To Glimpse a Wider World

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 8
Chapter 7

Chapter 1

“They’re always doing something like this, I tell you.”

“Where could they have gone? Oh, I hope the poor dears are alright…”

“Trouble, the three of ‘em. Ya see? Cutie mark or not, this is why I tell ya not to hang around with them.”

A large crowd of ponies, illuminated by torchlight and the fading sun, stood before a stage outside of Ponyville town hall. From them emanated a great chattering, the frenzied conversation of a mob that, for the most part, worried why it had been formed. Three names in particular seemed to be on everyone's lips.

Atop the stage, nine more ponies and one zebra found themselves arranged in a haphazard circle, holding a conversation of their own. Eventually, they nodded amongst themselves, and one mare—a bespectacled, tan earth pony with a gray mane—stepped out from the group and over to the stage’s podium. By the time she’d reached it, the crowd had grown silent, but the mare still cleared her throat noisily.

“It isn’t often that I have to call a town gathering for an occasion that has such a level of seriousness attached to it,” the mare began. “As many of you have no doubt been informed, three of the town’s fillies have gone missing. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle—the ‘Cutie Mark Crusaders’, as they call themselves—have not been seen since this morning, leaving Miss Cheerilee’s schoolhouse. The decision has been made to arrange a number of volunteer search parties. Miss Sparkle, you have the floor.” She turned and nodded to the purple unicorn standing behind herself before vacating the podium.

Twilight Sparkle promptly stepped up, spreading a collection of note cards out overtop the podium. “Thank you, Mrs. Mayor,” she said. “It’s just as she says, everypony. All that’s been found is a note in their clubhouse, which read that they’d ‘gone crusading’ and that they’d ‘be back soon’. The fillies’ guardians were expecting the three to come home this evening at the latest, but nopony’s so much as caught sight of them in the past eight hours. We need to pull together to try and find them as soon as we can. They have a knack for getting themselves into bad situations."

The street lamps throughout Canterlot Square flared to life as the as the sky above grew darker. The last of the open-air merchants were packing up their wares for the day, leaving the brightly lit storefronts of the square’s numerous late night conveniences unobstructed for the evening rush. Despite the late hour, the city’s thoroughfare, which ran into and throughout the square, was packed. Equestria’s elite—politicians, scholars, nobleponies, and the like—scuttled quickly to and fro, never mind the hour.

Three small fillies scampered awkwardly between the legs of the busy crowd, until one pointed a hoof towards an adjacent alleyway between a busy café and a twenty-four hour bank. The trio broke from the crowd and dashed into the alley. They huddled together against a damp wall, myriad emotions playing across their faces—the little pegasus wore a disgusted scowl, aimed directly at the bow-clad earth pony, who, for her part, looked markedly regretful. The unicorn had tears in her eyes, prodding one forehoof with the other, right where a horseshoe-shaped bruise was sure to develop over the following few days.

“This is prob’ly the worst idea we’ve had yet…” said the earth pony.

The pegasus's eyes narrowed further. “Oh, so now it was our idea?” she shouted. “I don’t remember coming up with it!”

The earth pony buried her head more deeply into her hooves, tears of her own starting to well up.

The pegasus filly withered. “Oof, um…" She rubbed the back of her neck. "Look, I’m sorry, Apple Bloom. I thought it was good, too. At the time.”

The unicorn raised her head. “It w-was a good idea, Scootaloo,” she said, audibly trying to hold back sobs. “We’ve b-been trying for who kn-knows how long to find our special talents, but we b-barely leave Ponyville. New place, n-new ways to get a cutie m-mark… We j-just… we just shouldn’t have come alone.”

“Yeah… Prob’ly should’a paid for a train ticket, too. That conductor’ll be keepin’ an eye out fer us now. But…” Apple Bloom raised her head a little, a slight hopeful gleam appearing in her eyes. “But we’re here, Sweetie! Ah was worried we might not ever make it this far.”

“That’s something, I guess,” said Scootaloo, the anger all but gone from her voice. “But now what? This place seems even bigger than I remember. Where do we start looking for things to try?”

Sweetie raised her eyes, staring up at the scant few stars bright enough to make it through Canterlot’s own illumination. She sighed heavily, breath visible in the chilly Canterlot air. Calm enough now for her sobs to have ceased, she spoke, “Girls, it’s too late to start looking tonight. Let’s just get some sleep, okay? I feel like I’ve been running all day long.”

Sweetie’s companions looked up to the sky as well, and murmured their agreement. “But where are we gonna sleep?” asked Scootaloo.

“Yeah,” Apple Bloom responded, “‘s not like we can afford a hotel room or anythin’…”

“Apple Bloom, the next time we do something like this, we’ve gotta spend more than an hour planning it, ’kay?”

Apple Bloom nodded resolutely.

Scootaloo nodded back. “Okay then. For now, we need to find a free bed someplace. Any ideas?”

“None,” said Apple Bloom. “How ‘bout you, Sweetie Belle? Know any… Oh.”

The pair looked on at their friend, noticing that she was already curled up on the ground of the alleyway, snoring lightly. They looked to each other once more and shrugged, before finding their own spots beside her. The earth was poorly paved, cobblestones jutting up here and there from decades of neglect, but they managed. After a while tossing and turning, the trio found sleep, passersby either not seeing them or not caring enough to disturb their slumber.

The hustling and bustling of the passing ponies had continued throughout the night, and was now joined by the excited shouts of tourists. The trio of fillies had slept through it all, and now sunlight had begun creeping into the alleyway as the day began. Sweetie Belle’s closed eyelids were the first to feel its sting, and the filly found herself being slowly roused by it. Very soon, though, she started to notice a smell in the air.

A pungent odor wafted into the unicorn’s nostrils from the wall opposite her and, reluctantly, she forced her eyes open. Leaned up against the far wall was what looked to be a very unsanitary stallion; his brown coat was splotched with dirt, and his black hair and beard were full and scraggly. As if sensing her gaze, the stallion turned to Sweetie Belle, smiled as best he could with so many of his teeth missing, and gave her a wink.

The filly gave a gasp and backed up against her own wall, and she reached out to to shake her friends awake. It took a few moments, but soon they were smacking their lips tiredly, until they too caught the stallion’s scent, their eyes shooting open.

“What… What is that?” asked Scootaloo, nose crinkled. The unkempt stallion’s smile disappeared at this, and a light blush came over his face as he sniffed the air around himself.

“Ah know it ain’t e’zackly pleasant,” he said. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo looked shocked for a moment, before noticing the stallion and joining Sweetie Belle in staring at him. “Not s’much ah can do ‘bout it, though. T’ain’t rained fer comin’ on a week now, and they got guards ‘round the fountains nowadays. Hot shower’d be heaven right about now, lemme tell ya.”

Apple Bloom, recovering the most quickly, mustered up the courage to speak. “Howdy there, sir. Mah name’s Apple Bloom, and these here are mah friends Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle. What’s yer name?”

The smile returned to the stallion’s face, and he tipped the filly a nonexistent hat. “Name ’a Pennypincher. Pleased ta be makin’ yer acquaintance, little’uns. No need ta be scared—ah don’t bite.” He aimed the last part of his introduction at Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, who had yet to stop staring wide-eyed at him.

A few moments of silence passed before Apple Bloom realized that her friends weren’t going to say anything back. It was then that she noticed Pennypincher’s cutie mark, a bronze-colored ¢ sign, and decided to fall back on the trio’s old standby. “Hey Mister Pennypincher, how’d you get yer cutie mark?”

The stallion’s grin wavered just a bit. “Oof, ah dunno if ya want ta be hearin’ that story, little miss. ‘S not one ’a my happier tales.” The stallion shifted into a more comfortable position, and Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle—now seeming to take a genuine interest in the Pennypincher—did the same. “Naw, suffice ta say the kindness ‘a strangers ain’t so easy to come by as it were when ah was yer age. ‘S fine by me, though—if’n there’s one thing ah know, it’s stretchin’ my bits. Couple ’a coppers ’n ah can eat fer a day. How ‘bout all ’a you? I know t’ain’t fair fer me ta ask yer story when ah ain’t given one ’a my own, but let an old stallion keep ‘is secrets, if’n ya please. Why’s yer little group here in Canterlot?”

Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. “And what makes you think we’re not from here?” she asked, a note of suspicion in her voice.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, but the three ’a ya don’t much look like ya been livin’ on the streets fer long, and yer little friend”—he indicated Apple Bloom with a forehoof—“is far too polite to ’a been raised ‘round here. Not nearly spoilt enough.”

“We’re from Ponyville,” piped up Sweetie Belle. “We came up here to try and find our cutie marks.”

“‘Cause after all—” said Apple Bloom.

“We are—” chimed in Scootaloo.

“The Cutie Mark Crusaders!” the trio shouted in unison, almost loudly enough to rupture Pennypincher’s eardrums, and more than loudly enough to draw confused stares from the ponies passing by on the adjacent sidewalk.

Pennypincher made a show of smacking his ears with a hoof, as if clearing them of water. “‘S mighty nice, ah s’pose. Whassat mean, e’zackly?”

“It means that the three of us try anything and everything to get our special talents!” said Scootaloo. “Stunts, odd jobs—you name it, and… and we’ve probably found out we’re not so great at it…”

A frown found its way onto Sweetie Belle’s face. “The problem we’ve been having is that there’s only so much to do in Ponyville,” she said. “We’ve tried just about everything there that we’d actually want a cutie mark in.”

“Yeah!” said Apple Bloom. “So then we decided ta come to the city and try to find some new stuff to do. It worked for mah sis when she still didn’t have her cutie mark.”

Pennypincher tapped a hoof to his chin. “Well, Canterlot ain’t really a stunt-friendly sorta place,” he said eventually. “And jobs? All ’a ya seem a bit young fer one ’a them, but… Hm. Maybe an appren’iceship’d be more up yer alley.”

“An apprenticeship?” asked Sweetie Belle, her tone midway between inquisitive and corrective.

“That’s right. A whole heap ’a folks ‘round here’d just love ta have a bunch ’a fillies like you learnin’ their trade. The work’d be on the rough side, and they wouldn’t be payin’ ya much more than ya’d need ta live by, but ya’d get ta try the job out. They’d even give ya a place ta spend the night. ‘S more than can be guar’nteed to a lotta folks my age.”

“That… actually doesn’t sound so bad, if it means a cutie mark,” said Scootaloo, staring off. Her two companions, on the other hand, looked shocked.

“Scoots, what are you talking about?” asked Sweetie Belle with a worried tone. “We’ve been gone for a day already, and everyone back in Ponyville must be wondering where we went. I’m fine with staying a bit longer, but an apprenticeship takes forever! Years, even!”

“Yeah, and besides,” said Apple Bloom, “Ah’m already sorta an appren’ice back on the farm. Ah can’t even imagine how mad AJ’d be if ah up and started bein’ an appren’ice someplace else. Not to mention how bad the farm’d get without me.”

Scootaloo’s gaze snapped back to her friends. “Well, yeah, I know all that!” she said, smiling. “What I meant was that we could, um… just say we wanted to apprentice and leave later! Y’know, just try a job out for a bit.”

