The Sad, Lonely, Hearth's Warming Trix-Eve

While Pinkie, Rarity, and Applejack stayed behind to prepare the party portion of the plan, Princess Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy set out to find the unicorn the map set them out to find. Fluttershy living not far from Everfree Forest meant she knew the ins and outs of the area, and would make it easier to find Trixie. The snow had subsided from eariler, but there was enough fall that made hoof prints in the ground, certainly made it far less difficult to locate a trail of anypony wondering about. Not long after a fresh track of hoof tracks that appeared to be from a running pony, the three knew they found their pony. After a brief track through a heavily wooded sector of the forest, a voice could be heard near by. It was definitely the pony they were looking for, they recognized the voice instantly. The three ponies hid quietly behind a tree to see Trixie next to her caravan, with two cups of cocoa. What was odd was there was no other pony around, the only other thing around her was a small bush. The three Mane Six ponies were trying to wait for Trixie's apparent visitor, but the embarrassing reality hit when Trixie floated one of the cocoas towards the bush and began making conversation with it. The three ponies looking on were speechless at what they were watching, but it couldn't be right.

"You've gotta be kidding me..." Rainbow Dash spoke of embarrassment. She though wasn't sure who she felt more embarrassed for; Trixie for doing such a silly thing, or herself for having just witnessed it.

Twilight quietly chuckled sarcastic. "Well maybe it's not what it looks like..." That was shut down when Trixie actually started talking to the non-drinking bush, "Oh, would you a like sandwich as well Starlight?", followed by a slow chuckle from the magician. The face Twilight made upon hearing it was one of complete dread.

"...It's exactly what it looks like..." Fluttershy replied, walking out from behind the tree not being able to bare anymore. The others reluctantly followed behind. The Princess thought the time had come to end this depressing scene. "Trixie?"

A shocked gasp from Trixie led to her frantically trying to cover up the evidence of her embarrassing ordeal as the ponies approached. "Oh...it's you..." Her eyes widened. "Please tell me you didn't see any of that..." She stated in a quick pace of shame and humility.

"That's not important Trixie..." Twilight walked up. "I understand why you're out here..." She cleared her throat to say in a hint of misery. "...talking to a bush."

"Because she's weird?" Answered Rainbow Dash who quickly got a whip in the face from Fluttershy's tail, rubbing the side of her face in regret.

"Because you're alone." Twilight finished. It was true, Trixie didn't acknowledge the reason, but her slumped demeanor gave the answer loud and clear. "We would be honored to invite you to spend Hearth's Warming Eve at the castle to with us."

Trixie gave a look of curiosity, she never thought that Twilight and her friends would offer something of this magnitude. They never did talk and they weren't ones to hang out with each other. But Trixie realized, it was either the option of staying in a warm, cozy castle; or stay in the cold and share drinks with the bushes and trees. As she smiled at the gesture, for the former option it would be.

***

The ponies had returned to Ponyville with Trixie alongside. She had asked what kind of celebration would be taking place, but the members of The Mane Six present were very hush hush on details. The group entered into the castle and began to enter the main room. "I'm glad you took up our offer to join us Trixie." Twilight finally mentioned something direct to her guest.

"Well I appreciate the offer Princess. Anything is better than talking to trees in the middle of nowhere..." Trixie embarrassingly admitted with a blush. "I'm just looking forward to enjoying a Hearth's Warming Eve Party with..."

Trixie's sentence was cut off by a Party Cannon blast of confetti that hit her in the face, and when she wiped the colored paper from her eyes, she open them to a grand room of The Mane Six.

"SURPRISE!!!" They all screamed to a confused Trixie at the doorway. The banners and streamers all around in blue and purple, that matched Trixie's usual garb.

"I don't understand...I thought this was a Hearth's Warming Eve Party?" Trixie asked.

"Well it is, but it's more than that too." Pinkie perked up with a grin that went across her face. Trixie became even more confused by the answer that was given, Twilight approached to explain.

"We realized that we haven't treated you like much of a friend since you've came to stay in Ponyville. So we decided to change that today." She said. Applejack then continued. "Hearth's Warming Eve is about spending time with friends, and we thought maybe you could use a friend or six right about now."

Trixie looked around at the party present and then turned to Princess Twilight...and she slowly grew a smile. She didn't say anything though which made the others not sure what the day could be in store.

"Well, I'll take that as a yes!" Pinkie declared, and used that as an opportunity to shoot off her Party Cannon in the room, spewing confetti everywhere.

