it.”

“We helped!” Vast Volumes exclaimed.

Lyra blinked, remembering at last that the 'scholars' were there, as she looked to them. The three were standing awkwardly off to the side, Glitter Scrolls looking quite pleased that he’d gotten to see two mares making out, while Regal Tome looked a bit green in the face, probably from the transformation that he’d witnessed. Vast Volumes, meanwhile, seemed to be thinking ahead, to the possible tongue-lashing that they could receive from Luna later if they weren’t careful.

Well, that they would be receiving anyway, but neither of them had to know that at the moment. “Whatever,” Lyra declared, standing on her own four hooves again – stars above it felt good to be a quadruped again – and turning around, to the library’s exit. “Come on, Trixie, you said something about us probably being able to stay in your old room for the night…”

Trixie nodded, as the three mares made their way from the library. “You two can even have my bed,” she promised, though she froze after she did. “Um! But there are terms and conditions, I know you two are probably eager to, er, break in Lyra’s restored body, b-but I’d really rather…er…that is, maybe I’ll look into getting you two your own room.”

Lyra and Bon Bon laughed at that, even as Trixie shuffled around a little before following them. “With soundproofing,” she added.

10. One Week Later [Epilogue]

Dear Trixie,

I have been able to recover the copied spellbook that I gave you originally; it was sitting in our rail station’s lost and found, thankfully intact. Having had a chance to read it, I can see now what, precisely, you meant by poor translations and mislabeling. I am fluent in Zebra, but I admit to having been in something of a rush to get underway to Hauptstadt der Greifen when I sent it along to you, and so I did not have time to do any but the most cursory of reviews.

Rest assured that Regal Tome, Vast Volumes, and Glitter Scrolls will not soon be working in the royal library, or indeed in Canterlot, again, though on that note I believe that we must have a discussion in the near future concerning the proper response to dealing with one’s problems, regardless of one’s emotional commitment to them –

“I think that our response was entirely proper,” Trixie said.

“Hang on, let me finish…” Lyra insisted.

– however, I find myself incapable of becoming truly angry with you at the moment, given the personal appeal and testimony I have received from Miss Heartstrings concerning your conduct and efforts to see her show through, no matter the cost to yourself. If somepony had described this situation to me as soon as three months ago, I would have not believed them. Your decision to remain in Ponyville was clearly for the best, and I believe you are becoming a better pony because of it.

Now, as to Miss Heartstrings’ inquiries as to what she turned into. The zebra word, binadamu, defies translation into Equestrian – much as how we would have a difficult time properly translating ‘bear’ into their tongue beyond simply describing the creature. Based on your description and rough sketch, however, I would posit that Miss Heartstrings was transformed not into a bear as she believed –

“I didn’t think I was a bear, I just figured I might as well be a bear as long as we didn’t have anything else to call me,” Lyra objected.

“Bears have tails, and fur, and muzzles,” Trixie pointed out. “And are taller.”

“Not all of them.

“Most of them.”

– but rather a simian, specifically some form of hominan, although what specific species, I am uncertain based on your description. Unfortunately I can’t say much more than that – they were never very common even in Zebrica, and to be completely honest I had thought them to have died out some time ago. Evidently the zebras retain some knowledge of their existence, however – perhaps there are pockets of the species yet existent in the Zebrica? Certainly there are cryptozoologists who will be delighted to hear that news and will be eager to journey there, provided that relations with the zebra nations can be normalized.

In any event, Trixie, I think I will leave the examination of zebra magic in different hooves. After your experience last week, I think you have earned a reprieve.

Your Princess and Teacher,

– Luna

“Hominan,” Lyra said, wrapping her tongue around the word. “Hominan. Weird.”

“From what Luna wrote, I think it’s just describing the creatures in general, but then there are specific sub-groups,” Trixie said. “Like with ponies, or deer.”