The others thought about the idea for a few moments, and gave their approval. “It’s settled, then!” said Apple Bloom. “Cutie Mark Crusader… Um.” She deflated somewhat. “What’re we gonna be, again?”

“Well, have yerselves a look around!” said Pennypincher. “‘S plenty ‘a shops ta choose from.”

“Sounds good!” said Scootaloo, her excitement bubbling up again. The trio got up and began to depart the alleyway for the nearby crowds.

“Bye, now, little’uns!” Pennypincher called to the girls as they left. “If’n ya stay long enough ta get paid, ‘member who gave ya the idea!”

The three fillies waved goodbye to the bedraggled stallion as they bounded into Canterlot Square proper.

Chapter 2

“No luck with your group, ah take it?” Applejack’s voice held a note of hope, begging to be disagreed with. She and Rarity, both with bags under their eyes, looked expectantly across the café table at Pinkie Pie.

“Nope…” responded Pinkie, her face scrunched up. “This whole thing has just been no good at all! I mean, I knew something bad was going to happen yesterday—days when I wake up with a tummy ache are always bad. But, y’know, they’re usually bad ‘cause of the tummy ache.”

Rarity poked idly at her uneaten lunch, as she had been doing before Pinkie arrived. “Mm,” she said, “Fluttershy’s party has failed to turn up so much as a clue to where the girls might have gone, either.” The mare gave a tired sigh and rested her head on her forehooves. “Personally, I’ll be so relieved when we find them that I doubt I could even manage to give Sweetie a punishment for being so reckless.”

Applejack grumbled. “Speak fer yerself, missy.”

“…I was,” Rarity offered tiredly. “I said ‘personally’. And whatever do you mean? Won’t you be relieved?”

“‘A course!” said Applejack. “Ah’ll be so relieved ta have Apple Bloom back, ah’ll ground that troublemaker. She’ll be lucky if ah don’t tan her little hide, so you can bet she won't be leavin' mah sight!”

Pinkie Pie wore a frown, while Rarity suppressed a gasp. “Jeez, AJ,” said Pinkie, “that’s kinda rough. Well, at least let her come to the ‘We Found You Guys!’ party!”

Applejack knitted her brows. “Pinkie, ah know this ain’t the easiest thing fer y’all ta understand, but ya can’t go throwin’ a party fer every gosh-darned thing. If we give a kid a party every time they up an’ run off, what’s that tell ‘em?”

Pinkie tilted her head, and Applejack sighed.

“That tells ‘em that—”

“Girls! Hey, girls!”

Applejack, Pinkie, and Rarity looked over to see Twilight Sparkle.

The mare came trotting up to the café, a wide smile on her face. “I finally found you—I’ve got some good news!”

“What is it, darling?” asked Rarity. An instant later, she sat up bolt upright. “Have they found the Crusaders?”

Twilight stopped in her tracks, blinking. Her eyes widened. “Oh…” she said, looking to the ground. “I'm sorry, Rarity, but no.” She looked up again, smile back in place. “But it’s the next best thing! We have a lead!”

The others perked up as well. Rarity said, “Do tell.”

“A train conductor pulling into town today told us that three kids—one of them wearing a big, red bow—were found sneaking around the train. When they realized they’d been caught, they hopped off at the next stop. They’re in Canterlot!”

“R-really?” said Applejack. “Well, what’re we waitin’ fer? We’ve got a train to catch!”

Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle had quickly set about their task of finding a place of temporary employment. A great garden, pride of the city’s commercial district, decorated the center of Canterlot Square, while around the outer ring were a wide variety of shops. The trio had circled the sidewalk along this ring, considering each shop they passed in turn.

Occasionally they would spot a store that caught their interest, yet each time they had entered and asked to be taken on as apprentices, they had been turned down. A cobbler had told them that they were too old to start learning his trade. A clockmaker said without hesitation that they were too young. The barista at a café they had tried simply looked up and laughed at them the moment they walked in the door.

“This isn’t going so well…” muttered Sweetie Belle, just as the trio exited a shop that primarily sold musical instruments. The owner had actually seemed willing to take them on, just before Scootaloo had picked up and attempted to play a flute. The unfortunate instrument was now jutting out of a punctured drum.

“Well, don’t go blaming me,” said Scootaloo. “I mean, why’d she set up all that music stuff everywhere if ponies aren’t supposed to try it out?”

Her friends rolled their eyes and said nothing, continuing along the sidewalk.

Looking ahead, Apple Bloom slowed. She pointed a hoof towards a nearby clothing store. “How ‘bout that place?”

The others looked up, Scootaloo eyeing the shop. “I dunno,” she said. “Looks kinda girly to me.”

“No, it’s perfect!” said Sweetie Belle. “I help out Rarity at the Carousel Boutique all the time. I’ve got experience—they have to take us!”

The filly trotted happily towards the clothing outlet. Behind her, Scootaloo shrugged to Apple Bloom, and the two followed along momentarily. As the trio entered the building, however, the slowed to a stop. Every eye in the store was trained on a nearby customer.

“Ninety bits!? You cheat Trixie!”

“Ma’am, please! There’s no need to make a scene…”

A smattering of customers throughout the busy clothing store had ceased to search for purchases, now staring intently at a raucous, royal blue unicorn mare and the tired-looking burgundy stallion that was currently waiting on her. The mare, having taken a moment to realize how loud she had been, looked about sheepishly.

Noting her relative calmness, the attendant spoke again. “Ma’am, I assure you: ninety bits is a reasonable price, as it seems you’ve managed to select the finest wizard’s hat and cape in the entire store.”

At this, Trixie began to grin.

“Designer items such as this are appropriately expensive,” he continued, “but if they are out of your price range, we have a wide selection of cheaper alternatives.”

Trixie’s grin disappeared immediately. “The Great and Powerful Trixie does not dress herself in rags from the bargain bin!” she said, her voice raising once more. “Image is half of Trixie’s career! She will admit that she is a bit desperate to replace her old costume, but Trixie could never settle for anything less than perfection. After all, Trixie is perfection!” She lifted her chin and giving a grand sweep of her foreleg.

The stallion lowered his head, sighing audibly. “The price is what it is, ma’am…” he began again. “As I was telling you, the Balucci cape is ninety bits, and the Hafliger hat is another hundred and twe—”

“Do you mean to tell Trixie that ninety bits is the price of the cape alone!?” the mare cut in. “Are you insane? Why, what poor foal could possibly afford that here in this backwater town?”

“Ma’am, I would hardly call Canterlot a backwater town,” said the attendant with just a pinch of agression. “And again, the price is what it is. All together, you’re looking at a cost of two hundred and ten bits.”

After a few moments of silence, and another few of frustrated grumbling, the mare responded, “Alright, fine. Trixie will pay your ridiculous prices, but know this: from here on out, the Great and Powerful Trixie shall forever tell her fans to avoid the unscrupulous thieves of… What was the name of this establishment, again?”

“The Sumptuous Saddle, ma’am.”

“Yes! The villains of The Sumptuous Saddle!” shouted Trixie, rearing back in a triumphant manner and earning herself more stares.

The stallion sighed once again before leading her over to the counter.

The Crusaders finally broke the stare they had been directing at Trixie throughout the ordeal. “Who the hay is that pony?” asked Scootaloo.

“Ah dunno. Sure seems full ’a herself, though.”

“Oh, wait! I remember her,” said Sweetie Belle. “She was in Ponyville before. She’s that mare that Snips and Snails got thrown out of town.”

“Well, what’s she doing here?” asked Scootaloo.

“Buyin’ a hat, ‘a course. Don’t you listen?”

“No, I mean, like, isn’t she a magician or something? Do you think she’s in Canterlot to do a show?”

“Hm…” Sweetie Belle, her expression neutral, stared at the silver-blue tail disappearing out through the shop’s exit. “I have an idea. Come on, we need to follow her.”

Stepping out from the confines of the clothing store and into the open air of Canterlot, ‘The Great and Powerful’ Trixie shone in the strong daylight that reflected off of the silk-like texture of the new purchases. Myriad arcane designs—in metallic silver thread that matched the silvery blue of her mane—decorated the deep indigo fabric of her small, off-the-shoulder cape as it fluttered in a light morning breeze. Soft white gold trimmed its corners and the top of its collar, as well as the edges and tip of the similarly purple hat, which was now snugly fit atop Trixie’s head, concealing her horn.

Be it the radiance of the sun glinting off of her new attire or, as the mare might assert, the radiance of Trixie herself, she was garnering attention from the passersby.

‘A good start…’ she thought.

Trotting purposefully from underneath the store’s awning, Trixie made her way to the nearest corner of the Canterlot Square garden. A small area of greenery and flowers, it was far too improvised for her to call it a stage, but without any trees to obscure an onlooker’s view of the performance she was about to put on, she felt that it would serve her purposes nicely.

A professional, Trixie regretted having to work without a stage for the time being, her old transportable one having been lost in the same tragic event that had claimed her previous costume. Unfortunately, stage-equipped wagons and carriages are hard to come by—and, not to mention, very expensive. What’s worse, her recent purchases had left her all but destitute. With this thought in mind, Trixie used her magic to levitate a coin pouch out from within her mane.

‘Let’s see,’ she thought, magicking the pouch open and peering inside. ‘…Six… eight… ten… eleven gold bits and… five silvers.’

Trixie sighed, pulling the drawstrings taut once more and stowing the pouch away. ‘That settles room and board at the inn for the night, if only just. Tomorrow, however…’

The mare groaned this time. ‘A new stage of my own will be at least twelve hundred bits, and I won’t be caught dead with some bargain model. Until then, though… Ugh, I detest street magic. The audience never appreciates my prowess! At least, not in any way that covers expenses.’

Trixie gave a hard stare to the ponies that passed on the nearby sidewalk, a good majority of them dressed in finery, noses held high. ‘And the filthy little moneygrubbers in places like this are as bad as they come…’

She suppressed an urge to shout “sycophants” at the top of her lungs, well aware that no audience would pay her for insulting them. ‘Not yet, at least.’

Trixie surveyed the hustle and bustle that passed by her small bubble of nature. ‘Now, how to begin? I could give them the old “Come one! Come all!”… No, no. Without a stage, that might be a tad presumptuous, even for me. Perhaps the best way to begin…’—Trixie’s mouth grew into a smirk as she started to call some magic into her horn—‘is to begin.’

Focusing her magic on her hind hooves and her back, the blue unicorn felt the warm, telltale glow in her horn as she released the spell. It had been a basic balance spell, one that allowed her to stand and move about bipedally with ease. She grasped a bit of the grass beneath her front hooves and reared up, tearing the blades from the dirt as she stood upright. Trixie then held her hooves before her chest, lined up with and pointing at each othr, and with roughly a quarter-hooflength of space between them.

The mare called upon her magic again, grasping the grass in a telekinetic hold. The blades began carving a sluggish, cyclical path through the air between Trixie’s hooves, gaining speed as the unicorn forced more and more magic into her task. She wore a knitted brow, concentration clear as she searched for just the right rotation speed.

