Of Maids and Mistresses

Twilight ran out into the sunniest day she had ever seen, a plethora of colourful flowers assaulting her senses with their beauty and magnificent fragrance as she rushed towards the top of the hill. Despite nature’s best attempts, Twilight only had eyes for one thing: on the top of the hill Trixie was waiting for her, smiling and waving as she urged her to make haste.

As soon as she reached the top of the hill, she launched herself at Trixie, swinging her front legs around the mare as Trixie did her best to catch her. They fell down upon the soft grass together, and started rolling down the hill in a fit of giggles and laughter. They finally came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, lying next to each other and staring into one another’s eyes. Their bodies inched closer and closer together, until both their legs and tongues were entangled in a display of the highest love and passion, and soon Twilight lost track of the passing of time.

An eternity later--yet at the same time but a second--they finally broke off their kiss, panting softly, as both of them drowned in the other’s eyes.

“I love you,” Twilight whispered breathlessly. “Please, never leave... stay with me.”

The blue unicorn smiled. “Trixie loves you too... and of course she will stay with you, forever...”

Yet despite those comforting words, the world around Twilight suddenly turned from brightest day to blackest night, and Trixie’s coat darkened as she suddenly dissipated, slipping through Twilight’s hooves as were she but a shadow.

The darkness was oppressive and pressed down upon her in such a way that all she could do was move her legs around, searching for her lost lover.

“N-no...” she said with a frightened whimper. “P-please come back, you... you can’t go... y-you promised... you promised you’d... s-stay... you promised...”

Tears of loneliness and abandonment started to fill the corners of her eyes, until suddenly something unseen caressed her body comfortingly. A shape manifested itself from the darkness, and there Trixie was again, wrapping the trembling purple unicorn in her warm embrace.

“Hey,” Trixie said gently, “just because you can’t see, feel or hear Trixie... doesn’t mean Trixie is not there.”

Twilight buried her face against her lover’s neck, hugging her tightly, determined to never, ever let her go. The darkness still reigned all around her, but with Trixie there, it didn’t seem that bad anymore. Not that bad at all.

***

The clinking of porcelain woke Twilight Sparkle from her slumber, and she half-opened her eyes groggily. “Good morning, love...” she whispered to the mare she believed to be in her legs, but upon reaching out for a kiss she discovered that it was, in fact, a rather large, blue pillow. She let go of it as she finally forced her eyes to open completely, looking around with a blush of embarrassment upon her cheeks.

“Good afternoon mistress!” Trixie said cheerfully as she came up the stairs with a food-laden tray.

Almost instantly, memories of the night before flooded back to Twilight, and she groaned with misery weakly. Some part of her had hoped, beyond all reason, that she’d awake to a world without problems, a world where she could simply be with Trixie in a never ending state of bliss. But it was not going to be that easy. Nothing ever was.

The all-encompassing sorrow from the night before had mellow’d out to a black feeling of depression, yet Trixie mistook her mistress’s somber expression for a simple case of morning drowsiness. Or, in this case, afternoon drowsiness, as Twilight had already slept the morning away.

Without giving Twilight even a second to protest, Trixie drew her up to a sitting position and positioned some pillows behind her back, so that she could sit and eat comfortably from the tray Trixie put down on her lap. She then sat down next to the bed and levitated a piece of food towards her mistress’s mouth, obviously intent upon feeding her like last time.

“You don’t need to do that anymore, you know,” Twilight said as she tried to move her lips as little as possible, just in case the maid would take parted lips as an invitation to continue. “I can feed myself, I’ll be fine. You can relax.”

“But... b-but mistress,” Trixie stammered as her smile turned itself upside down, “Trixie...”

She remained silent after that, as Twilight sampled some of the breakfast-turned-lunch by herself. As always, the cooking was of exceptional quality, and even managed to awaken the slumbering appetite that Twilight’s drowsiness and depression had first repressed.

“This is really go-” she said as she turned towards Trixie, but she fell silent at once as the mare’s expression and stance--eyes shining with the beginning of tears, her head bowed miserably as she was seemingly attempting to sink away into the floor--hit her in the head like a brick. “W-what’s wrong?” she stammered. “It’s ok, it’s really good, I love it!”

For a moment Trixie remained silent as she struggled with her desire not to question Twilight’s commands, coupled with her desire to answer a question that asked her to do just that. “Why...” she finally managed, her voice sounding silent and faint, “w-why can’t T-Trixie feed mistress anymore? Is Trixie... is Trixie not... good enough?”

“It’s... it’s nothing like that!” Twilight quickly said as she made frantic gestures with her fore hooves to support her words. “You do your job so well, you are so good in everything you do for me, but... but Trixie, you don’t need to continue being my maid, you’re my marefriend... you shouldn’t have to serve me. I can see that now, and... for what it’s worth, I apologise.” She paused for a moment, and suddenly remembered the flood of apologies the night before. “Again, I mean. I apologise again.”

