Author's Note

This story started as something different until, on the eve of the anniversary of my nephew's passing away, I was served a blunt reminder of the fragility of life. So I dedicate this to his memory and hope that this short but bitter-sweet story may inspire strength in somepony else who is struggling with loss or various other personal demons.

Win a Date With Trixie Lulamoon!

Gallus burst from the Cake's shop excitedly with a small pouch of bits. He had taken his very first summer job doing delivery work for the Cake's and this was his first payday. The rest of the Student 6 waited outside. They began following Gallus as he started strolling casually.

"That looks like so much money!" Silverstream squealed.

"You could totally buy that mint condition Issue #1 of Power Ponies from the book store!" Sandbar suggested.

"Nope." Gallus shook his head.

"You can get premium Yak smashing log!" Yona exclaimed.

"Real tempting, but no." Gallus replied sarcastically.

"A bucket of gemstones for your favorite dragon?" Smolder winked and gave him a nudge on the shoulder.

"Yeah, nice try you guys." Gallus rolled his eyes.

"Where are we going, anyway?" Ocellus quizzed as they rounded a corner.

Gallus pointed to a sign by the door as they reached a large building. "Ponyville Orphanage." the sign read.

"The orphanage is holding a big charity prize raffle. It's meant for bigwig donors but I should be able to afford one or two tickets." He explained.

"What are the prizes?" Ocellus asked.

"Is it pirate's treasure!?" Silverstream piped in.

"Why would they have pirate's treasure?" Gallus rolled his eyes. "It's all written down on this brochure." He held up a folded piece of paper and Smolder snatched it from his claws.

"Spa day- blech. Surf board- boooring" She read.

"Surf board?" Sandbar perked up.

"The spa day sounds nice!" Ocellus said.

"If you get the pirate's treasure will you share it!?" Silverstream squealed.

"Everybody just." Gallus spread one of his claws over his face. "I'm just going to drop my tickets into random raffle boxes and if I do win anything you guys will be the first to know!" he sighed.

As he stepped through the door Silverstream perked up as though she were about to speak but Gallus interrupted her. "Yes, if it's pirate's treasure YOU can have it." he rolled his eyes. "If I win the surf board, it's all yours" He pointed to Sandbar. "If I win the Spa day Ocellus can have it." He gestured over to Yona. "And if I don't win anything YOU can smash the raffle boxes."

Yona excitedly stomped onto a nearby stick on the ground.

The following weekend Gallus awoke to an early morning knock on the door of the dorm room he shared with Sandbar.

"Can you get that!" He shouted grumpily. There was no reply. The knock came again. He looked around and remembered that Sandbar said he was going to be leaving early to go to the beach. He crept lazily to the door and slowly opened it to see Trixie standing outside.

"Yes?" He asked.

"Are you Gallus, the griffon?" Trixie asked. He nodded in reply. "Well the Great and Powerful Trixie is here to deliver your prize for the Ponyville Orphanage raffle! A date with one of Ponyville's esteemed celebrity mares!" She exclaimed in a booming stage voice.

Gallus peaked his head out the door and looked around. "Where is she?" He asked sarcastically.

Trixie scrunched her face angrily before containing herself. "Why it is I, Trixie, of course!" She said boastfully as she bowed.

"Well my dorm-mate is gone for the day. Do you want to come in and make out or something?" Gallus slicked back his crest feathers and winked.

"Not THAT kind of date! Did you not read the prize description?" Trixie seethed red as she pulled out a copy of the prize brochure and read off "Spend an entire day with one of Ponyville's esteemed celebrity mares!"

"Oh." Gallus hung his head and his crest-feathers snapped back to their original position. "Nocreature uses THAT meaning of the word 'date' anymore." he sighed.

Trixie scrunched her face at him again.

"Look, I didn't actually think I was going to win anything. I didn't care about the prizes. I was just supporting the charity nearest to my heart, but that part stays between you and me." Gallus said as he made a 'hush' gesture at her.

"Well follow me, Trixie has an exciting afternoon planned!" She exclaimed.

Gallus shrugged his shoulders and wandered off with her. For their entire walk Trixie boasted about her amazing feats of magic and showmanship while Gallus passively nodded in reply, throwing in the occasional "Uhuh" or "I see". Eventually they walked up on Trixie's caravan, parked just outside Ponyville.

"I bet you can't guess what amazing adventures await in Trixie's own personal workshop!" She boasted as she opened the door for him.