Trixie began a series of slow, showy, mystical, and altogether unnecessary hoof motions around the now-swirling blur of green. By this point, a small group of ponies had noticed what she was doing and stopped to watch. As Trixie adjusted the speed of the grass, a sharp whistle cut through the air, and a great many more ponies turned to look at the source of the noise.

A grin broke out on her face and, keeping the grass flying at the same speed, she willed each blade to break off and form its own circle. She started adjusting the blades’ speeds and orientations—and the circles’ sizes and shapes—individually. Soon, each distinctive whistling noise began to work in harmony with the others, and they formed a simple tune.

For a few minutes, this continued, the impromptu song never growing very complicated, but remaining light and catchy all the same.

As the song died down, Trixie shifted her magical focus yet again. As each blade of grass ceased to be a part of the tune, she sent it flying into the air, where it exploded into small-scale fireworks of green and white.

The final piece of grass was now circling around Trixie herself. Once the mare was certain that every eye in her audience was trained on the spinning blade, she slowed its orbit until it had almost halted, and then pumped a different spell into it than before, still gesticulating as she went.

The grass began to elongate. Soon, it was indistinguishable from a sizable green ribbon, spiralling up and around the invested magician. Then, all along the ribbon’s length, more growth occurred, outwards this time. The object now seemed like a fat, animated vine, with Trixie starting to move it away from herself, making it perform different aerial maneuvers. It did figure eights, loop-de-loops, and a great deal more spiralling, the her fore hoof moving in similar patterns, as though guiding it.

Channeling yet another spell into the ‘vine’, Trixie gave the entire length an otherworldly, ethereal glow. At the top, a gruesome head, snake-like with eyes of a deep red, suddenly formed. Still twisting it wildly through the air, Trixie looked down and sized up her audience, searching for the bravest-looking pony among them. Her eyes alighted on a young stallion towards the front whose face held an impassive expression. She smirked.

Trixie willed the ghostly snake forward, rapidly bringing it to within a hooflength of the apathetic stallion. The stallion’s eyes flew open wide as its jaws snapped menacingly at the air, and he tumbled backwards, yelping. The snake gave a long, rumbling hiss, and a sound of enraptured surprise left the mouths of the crowd at large.

Growing somewhat drained, and feeling that that was enough of a high note, Trixie decided to wrap up her performance. Pulling back the snake, she shot it straight upwards into the sky. A few moments later, there was an impressive explosion of magical sparks. Green, red, and white, they showered over the audience, disappearing just before they came in contact with any surface. The ‘Ooh’s and ‘Ah’s emanating from the gathered ponies gave Trixie the distinct feeling of a job well done.

Distracted as the crowd seemed to be, Trixie decided that now was the perfect opportunity to collect her pay. As she made to remove her hat, however, she could see some members of the audience walking off. ‘Hmph,’ she thought. ‘It’s always the rich ones! If they dare to pay me even half as poorly as I expect, this day shall certainly be the last I spend in such a wretched place…’

Chapter 3

The Friendship Express had pulled out from Ponyville Station over half an hour ago, and was well on its way to Canterlot. Few Ponyvillians having to commute, the Elements of Harmony found themselves populating an otherwise empty car, but the usual wonder of the rarely ridden train was lost on them. Even Pinkie Pie, who felt she should be bouncing off the walls, was merely staring out the window with a subdued smile.

“But why would they do this, Applejack?” asked Rarity, who was sharing a corner of the car with her fellow in loss. “Who gave them the ridiculous idea that they should simply run away from home?” The mare was spread languidly over what would normally be a two-pony seat, a few dried tears beneath her eyes.

“Ah don’t rightly know,” said Applejack, staring out her window, directly towards the rapidly approaching city. “Heck, it coulda been me an’ mah blasted cutie mark story. That’s not important right now, though—we’ve gotta find ‘em first.”

Rarity began to grind her teeth. “Ooh, I think I’m beginning to come around to your way of thinking, darling,” she said. “When we find them, Sweetie’s going to get quite the talking to. And I’ll make sure Mother and Father give her a matching punishment!”

“Ah hear that,” said Applejack. “It’s a lack ’a discipline, ah tell ya. Back when Mom ‘n Pop were around, ah’d never think 'a doin’ somethin’ like this. Heck, when ah went away ta Manehattan, ah still got permission. ‘S not like ah just ran off, y’know?”

Rainbow, who had been trying unsuccessfully to get some rest, couldn’t help but overhear. “I don’t know why you guys are so hung up on the fact that they ran off, honestly.”

Applejack turned to give the pegasus an icy look. “An’ what’s that s’posed to mean?”

“Oh!” Rainbow’s eyes widened and she sat up. “No, don’t get me wrong or anything—I want to find ‘em, too! I’m just saying running away from home is a pretty normal thing for kids, yeah? I did it. Hay, even Fluttershy did it!”

The mare in question caught Rainbow’s declaration from her own seat. “Um, Rainbow,” she said, tone a shade of apologetic, “I had myself emancipated and moved to Ponyville. There’s… It's different.”

“Pfft, whatever,” Rainbow said, waggling a hoof in Fluttershy’s direction. “Just think about it, though. All of us left home when we were kids.” She gestured to all six of them, her hoof halting when it reached Twilight. “Well, except Twilight, I guess, but still. Half of us never even went back, and we’re fine!”

Pinkie Pie bounced over from her window. “Dashie’s right!” she said. “Leaving the farm was the best thing I ever did! I might’ve made my family a little sad, which isn’t good, but I made so many friends in Ponyville that I don’t regret it even the teensiest little bit.”

Rarity propped herself up on her forelegs and cut back in, “Dears, the situation we face now simply cannot be compared to what you’ve been through! The three of you already had your cutie marks before you left home—you knew where it was you were going and what it was you were doing. The Crusaders do not.” She looked to the floor now, frown growing more and more as she continued to speak. “Sweetie is almost incapable of magic, as well, and I’m fairly sure little Scootaloo still doesn’t fly properly.”

Rainbow remained undeterred. “Well, think of it like this,” she said, crossing her arms, “you and AJ left home before you had your marks, but when you got back, you had ‘em! Those kids could’ve already found theirs, for all we know.”

Applejack leapt up from her seat, eyes fiery. “Rainbow, this’s serious! The last time they ran off ‘n did somethin’ stupid, did they come back with cutie marks? No! All they ever wind up doin’ is landin’ themselves in trouble, and we’ve gotta go get ‘em out of it!”

Twilight stood up from her seat as well, and quickly put herself between Applejack and Rainbow Dash. “Girls, don’t fight!” she said, foreleg outstretched to block Applejack’s path. “It won’t be long at all until we reach Canterlot. We’ll find your sisters and we’ll all head home together. Everything will be just fine, I’m sure of it.” Twilight capped off her statement with a confident smile directed towards Applejack and Rarity.

Breaking her gaze at the floor, Rarity looked up towards Twilight, her expression no less worried than it had been. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure as well…”

After the impromptu performance, Trixie used her magic to upend her newly purchased hat, and she approached her crowd. Many ponies, upon seeing the magician coming in their direction, began to walk nonchalantly away. Trixie scowled bitterly at them, even as she extracted bits from the ponies who had stayed behind—some out of generosity, and some because they had simply been too mesmerized by the show’s finale to make an escape.

When all was said and done, only three audience members remained: a trio of fillies with broad smiles aimed directly at Trixie. The showmare noted, sourly, that these three had not paid her a single copper.

“And what, pray tell, may the Great and Powerful Trixie do for you?”

After the mare had spoken, the trio gained a matching set of shocked expressions, before huddling together and whispering amongst themselves. Trixie rolled her eyes.

Several moments passed, the fillies’ discussion undecipherable at Trixie’s distance. After somewhere around the eighth time that one or more of the children popped their heads up and looked at her before zipping back down to continue talking, Trixie decided that she had had enough, and that her wagon was waiting for her. She turned showily, costly cape fluttering in the breeze, and started to walk through the Canterlot Square garden in the direction of Main Street.

Trixie heard a gasp from behind herself, followed by the almost panicked pitter-pattering of hooves on grass. “Hey, Miss Trixie! Wait up!” Trixie continued trotting along, not even sparing a glance at the filly addressing her. It was just a moment before said filly, yellow-furred and bow-clad, leapt into the showmare’s field of vision. “Ah said hold on a minute, would’ja please?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie has important matters to attend to, and can’t spare her time for three exuberant little deadbeats,” said Trixie, not breaking her stride. “Either become one of Trixie’s many wise and discerning customers, or kindly allow her to go about her business in peace.”

At that, the filly’s face fell, soon growing a little scowl. “Fine…” she said, reaching a hoof into the folds of her bow. After rummaging around for a short while, the little earth pony withdrew and held up an old silver bit—encrusted with something, it looked like. “This enough?”

Not having expected her ploy to work at all, Trixie fought to contain a grin as she levitated the coin into a pouch concealed within her tail. “It is acceptable,” she said, her expression neutral. “Just barely.” Now coming out of the garden and setting her hooves on the well-worn sidewalk of Main Street, Trixie silently despaired to find that her apparent fan’s friends had now caught up with them.

“Hey gals, she said she’d be fine with talkin’ to us now!” said the yellow filly, her excitement back in full force. Not a moment later, an orange pegasus and a white unicorn appeared before Trixie as well, the three cheerful fillies now walking in front of her down the street, eyes fixated on the magician.

It was the pegasus who spoke up next. “Your show was awesome!” Trixie rolled her eyes, but the filly didn’t seem to notice. “All those explosions, and that wicked snake—that colt was probably a hooflength away from having a heart attack!”

“Yeah!” said her bow-clad friend. “Ah’ve never seen somethin’ that mean-lookin’ up close before, an’ ah’ve been face-to-face with a cockadoodle!”

“Well, the lights and explosions were impressive, sure, but what really hit me was that sound trick!” lauded the little white unicorn. “It’s not often at all that you see magic used to make music without a real instrument. Where did you learn something like that?”

“Ah, Trixie developed that little parlor trick after T—” Trixie looked startled all of a sudden, forehoof frozen over her chest in a nonchalantly boastful pose. “…Er, after it came to her in a dream. Yes.”

Silence reigned over the group for a while. The number of ponies around the four thinned out as they went further and further from Canterlot Square. The fillies would trade meaningful looks with each other every now and again, as though they had more to say. Trixie noticed, but said nothing. ‘If they wish to give me a moment’s peace,’ she thought, ‘who am I to complain?’

Just as they turned collectively onto a sparsely populated side street, the bow-clad member of the group sighed. “Ah’m Apple Bloom, Miss,” she said.

“And I’m Scootaloo,” said the pegasus.

“My name is Sweetie Belle,” chimed in the prim white unicorn. Each of the three reached a foreleg up, apparently expecting a hoofshake.

“Charmed, Trixie supposes,” said the mare, wondering to herself why the fillies thought she should bother knowing their names. “As you are no doubt aware, Trixie is the Great and Powerful Trixie.” Her horn lit up beneath her hat, and she shook each offered hoof with a field of telekinesis.