But whatever Twilight had intended for her words to accomplish, they no doubt had the exact opposite effect, as the maid shrunk back even more and her expression detailed the fruitless battle against a flood of tears she could not contain. Trixie broke into sobs, and Twilight buried her head in her hooves out of pure misery; lately it seemed that at least one of them was crying at any given time, and she knew she only had herself to blame. But she already blamed herself for such a great many things, that even that one additional element was hard to bear. In her heart she knew she’d never be able to maintain a course that so clearly pained Trixie, especially when it seemed more likely that it would completely break her spirit, rather than restore it to its former glory.

“Trixie,” she said gently, “come here.”

That simply command could not drag Trixie from her sorrow completely, but at least she only sniffled instead of straight-up bawling as she approached. Twilight extended a hoof towards her, gently caressing her cheek and mane, careful not to flip over the tray on her lap--which she would have done away with, had she not had further need of it--as she smiled kindly.

“You know it’s not like that... I... mistress loves you dearly, and I thought I was doing you a favour... Now, if you wish, you may feed mistress.”

Trixie did not show any reaction to this, as she just continued sitting right next to the bed, looking, on the whole, quite miserable. This perplexed Twilight, until an idea finally came to her.

“I want you to feed me,” she attempted.

Trixie instantly lifted up her head, and her eyes sparkled with barely-contained happiness as a smile slowly returned to her lips. “R-really?”

“Yes! And if you don’t mind, all this food in front of me has made me quite hungry.”

Trixie quickly dried her tears and enthusiastically threw herself into the task at hand. So great and sudden was the change in her mood, that even Twilight (who had seen it happen) had trouble believing it had occurred at all. At first she was elated that she’d been able to stave off Trixie’s sadness, but then the reality of the situation caught up with her again, and she realised the situation was grim. Trixie hadn’t made a move when told that she could feed Twilight “if she wished” because Trixie really only had one wish: to serve and please her mistress. It was thus not feasible to let her do anything according to her own wishes, as those directly lead back to the mare’s perception of what Twilight wanted anyway.

Twilight assumed that would’ve made for an easy way to bend Trixie’s personality back onto a healthier track, were it not for the set of behaviour rules and norms that had gotten imprinted alongside her obedience. Pleasing her mistress was what she wanted to do, but being the perfect maid (or rather her perception thereof) was what she thought to be the only way to do so. For that reason, every time Twilight tried to make her less of a maid, Trixie assumed she had failed, with acute emotional distress as a direct result--that was how deeply ingrained the message was.

It would perhaps be possible to slowly wrest control back from the overly obedient portion of the mare’s mind, step by step, but Twilight wasn’t certain Trixie would be able to bear the strain that’d no doubt put on her. On top of that, the purple unicorn was quite sure she’d collapse under it as well; how could she live with herself if she had to inflict pain upon the mare she loved day after day because of something that wasn’t Trixie’s but her fault? There had to be a different way...

She opened her mouth absentmindedly to accept the next piece of food that was no doubt coming her way, having not noticed that the tray was completely empty already, lost in thoughts as she was.

“Uh... shall Trixie get more?” the maid asked uncertainly.

Twilight finally snapped out of her dark thoughts. “What? Uh... no... it’s fine. I’m quite full, thank you love.” She paused for a moment. Perhaps her books would hold an answer? “Let us go downstairs.”

Trixie nodded as she picked up the tray, allowing Twilight to finally rise up to her hooves. The librarian was surprised at how heavy her limbs felt once she was standing; apparently, the nightmares that had plagued her most of the night (and morning) had stolen much of the reinvigorating effects of sleep away from her.

“Trixie, you may go without that outfit. You can serve mistress perfectly well without it.” Perhaps separating her from the outfit would help loosen her up from the role a little bit, although Twilight doubted it; she never wore it in bed, and her submission there had definitely been undiminished. Of course, it was possible that making her go without it for longer periods of time would be different, and Twilight staked all her hope on that theory.

Hope which Trixie quickly smashed to smithereens when she said, with a shocked expression: “But mistress, Trixie is your maid.” as if that was all that needed to be said, and as if she was surprised that Twilight--the glorious and magnificent mistress Twilight--had failed to consider it. Trixie saw it as her duty to point it out, no doubt.

“Ah, y-yes,” Twilight conceded, quickly realising that, under these conditions, taking the outfits away from Trixie would be seen as a forcibly dismissal, which would have predictable effects. “I guess I didn’t think it through, heh. Forget it.”

And forget it she did, as they walked down the stairs.

For the longest time, Twilight had assumed the mistress role rid her of all obligations, that she could just do what she wanted because she was the mistress. She realised then that that simply wasn’t true; the role of mistress had come with shackles all its own, she just had not seen them for what they were.

Once downstairs, she asked Trixie to prepare some tea as she faced the wall of books that composed the main part of the library. Somewhere amongst those tomes lay the answer to all of her problems, she just knew. She just had to find it, and so find it she would, no matter what, for the mare she loved.

She took up one book, casting it aside in favour of another when it proved useless, only to quickly abandon the second book as well upon turning to the third. If the answer is not in this book, she told herself every time, it will be in the next book.

But every book she touched was “this book” and “the next book” never came.