It had been a week since Lyra’s Worst Day Ever, as it was now officially titled in her mind, even if objectively she knew that there was at least one day in her life that was worse: the most recent Longest Night, when Corona had returned and kidnapped, among other ponies, Bon Bon. That day was kind of just terrible for the whole world, though, whereas a week ago had been specifically bad for her above everypony else.

The two of them were sitting in Trixie’s kitchen; or rather, Lyra was sitting, while Trixie was arranging a magic circle in the floor, albeit one much smaller than the ones she had constructed for Lyra. Sitting in the center of the magic circle was a rooster – the former hen of Fluttershy’s that Trixie had stolen, specifically. It was in a magical slumber once again. Fluttershy had raised no objections to the rooster’s theft, at least none that Trixie had heard from either Ditzy Doo or Rainbow Dash (the latter, most certainly, would have broken through Trixie’s once-again-repaired front window if she had known what Trixie had done), but after spending a week with the thing before considering herself brave enough to try another zebra spell, she was more than eager to get rid of the violent, smelly, ravenous bird. She simply supposed that it would only be proper to return him (soon to be her) in the same state and gender that she had acquired the once and future hen in.

“So,” Trixie asked, as she finished setting up the magic circle and looked to Lyra. “Have you been reaping the rewards of last week? Does the Majestic and Lovely Lyra Heartstrings have ponies knocking down her door offering her jobs?”

“No,” Lyra said, “but just plain Lyra has a few shows scheduled.”

Trixie grimaced. “‘Just plain Lyra.’ Really? Where’s the stage presence? The memorability? The pomp?”

Lyra frowned. “My music is supposed to be able to speak for itself.”

“Sure. It’s great. Really, it is. But a little showmareship never hurt anypony. Play yourself up! Your music is basically a product that you’re trying to sell, and as any salespony will tell you, you need to advertise it well!”

Lyra frowned as she tried to piece through what she’d just heard. “So…” she said, “I should…dress like you.”

“Non!” Trixie objected, rearing up on her hind legs and throwing her front legs wide. “You should dress like the Majestic and Lovely Lyra Heartstrings!” Her horn glowed, and a few small, quiet illusory fireworks were set off.

Lyra raised an eyebrow. “Yeah…but I’m not doing this, I didn’t decide to become a musician, for the money.”

Trixie dropped to all four legs again, rolling her eyes as she turned back to the rooster. “Tell me about it…I can’t believe you’re not getting paid for that show…”

Lyra opened her mouth to argue the point, but then thought better of it. Trixie just seemed incapable of wrapping her mind around the idea that Lyra made plenty of money – actually she was fairly certain that by the end of the year, she’d have made more money from shows and concerts and even just informal gigs, then Trixie made from her stipend as a Representative of the Night Court. For some reason, though, she felt it would probably be a good idea to just bite the bit and not tell Trixie that, and instead let Trixie continue under her delusion that Lyra was in need of financial assistance, or at least marketing assistance.

“Okay,” Trixie said. “Now then, watch in awe as I turn this rooster back into a hen! See, that’s how you’re supposed to…” Trixie turned around to look at Lyra, but then noticed that Lyra wasn’t behind her anymore. Instead, Lyra was outside, in Trixie’s back garden, looking in but having put the glass-and-wooden door between herself and the zebra spell.

“Carry on,” Lyra insisted from the other side of the door.

Trixie sighed. This was going to put a damper on her plans to have Lyra help her with her magic show for the Eventime…

BONUS - Helping...Wings? [Non-Canon]

Author's Note
This is my entry into the Lunaverse's Alicorn writing contest. Unfortunately, due to it being a "what if" story that launches directly off from the middle of chapter 2 of "Helping...Hands?", the story failed to pass moderation to be published on its own. This is fair - it can't really stand on its own and so it shouldn't.

So, instead, I'll be posting it here, as a bonus chapter of this story. It's, obviously, not canon.

Enjoy! Hopefully.

Chapter 2 is partially reprinted below, up until Lyra transforms.