A few more looks were traded over silent moments before Apple Bloom spoke again. “Where are you from, Miss Trixie?”

Trixie scrunched up her face. “Trixie hails from the far-off and mysterious land of Trixie’s Own Business. Why?”

Apple Bloom shifted her head down and stared at her hooves. “Oh, uh… no reason.”

Sweetie Belle bore a disheartened look, but Scootaloo was as chipper as before. The pegasus jumped right in with, “We’re from Ponyville!”

The mare sneered. “Ponyville?” she said. “Ugh, Trixie is no fan of that dreadful little place.”

“Hey!” said Scootaloo. “Ponyville’s an awesome place to live—Rainbow Dash lives there!”

Trixie stared upwards for a few moments. “Rainbow Dash… Rainbow D— Oh! Was that the name of that garish little pegasus that Trixie bested not ten minutes into her performance?”

Scootaloo growled beneath her breath. She made to leap at Trixie, her friends holding her back. “You take that back!” snapped the filly. “I swear to Celestia I’ll—”

“Don’t mind her, Miss Trixie,” said Sweetie Belle, a rictus grin on her face. She turned her head to face Scootaloo. “She’s just. Being. Silly.” Each word was punctuated with an ever-sharpening glare at the pegasus. Scootaloo soon calmed down, looking towards her friend apologetically.

Trixie now found herself genuinely curious about what this trio of fillies actually wanted with her. “What exactly is going on here?” she asked. “Why do the three of you seem so eager to trade life stories with Trixie? Beyond the obvious reason, of course.”

The fillies exchanged one last meaningful look amongst themselves. “Um, well…” started Scootaloo. “Y’see…” A look of exasperation found its way onto her face.

Scootaloo bumped shoulders with Apple Bloom, and the earth pony took over. “Well, the three of us got ta talkin’, and we decided…” Apple Bloom nodded to her comrades.

“We want to be your apprentices!” the trio shouted together. It was not an excited shout this time around, but a cautious one, as though they expected rejection. Still, it was no less loud.

For the third time in so many minutes, Trixie was stunned, and not because of the ringing in her ears. “Certainly not!” she said. “The last time that the Great and Powerful Trixie took on mere foals as assistants—assistants, mind you, not apprentices—she was run out of town! That isn’t a mistake that Trixie will be making twice.”

“Miss Trixie,” said Apple Bloom, “Snips ‘n Snails ain’t exactly the brightest-burnin’ wicks in the wax. Us three’d make fine appren’ices, ah think!”

“Yeah,” said Scootaloo, “just give us a chance!”

“Look here, Scooterloose,” said Trixie. The filly scowled. “It isn’t going to happen. The Great and Powerful Trixie is a very busy mare. She won’t even be in Canterlot for very much longer.”

“We don’t need this to be permanent,” offered Sweetie Belle. “We just want to get our cutie marks and go home.”

The mare seemed to take a close look at the fillies, as though for the first time. “Hm. Trixie hadn’t even noticed. Still, that changes nothing. Trixie, though it pains her to say it, is not as financially stable as she once was. Feeding three growing fillies as well as herself is simply beyond Trixie’s means for the time being.”

“We won’t eat much!” promised Scootaloo. “And besides, we’ll be your apprentices! That means we can get bits with what you teach us.”

“And that is another thing,” said Trixie. “What is it exactly that you expect Trixie to teach you? Despite her vast array of magical knowledge, pegasus and earth pony magic is far from Trixie’s forte. Certainly, she would be more than capable of showing some effects to little Sweetbell, but what of yourself and Apple Bloom?”

Sweetie Belle grumbled under her breath while Apple Bloom smirked at her companions. Apple Bloom turned back to Trixie. “Well,” she said, “yer main thing is that yer a showmare, right? Couldn’t ya teach us how to be flashy and everything? Scootaloo can do plenty ’a tricks already, and ah… ah’ll do somethin’, ah guess.”

Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo nodded excitedly, grinning towards Trixie. The mare now began to visibly grind her teeth together. “Bah!” she shouted. “This is all irrelevant! Trixie receives nothing at all from this arrangement in the first place, so why should she bother taking you on?”

The fillies, for once, seemed to have no answer. They simply stared at one another, hoping one of them would come up with something.

“Because…” Sweetie Belle tried. “Because we need you?”

Trixie merely chuckled.

The group was now coming to the end of the street. The area was relatively industrial when compared to the commercial district surrounding Canterlot Square; the trio spotted a number of lumber yards and mills, as well as masonry workshops, small factories, and other supply businesses. The building that the Crusaders and Trixie were now approaching, however, appeared to be a poorly trafficked inn. A number of simple, canvas-covered wagons were parked out front.

Trixie walked up to one such wagon, this one seeming newer, yet lower quality than the others. After depositing a number of pouches that had been hidden within her mane and tail into the wagon, along with her new outfit, she turned to face the fillies that had come with her.

“Here is what’s going to happen,” Trixie said sternly. “Trixie is going to enter this inn, pay for a meal and a room, have her dinner, and then go to sleep. The three of you are welcome to come in, but you will not be with Trixie. From this point on, whatever you do, you do on your own. What Trixie would suggest, however, is that you go back home. Canterlot is a difficult sort of place for copperless fillies—Trixie should know. Now, Trixie wishes you luck, and she bids you adieu.”

The showmare spun a hoof in the air and gave a bow before promptly turning and heading towards the inn’s entrance, leaving three shell-shocked fillies behind.

Scootaloo was the first to speak. “No way. I’m not gonna give up like that! There’s gotta be something we can do for her that’ll show her she should make us apprentices.”

“Like what?” asked Sweetie Belle.

The trio turned their heads to look all around the area. Eventually, all three sets of eyes settled on a nearby lumber yard, and the seemingly abandoned toolbelt that rested on a bench therein. As one, the fillies looked back behind themselves, at Trixie’s wagon. All three grinned brightly.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Scootaloo.

“Be more corny, Scoots,” said Sweetie Belle, “but yes! I’ll find some paint.”

“Gals, no offense, but let me handle most of the work, ‘kay?”

Chapter 4

The Elements’ chosen hotel was—as Rarity had described it the night before—the very definition of opulence. In its dining area, chandeliers of crystal and silver hung from the high, vaulted ceiling. A grand carpet with designs of overtly exotic origin covered the pristinely white, ceramic-tiled floor. Scented candles sat burning at each table, more for the smell than the light, what with the morning sun shining beyond the room’s silken curtains.

Rainbow Dash, seated on a mahogany chair, a fine china plate before her, stared disdainfully at her food.

“An egg in a fancy cup?” she grumbled. “That’s the sorta thing that passes for breakfast around here? Where’s the sugar? Where’s the taste? Hay, where’s the rest of it?”

“Um, Rainbow,” said Fluttershy, seated across from her, “you should really hurry and eat up. You know how hard it was to convince Applejack to let us take a breakfast break…” Fluttershy then gave an almost inaudible gasp. “Oh, but not that I think any less of her! It’s alright, consideri—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Rainbow cut in. “I’m just saying. It’s no wonder these Canterlot ponies are always so stuck-up—they’ve probably never had a decent meal!”

“Rainbow, that’s… that’s a little mean of you to say…” said Fluttershy, rubbing her hooves together. “They were nice enough to give us a discount on our rooms, after all. They must have seen how worn out we were after all that searching.”

“Don’t give me that,” said Rainbow. “The guy at the counter got one look at Twilight and just started scrambling to make her happy. With the connections that mare’s got, I’m surprised he didn’t give us the rooms for free.”

Fluttershy frowned at her fellow pegasus. Before she could respond, however, she looked past Rainbow to see that Applejack was now entering the dining area. Fluttershy returned to her food (a small mound of blueberries and a single slice of apple), downing it hastily.

Applejack spotted the pair and walked over, hooves clip-clopping loudly on the tiles. “Are y’all just ‘bout finished yet?” she asked, fidgeting where she'd stopped.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. Tying the attached string of a hoof-spoon that she’d be supplied with to her foreleg, she promptly smashed the top of her egg’s shell off. Maneuvering the spoon beneath the remainder of the egg, Rainbow scooped it up and lifted it to her lips, sucking down its contents. She licked the shell’s interior searchingly for a few moments, then sighed.

“Now I am,” Rainbow said. “I guess.”

Applejack’s expression darkened. “Well, good, then,” she said. “Ah need y’all ta do yer flyin’ around thing again today.”

Fluttershy's eyes shot up from her now-empty plate, suddenly looking fearful. “But…” Her eyes darted around, as though searching for something to say at one of the other patrons’ tables. “But that’s what we did yesterday,” she said. “Um, are you sure that we have to do that again?”

“See?” said Rainbow, pointing her hoof-spoon at Fluttershy. “Even Shy’s calling you out! You had us flying around this place from the second we got off the train until it got dark, and we didn’t find a thing. It’s a stupid plan.”

Fluttershy wilted in her seat. “No, I’m just—”

“Don’t sass me, Rainbow!” said Applejack, her tone that of an irate mother. “There’s not a whole lot else I could have y’all doin’ besides flyin’, now is there?”

Once more, Rainbow found herself sighing. “Fine,” she said. “Fluttershy, I’ll meet you back here in a couple of hours, when this doesn’t work.”

When she had awoken this morning, Trixie had taken stock of her gathered bits. She found that she hadn’t earned much from the previous day’s performance, and while there was more than enough for her to purchase a breakfast from the inn that served as her temporary residence, there still wasn’t a lot.

Keeping this in mind, and deciding that she wasn’t yet hungry enough to spend what she had on food, Trixie gathered up what little belongings were not kept in her wagon, checked out of the inn, and headed outside to the parking area.

It was at this point that the her eyes widened dramatically, and her complexion grew slightly paler. About twenty hooflengths away from her stood… her wagon.

Or, at least, Trixie thought it was her wagon.

Looking about herself, the mare could see that the spot where she had parked was indeed empty, and there now stood a new wagon outside of an adjacent lumber yard, surrounded by scraps of wood, tools, and empty paint cans.

This vehicle was smaller than average, as hers had been, but that was where the similarities seemed to end. Trixie’s had been a simple canvas-covered wagon, while this one was a four walled, gable-style affair, solid pine if the scent in the air was to be believed. In this regard it reminded the mare very much of the wagon that she had lost to Ponyville. Something made this particular wagon decidedly different from her old one, however.

It was very intense shade of pink. Remarkably so, some would say. Painfully so, most others. Trixie felt herself almost vomit up the breakfast that she hadn’t eaten.

It was decorated, too. Patterns, some white and flowery in nature, and others red and fiery—all of them crude—were painted all along the walls of the newly resurrected wagon. White-painted moulding was present along the edges, as well, though Trixie almost didn’t notice, as it was fairly well done, by comparison.

As she walked around to the far side, Trixie was surprised to find that there was actually a retractable stage resting between what would, on the inside of the wagon, be the floorboards. It wasn’t actually attached to the wagon in any way, and it was really more like one half of a table with folding legs than an actual stage, but its presence impressed her regardless.