After while, Rainbow Dash was taking time interacting with Trixie, the rest were huddled to think of ideas to also do with her, but needless to say they weren't sure what to come up with.

"I'm glad Rainbow is keeping Trixie occupied, I have no idea of anything to do." Twilight declared, her statement was quickly followed by a response...

"Me too!!!" All the rest said in unison. The response led to them all staring at each other in groaned fashion. "So, what should we do then?" Rarity asked the group.

"I got it!" Twilight gleefully said. "Let's do the things that we know Trixie likes." But her idea was cut off by her dragon, Spike.

"Uh, Twilight..." Spike reminded Twilight and the others of the grim reality, holding up the list of five words again. "Things That Trixie Likes: Magic"

"Umm...please tell me somepony has another idea?" Fluttershy cried in a panic. Twilight attempted to calm the group. "Don't worry, I'm sure Rainbow Dash will come up with something open minded. There's tons of awesome things she can do with Trixie that don't involve magic..."

Meanwhile with Trixie and Rainbow Dash...

"So I totally LOVE magic!" Rainbow bragged to the blue unicorn while drinking some hot cider by the fireplace, this raised the curiosity of the great and powerful one.

"Really, you don't seem like much of the magic type..." Trixie tested Dash, trying to get more out of her.

"Are you kidding?" She answered with a chuckle. "Magic is so awesome, I uh...even practice my own tricks!" Giving a Cheshire cat grin.

"Well by all means, show me what you can do. I'd love to see what kind of tricks you know..." Trixie's answer was the last thing Rainbow Dash wanted to hear. Sweat starting falling off her muzzle as she feared Trixie would see right through her bald faced lie. Dash had to think on her hooves and improvise...fast! Dash saw Trixie's deck of playing cards and grabbed them to attempt her on the fly "trick".

Trixie looked on as Dash shuffled the deck quickly and placed the deck on the table in front of them. "So I'm uhh...thinking of a card." Dash declared as she and Trixie looked down at the deck, to which Rainbow drew the card on top. Dash then gasped excitement. "HEY! WHAT DO YA KNOW! Exactly the card I was thinking of!" As she showed a "two of clubs" to the unicorn, who just raised an eyebrow at what she witnessed, gazing at Rainbow who had a grin that looked bigger than a Sweet Apple Acres barn.

"Wow!" She said in the most sarcastic voice imaginable with rolling eyes. "How did you ever do that!?"

"What can I say, it's a talent!" Rainbow boasted and scoffed as Trixie floated the cards to herself.

"Well, it was a good joke at least. But let me show you an actual trick." Trixie then shuffled the deck with her magic as Rainbow sat and looked on. "Now...The Great and Powerful Trixie is thinking of a card!" She pulled the top card on the deck and looked at it. "Well what do you know, it's the card I was thinking of!" Magically dropping the "Ace of Hearts" on the table. Rainbow though was confused, she didn't get it; was Trixie pulling her leg? Figuratively of course...

"Uh, that's the same trick I did..." Rainbow said aloud. Trixie laughed though.

"Au contraire, this was the card I was thinking of. But it wouldn't have mattered actually which card I picked, for they're all the card I was thinking of." And as Trixie declared the final statement, she used her to spread all fifty-two cards face up on the table, revealing all of them to be an "Ace of Hearts". Rainbow's mouth fell to the floor seeing an entire deck of red aces spread all around, hooving through them all to see the truth in shock.

"Whoa, how'd you do that?" Dash asked in amazement.

Trixie laughed endlessly. "It's called magic Rainbow Dash...you should try it sometime." And Trixie walked off to see what others were doing, while Dash lifted up the table and chairs trying to find where the real cards went to, to no avail.

As the day transitioned to night, the Mane Six members continued to "interact" with Trixie to befriend her, however, The Great and Powerful Trixie noticed that each conversation started eerily similar.

"I like...uh...Magic." Applejack told her...Trixie's eyes widened at the comment.

***

"Oh...I really like magic." Fluttershy told Trixie with a smile, to which the magician gave a bored yawn.

***

"Magic is perfectly divine darling..." Rarity said with promise, but in result only woke Trixie from dozing off, and when Trixie came back to... "Ah...where am I?" She asked until coming to a realization... "Oh..." Getting a grimace on her face.

***

"Ooo...I like magic! And cake...but mostly magic." Pinkie said with a giant pink cake next her, then paused. "Wait...Was that what I was supposed to say?" Asking the unicorn next her. Trixie looked in annoyance and moaned as she just face planted into the cake next to them. At first Pinkie was surprised at the reaction, but quickly shrugged it off and began chowing down on said face planted cake, licking her face of the delectable icing and giving no regard to said face planted unicorn.