“It’s not a terrible look,” Trixie said with a wry grin, grabbing a mirror from her kitchen’s counter and showing Lyra herself. “Very…bold, anyway.”

Lyra stared at Trixie. Hard. The clock on the wall read 11:57

“Nini ana miguu nne asubuhi,
“Miguu miwili katika mchana,
“Na tatu miguu jioni,
“Wewe!”

“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Kutembea kwa miguu miwili!
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Kushikilia kwa mikono miwili!”

“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Ngozi yako ni wazi!
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Msimamo wako ni mrefu!”

“Wewe ni binadamu!
“Wewe ni binadamu!
“Wewe ni binadamu!”

Hearing was the first thing to return, as Lyra slowly opened her eyes, and found herself looking at Trixie. Her fellow unicorn was frowning, glancing over her book, then back to Lyra, her horn glowing.

“That’s not right…” Trixie mumbled.

Lyra blinked, as she slowly climbed onto her hooves. “What?” she asked, looking down. Her hooves were the same, her coat the same mint-green it was supposed to be –

“Oh, right,” she said, touching a hoof to her snout, then feeling at her horn. She wasn’t supposed to be green, she was supposed to be a black-and-white striped zebra. “All that magic, and I’m still a unicorn?”

Trixie glanced back to Lyra. “Not exactly,” she said, pointing behind Lyra.

Lyra blinked a few times, suddenly freezing in place. What was she going to find when she looked back there? Was she going to find her hindquarters transformed? A fish tail? Tentacles? Was her cutie mark going to be missing? Would that means she had no special talent? Slowly, achingly, Lyra looked behind her…

…and saw, in addition to her perfectly normal hindquarters and cutie mark, a brand new set of mint-green, feathery wings.

Lyra frowned – and her wings moved of their own accord, drooping a little. This startled her – and her wings responded emotively like that of any pegasus, flaring up. The sudden movement startled her more, and her wings started beating of her own accord, taking her up, her wings apparently unaware of the fact that she was in a kitchen with a rather low ceiling.

Smack. Thud.

“Ow,” Lyra said, as she picked herself up off of the ground.

Trixie observed her for a few moments, then looked back to her book. “See, this is why I hate casting from a book,” she said. “I don’t know, I said the magic words right, I’m pretty sure…all the ingredients are right…” She looked to Lyra. “By the way? Those things didn’t magically appear from nowhere, they grew out of you, and they didn’t have feathers at first. It was gross.”

Lyra didn’t pay Trixie any mind as she extended and retracted her wings a few times, stretching them, examining the feathers and the way they moved and bended. It wasn’t everyday that somepony got a new set of appendages, after all. The sensation was…strange, especially given how easily it came to her…moving her wings was as simple as moving her legs or neck. “This is actually pretty cool,” she said, and she set her horn aglow as she cast one of the simplest cantrips, a spell that let a unicorn see magic. “Hang on, I wonder what their magic looks li – aaargh!”

Lyra recoiled, wings beating, as her eyes were suddenly assaulted by bright, golden light, emanating not just from her wings, but her. She beat her wings in panic a few times, taking to the air, slamming into a wall, before finally thinking to dismiss her magic sight cantrip.

Trixie was at Lyra’s side in an instant, leaning over her fallen friend. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” she asked, putting a hoof on Lyra’s withers.

“Yeah, I’m fine, just…ow! Don’t look at my aura right now, it’s…it’s bright. Ow.”

Trixie frowned. “Hang on,” she said, stepping back from Lyra and setting her horn to glow. “I’m used to seeing really powerful auras, Princess Luna taught me how to basically put some magic sunglasses on…”

Trixie’s eyes flashed blue, as she looked at Lyra for a moment. Her frown deepened. “That’s…odd.”

“What?”

“Well, first, those wings aren’t magical. They’re actually a part of you now. I…think they’re permanent. Well, Princess Luna might be able to get rid of them…or we could grab a saw and some laudanum. Otherwise they’re not coming off.”