‘If nothing else, these three are exceptionally hard workers…’ the mare thought to herself.

Trixie came around the back of the wagon to a simple plywood door that had been added there. ‘I wonder who I’ll find inside…’ She opened the door as slowly and quietly as she could, though it still creaked on its apparently rusted hinges, no younger despite their fresh coat of paint.

There, on the floor of the wagon, illuminated by the sawdust-filled morning light filtering in through the open doorway, slept three fillies. They were curled into little, furry balls, patches of their colorful coats crusted with dried paint. After staring for a few moments, Trixie gave a defeated sigh.

Backing away from the wagon, the mare trotted towards the inn and entered it once more. A few minutes later, she re-emerged, two plates trailing behind in a field of her carnation-pink magic—one was filled with scrambled eggs and hash browns, the other piled with toast and waffles.

Reaching her vehicle, Trixie withdrew a pair of cloths, wrapped the plates of food up, and slipped them in through the door. As an afterthought, the mare also drew her coin pouch out from her hair, jostling it with her magic and listening to her last two copper bits tink together tinnily. A frown on her face, she tossed it into the wagon as well.

Shutting the almost flimsy plywood thing, Trixie walked to the front of the wagon. At its shafts, she donned the wagon’s harness, tightening the belt around her waist. She then began to make her way towards Canterlot’s northern exit gate via the scenic route, devoid of both the crowds and the wagon-rattling, filly-waking cobblestone streets the city was known for.

Fluttershy had never kept it a secret that she didn’t care much for flying. Whereas Rainbow Dash had always had a penchant for stunts and thin air, Fluttershy found that she could only be truly comfortable when all four of her hooves were on—or at least no more than a few hooflengths above—the ground. However, it wasn’t only for a fear of heights that she disliked being high up.

‘They’re… they’re all looking at me…’

Her eyes wide open in a combination of fear and attentiveness, Fluttershy searched the ground for any sign of Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, or Scootaloo, all while trying not to look directly at any of the numerous ponies staring up at her.

Birds and pegasi both were a rare sight in the skies above the high-altitude city of Canterlot, and though she was a bit too far above the crowds to actually see them observing her, she could feel their stares.

‘Just calm down,’ the pegasus thought. ‘They’re staring with you, not at you… Oh. No, wait…’

Fluttershy had been at it for hours, but felt that she had covered little ground; Canterlot was humongous in her eyes, certainly a great many times larger than Ponyville. Though she’d visited in the past, she had never truly grasped the scope of it.

Deciding to find out just how much of the area there still was for her to search through, the pegasus pushed herself higher into the atmosphere. Cold winds began to buffet her to and fro, forcing her to struggle to stay in flight. The air was notably thinner, as well, and the mare began to recall some of the reasons she had left her old home of Cloudsdale.

Now, as she looked down on Canterlot from above, its citizens little more than specks of color between the indistinct shapes of the city’s buildings, Fluttershy shivered pitifully. She began to think, despite her hopeful side, that their efforts to find the Crusaders might be in vain.

This thought scared the timid pegasus far more than the ponies watching her from below.

‘I should go and meet up with everypony else,' Fluttershy thought. ‘I’m sure Twilight can come up with a better way of looking for them.'

As Fluttershy turned to head back towards the Elements’ hotel, another thought occurred to her. ‘Oh my. What if… What if they aren’t even in Canterlot anymore?’ she thought, speeding up as best she could. ‘Maybe we could ask the gate guards if they’ve seen any fillies leaving the city.’

When Apple Bloom awoke, it was to a world of rumbling and darkness. Bleary, and with dreams still nipping at her hooves, confusion began to drive her into a panic. As the fog in her mind cleared, however, everything from the day before came back to her.

“Ah told ya we should ‘a put in a window…” the filly grumbled to no one in particular.

Apple Bloom fumbled around in the dark for anything she could use as a light source. At long last, one of her forelegs came into contact with what felt like the glass and metal of a lantern, but not before the rest of her bumped into something soft and squishy.

“Nngh,” groaned Scootaloo. “No, dun’ go yet, I… Wha… Huh? What?” The interior of the wagon lit up suddenly, the lantern flaring to life. “WAH!”

Seeing Scootaloo jump back from the light, Apple Bloom rolled her eyes. “Aw, calm down, ya big chicken.”

Scootaloo scowled, but her response was preempted by a contented yawn from Sweetie Belle, now waking up as well.

“Mmm…” the unicorn almost moaned. She raised her head, stretching out the kinks in her neck. “What’s—” Another yawn came, and the filly held a fore hoof in front of her mouth until it passed. “What’s that smell? It’s really nice…”

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo took a whiff of the air, soon catching on to something delicious hidden beneath the scent of pine. They tracked the smell to a pair of cloths resting by the wagon’s entrance. The pair of them each reached a hoof out, lifting the cloths up.

“Breakfast!” Eyes dancing, the trio happily began to dig in, tiredness all but forgotten.

Scootaloo eyed the rumbling walls of the wagon as she ate, noting them for the first time. Mouth full of waffles, she said, “Ya know whaf fiff meanf?”

Sweetie made it a point to swallow before responding, trying to keep from snickering. “What what means?”

Scootaloo motioned all around with a foreleg. “Fha ragon moofin’”—she downed her bite—“I mean, the wagon moving, ‘n all. Trixie’s taking it for a spin around Canterlot! She must’ve liked it.”

“Ah hope so,” said Apple Bloom. “Woulda been a lotta work for nothin’ if she didn’t.”

Sweetie Belle looked around the freshly built vehicle. “I still can’t believe you did all of this, Apple Bloom.”

The earth pony blushed. “Aw, c’mon,” she said, “y’all did just as much as ah did.”

“Suuure,” said Sweetie, giving her friend a look halfway between admiration and disbelief, “if by ‘did just as much’, you mean ‘did your best to stay out of my way while you all painted’.”

“Yeah,” said Scootaloo from the other side of the wagon, having wandered to Trixie’s belongings after finishing her breakfast. “You were bangin’ away at this thing like a maniac all night! I mean, it’s got nothing on my flames, but you worked crazy hard.”

Apple Bloom’s face grew redder, and Sweetie Belle did her best to hold back giggles.

“Man, Trixie sure doesn’t have much stuff, does she?” said Scootaloo, flipping idly through a book on magic, one of the only four in the wagon.

Curious, Sweetie Belle worked her way over to Scootaloo. Aside from the books, the lantern that currently lit the wagon, and the wizard’s hat and cape that the trio had seen Trixie purchase, all that the showmare seemed to possess—excepting the wagon itself—was a single, small cauldron and a number of pouches.

Sweetie hefted one such pouch, noting that the fabric was a soft, grey velvet. To her disbelief, another thing she observed was that, despite the fact that the little bag seemed to be filled to the brim with something, it was almost weightless. The unicorn shook the pouch lightly, and heard definite sounds of clinking and clattering from within. Even more intrigued, she gripped the top in her teeth and opened it up.

Within the velvety folds of the pouch were what appeared to be a number of small, ash-colored marbles. They glowed softly in the dim light of the wagon and, as Sweetie had already discovered, they seemed to weigh next to nothing. “What… are these?”

Suddenly, a crash came from the wagon’s front, the entire vehicle lurching upwards. Sweetie Belle’s head jerked forward, her horn finding its way into the pouch. The next thing she knew—and the last thing she remembered—was an unholy, roaring blast sounding in her ears.

‘Going down the mountain. This is more like it.’

Though she had left Canterlot only an hour ago, Trixie already found herself past the halfway point to the base of the mountain it jutted from. The grade of the winding path she was taking was almost too steep for comfort, and the mare found herself making a conscious effort not to move too quickly. ‘Can’t have my wagon go careening off the path with me attached, now can we?’

Despite the tension she felt, Trixie couldn’t help but find the view from her pathway breathtaking. Spread out before her, between the sparsely placed trees nearby, was much of the northern half of Equestria, and then some.

To the west, an expanse of yellows, oranges, and browns marked a forest getting ready for fall. ‘The White Tail Woods, perhaps,’ Trixie mused. Far above the treetops, the mare spotted a large grouping of clouds that swept lazily through the air, but remained absolutely still otherwise. A few trickles of rainbow fell through their bottoms. ‘And that must be Cloudsdale.’

Turning north, Trixie’s eyes met with rolling green plains, a latticework of shimmering rivers, and a range of mountains much smaller than the one she currently descended. ‘Not much to speak of out there, if I recall my geography lessons correctly. Oh, but wait…’

Trixie narrowed her eyes and stared at the horizon, barely able to spot the white silhouette of snow-capped peaks. ‘That might well be the Crystal Kingdom, or maybe the Griffon Kingdom. I should travel to the land of the griffons one day. A bit of quality entertainment might be just the thing they need, if they are even half as boorish as I’ve heard.’

Trixie turned now to the east. Rows of mountains were there, a long valley forming a pathway between them. Past the mountains, the valley seemed to spread out into open fields. She thought she could make out a collection of large buildings beyond one area of the plains, but the details eluded her.

‘That could be any number of cities,’ Trixie thought. ‘Fillydelphia or Manehattan, most likely. Perhaps even Trottingham.’

The unicorn turned her attention back to the path before her, coming around yet another curve. She grinned, as she could now clearly see Canterlot’s mountain’s base, and the small village that resided there at its northern end. ‘And this,' she thought happily, ‘must be Dappleton.’

Trixie allowed herself to pick up the pace, with her short-term goal in sight. Hooves aching from the downhill hike, the mare shut her eyes and sucked in a lungful of the crisp mountain air, letting out a satisfied sigh.

Eyes still closed, Trixie failed to notice a large rock jutting out of the dirt path, the wagon’s wheel rapidly approaching it. A loud, wooden thump came from behind her as the rock made contact, and her eyes snapped open.

Next, though, came the sound of an explosion.

Trixie’s head spun back. She spotted the plywood door of her wagon at least ten hooflengths away, blown off its hinges. Smoke poured out into the air from the wagon itself.

“Oh, sweet Celestia, no!” the showmare cried out, eyes wide and fearful. “Trixie’s outfit!”

Chapter 5

When Sweetie Belle awoke, it was to the sound of thunder. Bitter cold raindrops pelted her face, lightly stinging her slowly opening eyes. Above the filly’s head was a lone storm cloud, only a few hooflengths up. But the moment her eyes met with it, the rain halted, and the cloud disappeared.

Groaning, Sweetie looked slowly about herself. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo lay nearby, surrounded, as she was, by puddles of rainwater on the otherwise sun-baked dirt of the mountain path. The two were gulping down air almost feverishly, their breaths punctuated now and again by a rough cough.

Sweetie spotted Trixie nearby as well, nodding to herself and looking satisfied, the glow of a recently cast spell fading from her horn. As the mare turned and entered the group’s wagon, Sweetie made to say something, but felt a tickle niggling at the back of her throat. Soon she, too, was coughing, her throat starting to feel raw.