"Mixed signals?" Gallus rolled his eyes. Trixie scrunched her face at him again as she followed him in. It was tight inside. On one end was her sleeping quarters but most of the inside was a small combined kitchen and workshop area packed with implements from her magic shows with an empty table in the middle and a humble set of cupboards by the window.

"The Great and Powerful Trixie shall teach you a thing or two about being a world-famous magician!" She boasted.

"I already know how this is done. This is nestling's stuff. Smoke bombs and sleight of claw." He huffed abrasively.

"And what feats of magic do YOU know?" Trixie challenged him.

"How about 'Two-bit Monty'?" Gallus chuckled as he pulled three identical pink teacups down from the cupboards and placed them face down on the table. He produced a red ball and tipped it under one of the cups. "I have a bit, you have a bit, and I bet you mine that you can't keep track of the red ball." He explained as he mixed the cups around slowly on the table.

"Obviously you kept it in your claw." Trixie rolled her eyes and her horn glowed and the ball levitated from behind his claw. "Magic is to entertain, not to scam little griffons out of their lunch money!" Trixie waved her hand and the air crackled with sparks and smoke. Gallus coughed as the smoke drifted in his face.

"Well that's how you get your lunch money in Griffonstone" Gallus waved his hand to clear the smoke away from his face. "At least when you're an Orphan." He sighed.

"Oh." Trixie said and sighed with him.

"What about you?" He asked. "Or are you just exploiting the charity for free marketing?" He flashed her a sly grin.

"Trixie's a-" Trixie mumbled off the rest of the sentence inaudibly as she rolled her eyes.

"You're going to have to speak up." Gallus rolled his eyes back.

"Trixie's a runaway!" She snapped.

"Now why would you go and run away from a perfectly good family?" Gallus scratched his chin.

Trixie pulled out a small shadow-puppet theatre and placed it on the table. She placed her front hooves behind it and their shadows projected onto a white screen. Her horn glowed as the shadows formed into characters and scenery, acting out her story.

"Trixie's parents were both show-ponies in Las Pegasus. That is where she learned the arts of magic and showmanship!" The puppet theatre crackled with tiny fireworks. A blue stallion and an orange mare (both unicorns) put on an impressive magic show in front of a a small blue mare.
"But Trixie was never very good at making friends with other ponies. Until one summer when she met another mare, Lavender Breeze."

"You know that looks kind of like Starl-" Gallus was interrupted by Trixie's hoof in his face as he pointed to a light purple unicorn that appeared in the puppet theatre.

"Lavender Breeze and Trixie laughed and played and she invited Trixie to go camping with her family that summer and Trixie said, yes!" The scene then faded into a scene of Las Pegasus with empty streets.
"But the economy in Las Pegasus was not doing well that summer and Trixie's parents were having trouble making ends meet. So her dad suggested they try a travelling magic show, all the way to the Badlands and back. Trixie was furious because she wouldn't get to go camping with her new friend!"

"That looks familiar" Gallus chuckled as he pointed to the shadow puppet of Trixie making a scrunchy-face expression.

"But they insisted that they needed me, after all, I was an important part of some of the acts." she sighed as the theatre showed an image of the family trio pulling a caravan through a changing landscape.
"When we got back to Las Pegasus at the end of the summer Trixie rushed over to see Lavender Breeze but her mother was crying when she answered the door." The puppet of Lavender Breeze's mother leaned over and made meek speaking gestures to the puppet of Trixie, who then collapsed onto the ground and started crying.

"Back then you couldn't exactly send letters out to the Badlands. While they were out camping Lavender Breeze went missing. There were Ursa Major tracks leading away from the camp site and they searched for weeks but never found her and her funeral had long come and gone in the months we had spent on the road. I hardly even got to know her and I never got to say goodbye."
Trixie began to sob and Gallus came over and hugged her.

"There's nothing you could have done if you had been there, you might have died too." Gallus said comfortingly. The two noted their embrace in unison and like clockwork pushed each other away, Trixie crossed her front hooves and Gallus his claws. "I mean uh, that still doesn't explain why you ran away!" He turned his beak up.

"I was getting to that!" Trixie went back to the puppet theatre and continued the show.

"You know the more you open up to somecreature the more you stop referring to yourself in the third." Gallus observed.

"TRIXIE" she emphasized "blamed her father for the loss and for not getting closure. That night she loaded whatever food she could into the show caravan and ran off with it! And from there she became The Great and Powerful Trixie: a one pony show to make ends meet and keep the caravan moving." She ended the show with a sigh.

"A fugitive on the run, just like that huh?" Gallus teased.