Lyra considered, looking to her wings, stretching and unstretching them a few times. She’d had them for five minutes and already they’d made her smack into a wall twice, but that was because she wasn’t used to them yet. All things considered, there were worse things to be trapped as than a winged unicorn – she could have been turned into some kind of naked bear or something. “Well, if they start to be a problem, we’ll go to Luna,” she said, standing up and stretching her wings. “But…I kinda’ like them.” She looked to Trixie. “Was there something else?”

“Yeah. Um…have you always been this bright?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, like I said, the wings are actually a part of you…which means that they shouldn’t be giving off any real magical aura in and of themselves. So what I’m looking at is you right now…your basic magical potential. It's huge.”

Lyra considered the vast, golden light that had nearly blinded her when she’d looked at herself. “That’s…no, that’s not normal,” she said. “I think my teachers at the Academy said that I had a little more magic than was typical, but not much…”

Trixie frowned, and opened her mouth to say something, when there was a midnight-blue flash in the room. Both mares yelped in terror – Lyra’s wings again beating of their own accord – when suddenly the two found themselves no longer in Trixie’s home. Instead, they were floating in the vast reaches of the cosmos…there were stars everywhere, of every brightness and hue. Above them floated the crystalline surface of the moon, bright and full, but otherwise, there was nothing but them and the endless expanse of space.

“I’m going to admit, Trixie,” a familiar voice said, emanating from the moon, “that this has come far sooner than I thought it would…but that does not make it any less of a momentous occasion.”

“Princess Luna?” Trixie and Lyra both asked at the same time.

The two unicorns got the distinct sense that the moon frowned. “Miss Heartstrings?” Luna asked.

Lyra looked to the moon – she supposed that this was where the voice was coming from, and so was probably the right thing to look at. She bowed as best she could, floating in zero gravity as she was. “Um…yes?” she asked.

“Princess, what’s going on?” Trixie asked.

The sense that the moon was frowning deepened. It flashed, and Luna herself was suddenly before them, standing tall and regal despite the lack of gravity, as she looked first at Trixie, then Lyra. She seemed confused.

“Miss Heartstrings…why are you an alicorn?”

Lyra blinked at the question. “I’m…uh…not?”

“Your wings would seem to suggest otherwise.”

Trixie raised a hoof. “That’d be me,” she said. “That zebra spellbook you sent to me…I think a spell or two in it is mislabeled. It gave Lyra wings. I think they’re permanent, but Lyra seems to like them…”

Luna considered Trixie for a moment, then looked back to Lyra, her frown and look of confusion ever growing. “No,” she said at length. “Though I can see the confusion, Trixie, but no, that’s not what happened…”

Luna sat down, heedless of zero gravity. Trixie and Lyra decided to do likewise as Luna looked between the two of them. “Alright, Trixie,” Luna said, “I’m afraid I have a confession to make…I did not merely take you on as my apprentice all those years ago simply because I saw potential in your special talent to do good for Equestria – although that was a large part of my motivation, and I want to make it clear that nothing has changed between us. But, in addition to my hope that you might become a force for good in Equestria, I also saw a…a spark, inside of you.”

“A spark?” Trixie asked.

“More like a seed, actually,” Luna said, “a seed that, if properly nurtured and tended to, would one day blossom. Within you, I saw a nascent godling – the possibility that you could become an alicorn, like myself.”

Trixie blinked. “What?” she asked, then looked to Lyra. Her eyes widened. “What? Oh...oh no, I think I see where this is going…”

Luna grimaced, looking to Lyra. “I don’t know how…” she said, “but I think that…somehow, the zebra magic ritual moved that seed from Trixie, into you, Miss Heartstrings. And then it somehow sprouted, and…well, now you are an alicorn.”

“Give it back!” Trixie exclaimed, standing in the zero gravity. “I wanna be an alicorn!”