A short while later, the filly made another attempt. “What happened?” she wheezed, voice cracking and eyes glistening.

Trixie poked her head out of the still-smoking wagon to stare at Sweetie Belle. “A budding unicorn that’s never set off a mana marble before?” she asked. “You must be pulling Trixie’s leg.”

Sweetie stared right back, eyebrow raised. “A ma…” She trailed off with a wheeze, before coughing fitfully. Recovered, she began again, “A mana marble? What?”

Trixie returned the filly’s look of bewilderment. “Correction: a budding unicorn that has not only never used mana marbles, but has never heard of them?” She almost sounded disgusted. “What sort of backwater town did you… Oh, right, Trixie remembers now.” She disappeared back into the wagon.

Apple Bloom, throat cleared up, rolled onto her hooves and stood. She trotted over to and around the hastily wheel-stopped vehicle, surveying the damage. The filly noted—with no small amount of pride—that there was none, aside from the door having been blasted off its old, rusted hinges. “Ah told ‘em they should ‘a let me make some new ones,” she muttered, “but nooo, metalworkin’ is too daaangerous.”

Reemerging from the wagon in short order, Trixie carried her books and Canterlotian outfit on her back, levitating the rest of her possessions out behind her. Piling everything up—with the outfit placed on top, almost reverently—the showmare turned back around, horn aglow. There was a rushing of wind from within the wagon, and soon the remaining smoke had been sucked out of it and into the open air.

“Back to the matter at hoof,” said Trixie, rounding on Sweetie Belle and glaring hard. “You may very well be as ignorant as you claim, but no matter!”

Sweetie scooted away from the mare, eyes wide.

“That was half of Trixie’s supply of smoke spells you set off! What do you have to say for yourself?”

“S-spells? What?” said Sweetie, voice still cracking.

Trixie’s gaze softened somewhat, and she huffed. “Mana marbles are spells. Trixie supposes that if you are to be her apprentices, that may have to be the first lesson when we reach our first stop. Just imagine if you had poked your little horn around in Trixie’s fireworks spells!”

Scootaloo’s eyes widened. “Um, guys?…” she called. The others turned to see her looking worriedly about herself. Trees and shrubs, open sky and living earth, stark nature with not a sign of civilization surrounded the group in all directions. “Where are we right now?”

A gasp, followed by more coughing. Sweetie Belle cleared her throat, and managed, “This isn’t Canterlot.”

“Well…” said Trixie, her expression blank, “of course it isn’t? Trixie’s company has been heading towards Dappleton for over an hour now.”

“What?” the fillies shouted in the same instant.

Trixie’s face scrunched up, almost a scowl. “It is as Trixie has said. Her company left Canterlot over an hour ago, and has been travelling down its mountain since.”

Silence reigned, and Trixie noted the fillies’ slack-jawed expressions. “Where is the issue?” she said. “Trixie told you before that she was leaving Canterlot. You all made it sound as though you wanted to come along. Really, you should feel honored!”

Sweetie Belle found her voice. “You didn’t say you were leaving the very next day!”

“Trixie hadn’t thought she'd needed to!” the mare shot back, head held high. “She has her new outfit, so why should she have stayed any longer in that awful place? Rich ponies are far too attached to their bits for Trixie’s liking.”

“B-but, wait…” Sweetie looked searchingly at her two friends. “Wasn’t the plan to apprentice in Canterlot for a bit and then go home once we had our cutie marks?”

Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Plan?” she asked. “Trixie does not recall being asked about any plans. Trixie is a traveling prestidigitator, and you three are, apparently, her apprentices. The implication is that there will be traveling, and that you will be involved, no?”

“Um,” said Apple Bloom, “would y’all excuse us fer just a minute, Miss Trixie?”

Trixie shrugged and began to load up the wagon once more. The Cutie Mark Crusaders gathered together some distance away and huddled up.

Sweetie spoke first. “This wasn’t what we talked about doing.”

“Yeah,” said Apple Bloom, nodding. “Ah might ‘a been fine with spendin’ a few days, maybe a week tryin’ to get our cutie marks in Canterlot. This ain’t the same thing.”

Scootaloo bit her lip, but stayed silent.

“Exactly,” said Sweetie Belle. “The way I see it, we might have already taken this too far. Everypony back home is sure to be worried about us by now. Maybe we should just go back to Canterlot and take the next train home.”

Apple Bloom pondered for a moment, frowning, and then nodded once again. “Ya have a point… We should prob’ly head back. Next time we do somethin’ like this, we’ll have a solid plan—and we’ll have plenty ‘a time to come up with one, knowin’ how long they like ta ground us for this sorta thing.”

Scootaloo was biting her lip so hard that she was beginning to draw blood.

Apple Bloom left the huddle. “Miss Trixie?” she called. The mare in question looked up from her belongings. “Do you suppose y’all could take us back to Canterlot? We’re thinkin’ it might be best to head home.”

“Back to Canterlot?” she asked, with no small amount of incredulity. “Of course Trixie won’t do such a thing.”

“What?” asked Sweetie. “Why not?”

Trixie pointed a hoof behind the Crusaders. They turned as one, at least a mile of steep, uphill pathways meeting their eyes. “The base of the mountain is not far now,” she said, “but Canterlot might as well be days away. Coming down has taken it out of Trixie—she would not exhaust herself going back up immediately afterwards. Not that Trixie wants to go back up in the first place.”

“Okay…” Sweetie Belle said, sighing heavily as she looked back to the mountain. “I suppose we’ll just have to head up on our own.”

Trixie’s eyes widened. “You most certainly will not!” she said, authority in her voice. “Whether Trixie likes it or not, she is somewhat responsible for you three now. She can’t have you scaling a mountain only to tire yourselves before you’re even halfway up. Once night falls, the paths are no longer safe.”

“Hold up,” said Scootaloo, raising a hoof, “I’m stuck back on ‘responsible for us’. Last time we talked, you didn’t want anything to do with us.”

Trixie held her chin high. “The Great and Powerful Trixie does nothing by half measures.” She swept a hoof at the wagon. “You declared and subsequently proved to her your intentions—both quite loudly, she should say—and so you now find yourselves on the road and firmly sheltered beneath her proverbial wing. Simple as that.”

“So…” said Apple Bloom, “what’re ya sayin’? That we’re stuck with ya?”

Trixie scoffed, but couldn’t quite manage to hide a frown. “Certainly not. If you’ve changed your whimsical little minds about wanting to be Trixie’s apprentices, she does not care to have you accompany her any longer than you have to. Come now, Dappleton is nearby. You can all send your families a letter and have them pick you up.”

“Letters!” said Sweetie. “Oh, that would have been smart… We didn’t even say goodbye to anypony—we could have sent them a letter anytime we wanted!”

Trixie nodded, chest thrust forward proudly as though she’d been complimented. “Send one when Trixie’s company reaches town. Trixie was planning to stay there for a day or two in any case. She will wait with you until your guardians arrive.”

As Trixie made to hitch herself back up to the now-loaded wagon, Sweetie Belle dashed up and hugged one of the mare’s forelegs. “Thank you for your help, Miss Trixie.”

Trixie stared down at the filly wrapped around her leg. “Yes, yes. Trixie is the height of benevolence.” She lifted her hoof and waggled it, but Sweetie managed to hold on. The mare struggled to keep herself from smirking. “You have her permission to release her leg now.” Sweetie gave one last squeeze before letting go and walking back over to her friends.

Trixie, now properly hitched, began walking down the path once more, the fillies following behind. Apple Bloom turned to Sweetie Belle, and said in a weary voice, “This trip could ‘a gone a whole lot better…”

Sweetie nodded. “I thought for sure we’d have our cutie marks after this. It always seemed like everypony in my family had to go someplace else and try new things to get theirs.”

“Same fer mine,” said Apple Bloom. “Ah mean, there’s prob’ly somethin’ to it. Ah’m willin’ ta give it another try some other time, if we can just work out a plan.”

“No stowing away on trains,” Sweetie declared.

“We work out where we’re gonna stay before we leave,” said Apple Bloom.

Sweetie continued, “We pick a place to go and we stick to it.”

Raising her head, Scootaloo finally saw fit to unbury her teeth from her bottom lip.

Apple Bloom started, “We—”

“Guys?” Scootaloo’s companions turned their heads to her. “What if… What if I said I wanted to keep going?”

“What?” asked Sweetie Belle. “What do you mean ‘keep going’?”

Scootaloo’s brows furrowed. “I mean right here, right now. I don’t want to go home yet.”

“We already talked about this, Scoots,” said Sweetie, frowning. “Canterlot is already pretty far from Ponyville. We can’t go even further—think how long it would take us to get back.”

“Sweetie Belle’s right,” said Apple Bloom. “Everypony back home is prob’ly worried sick about us. And I know AJ’s gonna be mad as hay already. Just think how everypony must be feelin’, Scoots. Think about yer m—”

“Look,” Scootaloo cut in, “we have a huge opa— oppera—… Um.”

“‘Opportunity’,” said Sweetie.

Scootaloo scowled at her friend. “We have a big chance here! We could go on an adventure like Rainbow Dash or your sisters are always doing—there’d be no way we wouldn’t get our cutie marks after having one of those!”

The frown on Sweetie’s face deepened. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea, Scoots. My sister’s told me the kinds of things she’s had to do, and it always sounds really dangerous. I don’t think I’d even know what to do in a fight against some raging Tartarusbeast or evil dictator.”

“Ferget the danger,” said Apple Bloom. “Ah got responsibilities. Ah can’t just leave the farm fer a month to go fight evil stuff. AJ’s always saying how much trouble ah’d get in fer that sorta thing.”

A moment passed, silent but for the sounds of hooffalls on the well-trod path and the chirping of nearby birds and insects. The little pegasus began to bite her lip again. “I hate to do this…” she said, “but I’m invock— invocal—”

Sweetie Belle sighed. “‘Invoking’.”

“Oh, whatever!” Scootaloo shouted, tossing a hoof up. “I’m using Cutie Mark Commandment Number Three.”

Sweetie gasped, her hoof flying up to cover her mouth.

Apple Bloom looked between her companions. “An’ that was which, again?”

Sweetie Belle answered, “‘Once set upon the crusade, thou shalt not place above the acquisition of thine mark any of life’s everyday trivialities.’ It was one of Scootaloo’s.”

Scootaloo nodded vigorously. “Yeah, that one! ‘You can’t just drop crusading right in the middle so you can go do regular stuff.’ You guys have to keep going!”

“Now that ain’t fair!” Apple Bloom shot, all but scowling. “Ya can’t just up and say somethin’ like that.”

“Yeah,” said Sweetie, “I don’t think you understand the commitment here, Scoots. If we actually go through with this like you want, we would be gone from Ponyville for forever—maybe even a couple of weeks! And that’s only if something doesn’t eat us.”

Scootaloo’s little wings flared. “Oh, when I want to use Number Three to have us go do something awesome, I get rejected, but when you”—Scootaloo pointed a hoof at Apple Bloom—“use Number Two to make us do your sister’s job for a week, and you”—the hoof moved to Sweetie Belle—“use Number Six to make us do things that you won’t even let me bring up anymore, everything’s fine?”