It all went the same, the responses...followed by a lack of ability on the talent what they said they enjoyed. Trixie though was happy to show them some magic herself to lighten the mood.

To Applejack, who attempted to Apple Monty though failing terribly each time. Trixie played a bit afterward to show the honest Earth Pony how to do so. In the Cup Game, Trixie lay one bright red apple under one of the cups, mixing them up and letting AJ guess which had the prize underneath. The first guess though was a miss, then picking the second one, another miss, then knowing the third had the apple, picking it up to find nothing. Trixie smiled and then covered all three cups again and rapidly spun them on the table, and then after lifting up all three, a red apple appeared now under all three; bringing total shock and a smile to Applejack to say the least. She looked on in stunned silence as Trixie moved on to the next pony.

Next Rarity spent some of her time to enjoy her joy of "magic". Using her six different colored cloths that matched the color of a rainbow, she used her magic to tie them together to try the classic rope trick to little success. Trixie smiled at the effort and then took the tied up pieces of cloth to used it on Rarity, magically pulling it out of Rarity's ear, but that was only the beginning; for when Trixie used her magic to unknot the ends, Rarity was amazed to see that Trixie had somehow turned the six separate cloth strands into one whole piece of fabric, making it look like a shinning rainbow sheet, putting a smile on both their faces.

Trixie then looked on as Fluttershy used Trixie's magician hat to perform a trick, and suddenly proceeded to pull a rabbit out of it. However, the rabbit was nothing more than a piece of paper with a drawing of a rabbit on it in said hat, looking at the magician with an embarrassing smile. Trixie shook her head with a smile, and then floated the hat to herself and put the same rabbit paper drawing back into the hat. After waving her hoof over top of it, Trixie proceeded to pull out Angel Bunny by the ears, who looked none too happy of the matter. Fluttershy gave Angel the biggest hug ever as The Great and Powerful Trixie moved on the next magic trick sure to go wrong.

Pinkie Pie then had two bag of cake icing, one pink and the other blue. In an attempt to make them disappear she looked around for an idea, but when no idea came, she proceeded to shove them both in her mouth; shrugging her hooves acting like she had no clue where they were. Trixie slightly grossed out took the icing bags back and held front to back as if they looked like one bag. Trixie then slowly moved her hoof in front of said bag and it changed from blue to pink. She then did it again and it went from pink to blue, and repeated the procedure several times over. Then in one big swift hoof movement, the bags disappeared into thin air; until Trixie magically pulled both bags out of Pinkie's hair. Trixie was waiting to see Pinkie's amazement, but Pinkie was more focused on just squeezing every drop of icing from the bags into her mouth once more. Trixie then slightly back away with uncertainty to what she was witnessing.

***

After while, the majority Mane Six members were conversing between each other. Trixie observed the grand fireplace listening to the chesnuts popping in the fire. While doing so she looked atop the mantle, and saw the girl's Hearth's Warming Dolls that were placed there each year. Eight were there in total: Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Applejack, Twilight's, Spike, Rairty, Rainbow Dash, ...and then on the end was the doll of Trixie's friend...Starlight. It had been recently added during the years as it looked slightly newer from the others. But the sight of it reminded The Great and Powerful Trixie of a couple of things: One of her friend's absence, but also the fact that Starlight had gained a friendship from all these same ponies Trixie was gathered with, yet up until tonight, she herself had little to no interaction with them. And it made Trixie wonder...why? Why weren't any of these ponies ever true friends with her? She certainly enjoyed the time she had with all current company during the day, even if all the transactions seemed forced and eerily similar to a tee. During her thoughts, The Princess of Friendship approched behind.

"Hey Trixie!" She said, snapping Trixie out of her inner thoughts. "How's the party been?"

Trixie was a bit hesitant to say what she thought, but she felt she still needed to say so... "Honestly...not what I expected."

The face of Twilight went from cheer to concern, she didn't understand though why Trixie thought this. "Really? How so?"

"Well, all of your friends seem to have the same interests I do..." Trixie answered. That response confused Twilight, it certainly wasn't what she expected, but didn't really comprehend Trixie's lack of enjoyment for the party they planned for her.

"And that...bothers you?" Twilight asked back, getting a nod as an answer.