"Every now and then he would track me down and send me a letter. I opened them at first. He sounded pretty angry in them so then I just stopped opening them." She sobbed.

As she made that remark her cutie mark and Gallus's crown feathers started to pulse with light.

"What's happening!" She squealed.

"I heard about this in class. I think we're being summoned for a friendship mission. We should report to-"

"Twilight's castle." She sighed, finishing his sentence.

"I can't believe it, one of my students already being sent on a friendship mission!" Twilight beamed excitedly as the duo showed up. "And Trixie." She lowered her tone and her and Trixie exchanged glares. The three of them watched in anticipation as the images of Trixie's cutie mark and one of Gallus' crest feathers lazily swirled and came to rest just outside Ponyville.

"That's where my Caravan is parked." Trixie glared over at Gallus. "This better not be another ploy to try and get fresh with me!"

"I swear..."

"Do I even want to know?" Twilight sighed.

As Gallus and Trixie approached her Caravan she quickly grabbed him and pulled him into a bush.

"You really are starting to send mixed signals" Gallus huffed. Trixie quickly hushed him.

"That's Trixie's dad!" She whispered to him as she pointed to a blue unicorn with three gold stars as a cutie mark standing outside her door knocking.

"And you're just going to hide?" Gallus rolled his eyes at her. "Do you honestly still blame him? Sometimes bad things just happen and it's nocreature's fault and there's nothing anycreature can do about it." Gallus lectured in a loud whisper.

"I know that now." Trixie cried.

"Is somepony there?" Trixie's father quizzed, hearing the commotion and starting to head for the bush.

"But I stole his caravan, and ignored him and my mom for years." She cried as she prepared to toss a smoke bomb and run.

"So what? If there's one thing I've learned living here it's that family is very important to you ponies. I never got a chance to know my parents. I don't even know if they are still alive somewhere and if they are sure it's horrible that they abandoned me but I would give anything just for a chance to see them just once." Gallus cried.

"It's too late for that now!" Trixie sobbed and raised her hoof higher, ready to toss the smoke bomb as her father got closer.

"It's not too late but if you keep running away one day it WILL be too late and it will be the biggest regret of your life!" Gallus raised his voice and held out his claw. Trixie paused for a moment and then handed the smoke bomb to him.

"Daddy?" She cried as she emerged from the bush with Gallus.

"Sweetie you're-" He placed a hoof at the side of her face and began to sob. "You're all grown up now." he burst into tears as he grew weak and slumped down. Trixie embraced him and began to cry too.

"I'm so sorry." she could barely manage the words through her tears.

Gallus watched on and shed a few tears of his own but tried to act casual.

"Your mother and I, we've been reading about you in all the magic magazines and news papers." He sobbed. "We were passing through Ponyville on our way to Canterlot and we heard that you were living here now." he explained as he choked back his tears.

"You're not mad at me?" She asked meekly with a sniffle, still embracing her father.

"Of course we were mad at first when you left but then we just wanted to see our little girl again. We were worried sick but then we saw that you had started your own show." He sniffled. "Your mother and I are staying at a bed and breakfast in town. We would love it if you would come out to dinner with us and catch up." He sighed as he let go of Trixie seeing that she was becoming uncomfortable at the suggestion. "You're welcome to bring your uh... special some...griffon..."

"We would love to, pops!" Gallus piped up, coming closer and putting his claw on the stallion's shoulder. Trixie looked over with a shocked look. "Well I'm not actually-"

"He won a date with me in a charity contest. But he's already become a good friend." Trixie explained.

"What sort of contest..." Trixie's father began.

"Not THAT kind of date." Trixie scrunched her face.

"Nopony uses THAT definition of the word 'date' anymore." Her father chuckled. "Please, sweetheart. We've missed you so much."

"Okay." She said meekly as she hugged him again. As she uttered the word her cutie mark and Gallus' crest began to pulse again.

"Well I, uh, guess my work here is done. I'm sure principal Twilight will want a report on this." He sighed and turned around.

Trixie leaned over and whispered to her father.

"Now wait there young man." Her father called out to Gallus. Gallus looked back. "A show this big can always use another stage-hand. Why don't you join us for dinner too?" He smiled at Gallus as he finsihed.

"Well I, uh, sure!" He smiled.

He walked further behind as the three headed toward Ponyville. Trixie stopped and waited for him to catch up.

"Thanks." She whispered to him.

"It was nothing I-" Before he could finish Trixie interrupted him with a kiss on the side of his beak. He blushed red.

"Don't go reading too far into that!" She snarled at him. They both chuckled and then continued on their way.