A guilty frown wormed its way onto Apple Bloom’s face, and Sweetie Belle’s glare threatened to burn holes in the dirt below her.

“Guys, seriously,” Scootaloo continued, “you’re making this out to be a much bigger deal than it really is.”

“Scootaloo, it is a big deal,” said Apple Bloom, her tone more even than before. “Ponies’ll be worryin’ about us.”

Scootaloo groaned. “They always worry about us,” she said. “Look, that letter thing was a good idea, right? Why can’t we just do that? Send letters as we go?”

Sweetie Belle lifted her head back up. “I guess that isn’t the worst idea—it would keep everypony from worrying quite so much. But Scootaloo, are you really sure you want us all to do this? ‘Honorbound’ or not, do you really want to be away from home for that lo—”

“Yes,” said Scootaloo, voice as firm as the look she was giving.

Another weary sigh left Sweetie’s throat. A moment later, “If you’re really this set on it, I guess I’ll give you this one. But when we get back, the Commandments are getting amended.”

Apple Bloom’s frown persisted. “Guess ah don’t have much of a choice, huh?” She looked to her friends’ faces, Scootaloo’s expression still hard, but with a glint of eagerness in her eyes, and Sweetie Belle’s looking flat, and perhaps a touch regretful. “Ah can’t believe ah’m sayin’ this, but fine.”

Scootaloo’s stern face instantly gave way to an ecstatic grin. “So that’s that!” she affirmed. “We’re going! You two can think up what you want to say in your first letters—I already pretty much have mine in mind—and we’ll write ‘em up and send ‘em off once we get to Dappleville. Or whatever Trixie called it.”

“Oh, right,” said Apple Bloom. “Speakin’ ‘a Miss Trixie…”

The fillies nodded to one another, heading around to the front of the wagon. Trixie was there, pulling at a steady pace, a bored look on her face.

“Miss Trixie?” said Sweetie Belle, tone apprehensive.

Trixie shook her head lightly, as if pulling herself from her thoughts, and looked to the fillies. “Mm? What do you require of Trixie?”

All but hopping along giddily, Scootaloo answered, “We changed our minds! We’re gonna go along with you.”

The mare wore a slight grimace. “Really?” she asked. “And you do mean that? Trixie would prefer that if you’re going to stop, you stop now, lest Trixie’s company arrive at its next destination with all of you even more homesick.”

Though Apple Bloom wore a scowl, she said, “We promise. We’ll be goin’ along with ya fer a couple ‘a weeks, or at least till we get our cutie marks. That alright?”

Trixie grinned widely. “Ha! That is acceptable, little one—Trixie knew that nopony could resist the prospect of a working relationship with her. She’d thought you’d all gone insane!”

The group was passing through the last trees of the mountain’s forest. The dirt path widened and stretched onwards, snaking through a great field of wheat and corn before meeting a town that stood atop a hill.

Trixie’s smile shrunk, lip curling up into her more characteristic smirk. “Trixie believes that the time has come for her apprentices to begin earning their keep. Step the first to putting on a successful show: when you reach your destination, keep your eyes peeled for any open, crowded, legal-to-put-on-a-performance-in-looking areas.”

The fillies nodded, and the group walked on.

1 Sweet Apple Dr.
Ponyville, EQS 2403
9/17/1428

Dear AJ, Mac, and Granny

I miss you guys already.

Sis, I know you always told me that the farm is our home and that we all belong there, but you also told me you had to leave to find that out. I hope you can under stand that I felt like I needed to do what I’m doing. I'm tired of ponies telling me that I'll find out who I am if I have pashencepaysh if I wait. What kind of boring self am I ever going to find if I find her by just sitting around doing normal stuff?

Big Mac, you're always gabbing on about how much I mean to you since Mom left, so I now know this isn't going to be easy for you. Not a whole bunch I can say to set your mind at eas about that, accept that I promise to be careful. We're even going to be going along with an adult we're going to be aprentices for, and she's not even a stranger.

Granny, I don't think I even need to say anything to you. I'm sure you under stand why I'm doing this.

I'll see you all again some day. Until then, I promise to keep sending letters. I'll miss the hay out of all of you until I get back! Goodbye. And sorry again.

Sincerly, Apple Bloom

44 Longstride Street
Ponyville, EQS 2403-367
September the 17th, AM 1428

Dear Big Sis,

As I’m sure you’re cognizant, I and my cohorts have absconded without even dispensing a valediction.

Hi, Rarity. I’m sorry that Scoots, Apple Bloom, and I left without really saying anything to anypony, and I’m really sorry that we especially didn’t say goodbye. I wanted to, but Scootaloo said that if we did you all would have probably tried to stop us, which is true. Still, that didn’t sit well with me. So now I’m saying goodbye for real: “Goodbye, Sis.”

Well, not really permanently, I mean. We’re going to come back to Ponyville sometime, but maybe not for a couple of weeks, or a couple of months.

We love Ponyville, of course. It isn’t that we want to leave it, not really. We just want to see more of the world that there is to see. And I know telling you not to worry about us while we’re gone won’t actually get you not to, but please don’t. We have a place to sleep, and a friend to look out for us wherever we go. Even if I think she’s making us pay her.

Love, and apologies, and farewells-for-now,

Sarah “Sweetie Belle” Bellany Gem

P.S. Please give this letter to Mom and Dad after you’re done reading it. Tell them I said goodbye to them too, and I love them.

38 South Fields Road
Ponyville, EQS 2403
9/17/1428

Dear Swelling Ze Mom,

Don’t flip out when you get home and see this and find out I’m not there. Don’t get all sad or anything either. This isn’t your fault (not everything is, seriously). This was my choice, and I’m making it.

I have a good bunch of ponies with me who will be there for me. Almost like a family. So don’t be worried about me. You know I can handle myself.

Bye for a while, Mom.

From,

Scootal

Sam “Scoo

Your Little Chickadee

Chapter 6

Scootaloo felt the familiar sensation of rough cobblestone on her hooves, heard the cries from a nearby open market, smelled scents of wood and grass and baked goods. “Anypony else feeling a bit creeped out, here? This place is exactly like Ponyville.”

Late afternoon on Main Street in Dappleton saw Scootaloo, her friends, Trixie, and their wagon moving towards the center of town. Citizens—most of them earth ponies—moved busily up and down the street, past and into buildings of wood with thatched roofs. A café here, a smithy there, a general store, an inn, a bar, and more, with steady traffic in and out of all.

“Ah am noticin’ some similarities,” said Apple Bloom, “ah’ll give ya that.”

Trixie chuckled. “Take it from a mare better traveled,” she said. “Show Trixie one village or town made by earth ponies, and she will show you just about all of them. Pegasi mold clouds into whatever they’re wont to and unicorns tend towards erecting towers and palaces, but earth pony stylings are inescapably rustic.”

The town square was coming into view, now. Main Street broke and widened into a vast trapezoidal area of smooth stone pathways criss-crossing around and between a small ocean of stalls and performance areas; the Crusaders found their ears filled with the friendly chattering of peddlers and smatterings of applause and whistling. Surrounding buildings seemed to be higher-class versions of their earlier counterparts—more expensive-looking eateries, inviting taverns, clothing shops with garish outfits displayed in the windows, and a great many other attractions.

At the far side of the square, a brick building rose above its wood-and-thatch neighbors, with a great clocktower erupting from its top. Simple banners of green and white hung all along the clocktower and on the building’s face, fluttering lazily. Trixie pointed a hoof at the looming mass as she walked. “That will be town hall,” she said, turning to look back at the fillies by the wagon’s side. “It is possible that a post office is within, where you might compose and send those letters home of yours. If not, they will certainly be able to tell Trixie’s company where one is.”

Apple Bloom nodded. “S’pose that should be our first stop, then?”

“No way!” said Scootaloo. “We’ve been walking for like a whole day. Before anything else, I say we’ve gotta get some food.”

Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes and bumped her side against Scootaloo’s. “It hasn’t been more than two hours of walking, and you know it,” she said, her companion grumbling. “And we just ate a late breakfast right before that, too.”

Trixie cleared her throat. “Trixie will have you know that that breakfast used up all but the last coppers of her funds. If her charge wants supper for the evening—or a bed of more than grass, for that matter—Trixie’s company shall have to put on a performance.”

“What?” said Sweetie Belle. She dashed around to the front of the wagon to walk alongside Trixie. “Weren’t you going to train us first?”

Trixie pshawed. “Learn by doing, little one. And you are just about to get the chance; remember the first step to putting on a performance? Find a suitable locale?” Trixie swept her hoof over the marketplace they had just crossed into. “Trixie dares to say her company has just about completed…”

No more than a hundred hooflengths away, a trio of earth ponies saddled with packed instruments were walking away from a now-empty patch of the market. Trixie’s eyes darted around. Off to her wagon’s right was a buttercream-colored mare already moving in with a cart full of baked goods.

“Miss Trixie?” said Sweetie Belle, looking between Trixie and the other mare. They’d just locked eyes.

Trixie was off like a shot, towed wagon shaking wildly and bouncing over the cobblestones. She dodged masterfully through the crowds, only running over a few ponies’ tails and nearly knocking over just a hoofful of stalls. The buttercream mare wasn’t far behind, but the relative care she was taking—moving around groups of ponies instead of forcing them to make way—spelled her defeat. Trixie’s hooves skidded noisily on the smooth stone of the market patch, the wagon behind lifting up into the air and crashing back down. The buttercream mare glared hotly at Trixie, who stuck out her tongue.

The moment the mare turned to leave, Trixie sucked in a few desperate breaths. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo emerged from the slowly dispersing sea of legs, and Trixie caught their approach. “Y-yes, this area should do nicely,” she said. A few moments of calm, and she began to unhitch herself from the wagon. “What had Trixie been saying?”

The Crusaders looked at one another. “Um,” said Apple Bloom, “those steps ‘a yers, ah think. Are y’all okay, Miss Trixie?” The filly’s eyes were trained on Trixie’s shoulder.

Only when Trixie looked down at the ruffled fur of her upper fore leg did she start feeling the sting. She shrugged. “One cannot expect to get very far in Trixie’s line of work without clipping a few carts, and that only comes after one learns to stop crashing. And yes, step the first to putting on a successful show, completed. Step the second: develop a basic plan for the performance.” Out of the harness, she turned to her filly companions. “Alternatively, if you are a particularly skilled improviser, such as Trixie herself, you need only decide on a ‘jumping-off point’, so to speak. Trixie imagines that her company has not had enough experience in show business for that, quite yet?”

The girls looked at each other again, frowning. “Not exactly,” said Sweetie Belle.

Scootaloo offered, “We used to have a comedy show.”

Trixie’s eyes widened, and she smiled approvingly at her charges.

“That took a while to put together, though,” Scootaloo continued. “I don’t think we’d be able to do something like that off the top of our heads.”