Lyra blinked, looking to Trixie, then to herself. “Um, okay…” she said, standing. “I…don’t really want to be an alicorn, your Majesty. Besides, this was Trixie’s destiny…”

Luna tapped her front hooves together. “See, the thing is,” she said, looking embarrassed, “I wasn’t even aware that the seed could be moved…and, now that it has, and now that you are an alicorn, Miss Heartstrings…I doubt very much that it could be moved again.”

Trixie glared at Lyra, while Lyra looked to Trixie, and shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t know!” she exclaimed to Trixie. “I’m sorry…”

Trixie held her glare for a moment more, before wilting. “I…okay,” she moaned. “Fine…you didn’t know…Princess, I guess you didn’t know…it’s just…just…I didn’t even know about this plan of yours – ”

“I felt a long-term effort at molding you into a better pony was a wiser course of action than simply letting you know from the beginning,” Luna said, almost apologetically.

Trixie threw her head back as she wailed. “I wanted to be a god!”

Trixie stomped in place and turned in circles, muttering and ranting to herself, as Luna stood and trotted over to Lyra, heedless of the lack of a ground to trot on. “Give her time,” the Princess said. “I am certain that she will come to accept this.”

“Her?” Lyra asked. “What about me? I don’t want to be an alicorn! I don’t want to have to move the moon and the stars around!”

“Well, they’re mine, so you won’t have to,” Luna said. There was a slight pause as she reached out a hoof, poking Lyra as her face took on an almost petulant, childish look. “Seriously, though. Mine. I’ll let you move the sun on occasion, though, if you want, but the moon and stars are mine.”

Lyra blinked. In an instant, Luna’s serene, regal look was back. “I tend to the heavens in any event,” Luna said. “I’m not certain what your responsibility will be, though I suspect strongly that it will relate to your special talent.”

“But I don’t want responsibility! That’s why I’m a musician!”

Luna frowned. “That’s not stereotypical at all…” she muttered. “Miss Heartstrings, I understand that this is a very big, unexpected change. I don’t expect you to give up everything immediately…in fact, I think that these things will simply happen naturally. That’s what happened with Princess Cadenza in Cavallia.” She bowed her head. “Simply live your life as you might otherwise. Nothing has changed yet.”

“Except that I can banish people to the stars if they annoy me…”

“Mmn, don’t do that, it’s taken me forty millennia to get the night sky just so.” Luna inclined her head. “If you need to talk with me about anything, simply look to the sky and speak. I’ll hear, and I’ll be around to run damage control if you do anything that you shouldn’t like release the Smooze or Tirek or Lavan or Grogar or Arabus.”

“What about Catrina?”

“What about Catrina?”

Luna returned Trixie and Lyra to the earth, specifically, just outside of Trixie’s home. Trixie eyed Lyra for some time after she did. “Your horn is still short,” she insisted.

Lyra looked up at her horn. It wasn’t short, she refused to believe it was short…but Trixie was in a mood right now, and Lyra supposed she could understand it. It couldn’t have been easy to deal with, learning in less than a minute that you were going to be a god, but then accidentally transferred that potential to one of your best friends. “Yeah, there’s that,” Lyra conceded. “I’m sorry, Trixie.”

Trixie sighed. “It’s alright,” she admitted after several long moments. “I’m…happy for you, I guess. And also insanely jealous. Insanely, insanely...insanely jealous. But…I guess I can’t miss what I never knew I had. Maybe.”

Lyra nodded. After a moment, she leaned in, giving Trixie a friendly nuzzle. “Still friends?” she asked.

“Yeah…” Trixie confirmed, returning the nuzzle. “Still friends.”

Several months later…

Lyra dodged yet another blast of the Alicorn Reclamation Crystal that Trixie had constructed and enchanted over the past several months. “This is not how friends treat other friends, Trixie!” she cried out.

“It is when friends steal stuff from their friends!” Trixie cried out, as she chased after Lyra on her magic carpet. “I want to be an alicorn…!”