"It just doesn't make sense Twilight. I mean if we all have SO much in common, why did we never get to know each other sooner?" Trixie questioned the princess. "Did they just not want to be my friend? Was I really THAT bad a pony?" She slumped her head in sorrow. Twilight began to realize the problem, a big problem. The idea of trying to do Trixie's interests and pretending to act like they were favorite activities was actually making Trixie feel worse. Making her believe her personality was the reason their friendship never materialized, when in reality it was the complete opposite. It was their lack of commitment to get to know her was the true culprit in the matter. Twilight had to find an answer that would ease Trixie's disappointment of the recent occasions.

"Sometimes the length of time it takes to befriend somepony isn't important, what matters is having the courage to do so." Twilight's answer was pondered by the pony it was said to, but it didn't seem to be the answer said pony was looking for. But ultimately, Twilight returned to the others and told Trixie to join them if she wanted to. Trixie took her time to do so and while the others enjoyed themselves, she planned to take a stroll to the cake that was made for the party, however, in route to it her hind hoof got tangled on a long scroll that was dangling on the floor.

"Uh Twilight, I think you dropped one of..." Trixie statement gradually stopped when she gazed on the long scroll, it had words at the top, not many but enough that could be seen. She read them in her head... "Things That Trixie Likes: Magic..."

Trixie had put all the pieces together now. All her interactions with the others for the duration of the day was nothing more than a big sham in her mind now. They didn't actually enjoy the things they said, they said them because they felt sorry for her and just faked their enjoyment. For all Trixie knew, they probably didn't even care about her either. All the gatherings, the party whole party in fact wasn't a friend party to her...it was one big ole' Trixie Pity Party. She gazed so hard at it she could have burned a hole through it, and the fact that they tried to play dumb on the matter for this long made her feel even worse. But that was going to end, she grabbed the scroll and began to head over to the group, ready to hear their explanation.

***

While The Mane Six had a discussion about what to do next for an activity, they were interrupted by a final hoof stomp to the floor as Trixie met them in the main room, looking in a foul mood.

"Oh Trixie..." Fluttershy spoke up. "We're glad you're here. We thought of what we could all do together."

"Let me guess, does it involve magic!?" Trixie rash-fully responded to the quiet pony's words. The remark led to a bunch of eyes bouncing off one another.

"How...did you...guess darling?" Rarity hesitantly said.

"Oo well, because apparently it's the only thing I like!" With a stomp, Trixie then made the elongated scroll that was created appear in front of them to which she then magically crumpled it up and tossed it aside as the ponies she questioned started to get nervous looks of their faces. "Somepony better start talking..." Were the final words the unicorn spoke before having a grim expression on her face.

Pinkie broke the silence first. "Uh...cupcake?" Holding up a pink cupcake to be sampled to taste.

"Thank you..." Trixie responded in a tense voice, giving no joy in the response. She quickly floated the cupcake and put it all in her mouth at once, and after a couple chews, swallowed it fast. Then the look became more serious, still waiting for an actual answer.

"Oh no, my cupcake was so good she didn't even savor it to stall for time..." A squee grin arose from Pinkie directed to the others, who didn't approve of the tactic. Trixie then began tapping her hoof on the floor growing more impatient every second a lack of reasoning was given. "I'm waiting..." Came one final warning from her. The others sighed and knew the jig was up. Time to come clean, but Rainbow was the one to speak, to unfortunately for the others let her emotions and feelings boil over in the verbal standoff.

"Look, we didn't want to see you be alone for Hearth's Warming Eve. Excuse us for doing things we knew you would enjoy." Rainbow Dash said in a bummed out voice, but it didn't go over well.

"So rather than being alone, you'd rather just try to be like me instead? What does that help!" Trixie shouted at the group. "And you actually got me to look forward to a party with a group of friends, but instead you made me feel like I was only with myself!" The words hit The Mane Six hard as The Great and Powerful Trixie began to open her bag to pull out a smoke bomb. "So thank you very much, for making me realize just how alone I really am! So I think it's time I be just that...alone!"

After the statement, Trixie threw the smoke bomb to the floor that engulfed the room in grey smoke. When the hacking and coughing ponies came to the visible room again, their friend was gone, leaving the six of them alone. As if the mood couldn't be killed anymore, one of Pinkie's Party Cannons shot off randomly to a nothing reaction from the crowd of ponies.

"Well...that was a surprise..." Pinkie gloomfully pointed out as the party turned into a total sham of itself as the ponies present dropped their heads in shame. Their friend was gone, and they felt to blame for it...

To be continued...