“Not to worry,” said Trixie. “One must learn to walk before learning to gallop, and you’ve taken your first steps already. That was more than Trixie had dared to hope for.”

The fillies smiled proudly, Sweetie Belle blushing somewhat.

“So,” said Trixie, “Trixie’s company shall form a plan for its performance, this time around. To start off, do any of you have any specific, show-worthy talents?” She pointed a hoof to Scootaloo. “Trixie recalls Apple Bloom saying that you had some measure of talent with ‘tricks’, little Scootella.”

“It’s ‘Scootaloo’,” the filly said, sighing. “That’s right, though. Ponies tell me I’m pretty good on a scoo… Oh.”

Trixie raised an eyebrow. “‘Oh’?”

“Oh!” Sweetie Belle gasped. “That’s right! We didn’t bring her scooter with us when we left Ponyville. It’s back at the clubhouse.”

“Alright, then.” Trixie frowned. “Your tricks aren’t applicable, it seems. Anything else?”

“Ooh!” Sweetie raised a hoof, smiling widely. “Apple Bloom is really good at making things! She did most of the work on your wagon.”

Apple Bloom blushed, but stayed silent, instead turning away and half-heartedly smacking Sweetie Belle’s side with a hoof. Sweetie chuckled.

“Ah, yes,” said Trixie, looking to her functional yet haphazardly painted vehicle. “Trixie had almost forgotten to thank you. And she appreciates the work you all put in, of course, but must you have painted it so…”—she cringed slightly—“pink?”

Scootaloo grumbled, “Tell me about it…”

“Still,” said Trixie, “the work was far more capable than Trixie might have expected.” She turned back to Apple Bloom. “She may have use for you yet. Tell her: are you able to work from a blueprint?”

Apple Bloom absentmindedly kicked a rock about with her forehoof. “Um, ah’ve never tried doin’ anypony’s designs but mah own.”

Trixie waved a hoof. “Well, Trixie’s company shall just have to wait and see, then. A prestidigitator is no stranger to props, and if you are able to construct them, it would certainly save Trixie’s bits.” Her eyes moved up to the sky, where the sun had passed its apex and was well on its way back down to the horizon. “Trixie fears that more immediate talents are required, however. She intends to put on a show sometime in the next hour. Any more, and Trixie’s company shall be going without room and board for the night.”

Sweetie Belle found herself to be the next subject of Trixie’s gaze. “…What?” the filly asked.

“The obvious question,” said Trixie, staring intently at Sweetie’s horn. “How skilled are you with magic? As Trixie is sure you are aware, her show relates to magic, predominantly—another magician would not go amiss.”

Sweetie Belle’s cheeks flushed in seconds. “Well,” she said, voice cracking, “I—I, well… I can levitate?”

“Weight?” pressed Trixie. “Complexity?”

“Um, solid things!” Sweetie blurted. “Yeah, solids that don’t have holes in them, and only one or two at a time. And…”—she pressed a hoof to her temple—“I think the biggest thing has been one of my mom’s encyclopedias? The ‘Q’ one. But that was just for a second or two, and then I had to stop for the day.”

The corners of Trixie’s mouth snaked up her cheeks. “Yes,” she said, “that will do nicely.” Her horn lit up, and four small pouches—the first a shiny red, the next a sparkling green, and the remaining two a matte black—flew from her mane and tail and came to rest in the air beside her head. “Trixie judges that now is the perfect opportunity for a crash course on the usage of mana marbles.”

A gentle breeze blew through Dappleton’s square. The town hall’s banners fluttered lazily about, and all of the townsponies present felt themselves buffeted by the cool air. This breeze had ever brought light scents of wood and grass and tempting meals, but now a stronger smell rode above the others.

One periwinkle mare, engaged in purchasing ingredients for her dinner, caught the unmistakable smell of fresh laundry. She turned, intrigued, and tried to find its source. A pair of brown stallions watching a jester juggle suddenly found the scent of hot, cheesy bread tickling their nostrils, and turned as well. The jester herself caught a whiff of what smelled oddly like her daughter’s mane, and after retrieving the juggling clubs that had just landed squarely on her head, she, too, turned.

There was a mess of pinks and reds and whites in the shape of a wagon. From its bottom there protruded one half of a foldable dinner table, bare for only a moment—blue flames sparked across its surface from nowhere and began rising upwards, devoid of smoke but roaring loudly. A few seconds and they had gained enough height to reach past the wagon’s roof, but the hiss and crackle then became muffled, and the flames shrunk immediately back down to the table before winking out entirely. In their place stood a blue unicorn in full Canterlotian magician’s regalia.

“A fine afternoon, Dappleton!” called Trixie to the gathered and gathering crowd. “Yes, a time unapproachably fitting for the Great and Powerful Trixie to beg you bear witness to her wonders. Observe with all the attention you can muster”—she reached a hoof beneath her pointed hat and removed the article slowly from her head—“for Trixie has prepared a performance of that most mesmerizing mystery, that long-envied entrancement known only to the most honed of the horned: magia sine magia, the magic without magic!”

Trixie’s hat erupted into a deep red blaze which itself soon vanished into nothingness, all without the faintest glow on the showmare’s horn. The watching ponies stood with backs rigid and jaws slack but for a smattering of unicorns throughout that rolled their eyes and made to walk off.

Nopony moved, however, once the hat shimmered back into sight and then fell with a soft fwap to the dining table stage. “Um…?” left more than one throat.

“Wh-whuh…” Trixie managed. Her eyes darted about the collection of confused faces before her. “Er, the Great and Powerful Trixie deems the denizens of Dappleton deserving of a more desirable demonstration!”

Trixie hefted the wizard’s hat once more, tossing it like a discus straight upwards. All eyes tracked the its flight up into the sky—

“Waugh!”

All eyes jumped right back down to Trixie falling rump-first onto the stage, cape on fire. The flames quickly masked the cape and disappeared along with it, leaving behind one very stunned showmare staring down at her own hooves.

Trixie’s hat struck her squarely in the back of the head. “Oof.”

The crowd laughed uproariously.

Mostly hidden beneath the tablecloth of someone’s nearby book display sat two fillies, the pair of them looking out at the show. Stark unbelief in her voice, Scootaloo asked, “Sweetie Belle, what the hay was that?”

“I did the cape after I did the hat,” said the little unicorn, horn aglow and sweat rolling down her forehead. “This was her plan!”

“Sweetie, the point was that the hat was supposed to be gone!” Scootaloo whispered sharply. “She probably tossed it up to give you another chance!”

Sweetie Belle made a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl. “Okay, but just stop talking! You’re breaking my concentration. Get another two black ones out and I’ll get rid of the stupid hat—and be ready with the yellow one when I ask for it.”

Laughter rang in Trixie’s skull, and her eyes searched once more about the faces in her audience—gone was all confusion, supplanted by utter glee. It took her a moment, but Trixie smirked. She stood like a mare with purpose, and shouted with heavy exaggeration, “Does Dappleton doubt the Great and Powerful Trixie? Ha! She knows just the spell to ensnare you simpletons, but”—she moved a hoof to her mouth’s opposite side, as though whispering a secret despite her volume—“she has need of a volunteer, if her oafish audience would care to provide.”

Raised hooves and excited yells dominated the scene. Trixie made a show of moving her hoof slowly through the air as though carefully considering different ponies before her, giggling under her breath as she saw each one’s expression rise and fall in turn. Finally, her hoof angled down towards the front row, and Trixie said, “You, little one!”

Apple Bloom, surrounded by fillies and colts who had flocked to the front for a better view, pointed to herself. “Me?” She let out a great gasp.

Trixie rolled her eyes. “Yes, you. Now come along,” she said, beckoning with a hoof. “Up, up.” Trixie looked back to the audience as Apple Bloom leapt and scrambled up onto the stage. “Trixie would ask that you all take heed: make no attempt to emulate the Great and Powerful Trixie, for magic inherently holds dangers at the best of times, with even the simplest spells. What follows is no simple spell.”

Gasps and whispering now mingled with the crowd’s chuckling; even Apple Bloom couldn’t resist the urge to gulp. The filly stepped over to center stage by Trixie and turned to face out. There seemed to be so many ponies, all looking right at her. A strange feeling—anxiety and pride in the same heartbeat—filled her chest.

Red flames, same as before, engulfed a corner of the stage, and in their place a moment later was a sizable cloth. Trixie trotted over—as dramatically as she could with only two steps of table to cover—and picked it up by two corners, standing up on her hind legs in the process.

Back to center she went, swishing and waving the cloth through the air. She settled it in front of Apple Bloom, hiding the filly from the neck down.

“Prepare yourselves,” said Trixie. She tore the cloth away from Apple Bloom and then slowly settled it back in place. “One!”

She tore it away again and then let it flutter back to cover her assistant. “Two!” she said, and some members of the audience called the word as well.

Trixie tore the cloth back one more time, and she started to let it fall back in front of Apple Bloom—but before it stopped settling, she leapt a step forward and yanked the cloth to herself. “Three!” she and most of the audience shouted.

Apple Bloom… was Apple Bloom. She looked down at herself, eyebrow raised. She turned to Trixie, and— “Ah!” She jumped away, wobbling where she landed on the edge of the stage.

Trixie let the cloth fall away from herself, and sounds of shock rose up from the crowd. She looked down with exaggeratedly wide eyes—down at her body which, from her neck to her knees and everything in between, was less a body and more a length of rope. Rope in her signature blues and whites, seemingly coiled out of her thinned limbs and tail as they twisted up into it.

She looked back to the audience, eyes still bugged out. “Yes, friends,” she said, picking the cloth up again, “leave magic to the professionals.” Trixie covered herself, and after a resounding pop, she let it fall away once more to reveal her normal body, unharmed.

The first to snicker was Apple Bloom, the sound like the fatal crack in a dam, and the unease fell away for a torrent of laughter from the gathered ponies to follow.

While the crowd carried on, Trixie walked to Apple Bloom’s edge of the stage and whispered in her ear. A pat on the head, then the filly smiled, took a little bow, and hopped down from the stage.

“Ho ho!” yelled Trixie over the din, and she swept a hoof through the air. “Laugh you may, Dappleton. Ho and ho again! But Trixie is not done yet!”

Only after the final generous audience members had made their donations did the Crusaders approach Trixie. The magician—hair a little singed, coat a little blackened, but brandishing a radiant grin—was moving bits from her hat to a mid-size pouch. On noticing the fillies’ approach, she bowed low to them in a way that could almost have been called graceful in spite of how overblown it was.

“So, the comedy show you mentioned…” said Trixie, looking to Scootaloo. “Trixie guesses it that it was not originally meant to be funny?”

The filly gave a forced laugh and rubbed a hoof through her mane.

Sweetie Belle stepped forward. “Miss Trixie, I’m sorry the show went the way it did.”

Raising an eyebrow, Trixie said, “Did little Apple Bloom not relay Trixie’s message, after Trixie jumped in front of the rope trick?”

“No, she did,” said Sweetie, “and I did my best to mess up in funny ways after that.” She rubbed one forehoof along the other. “I’m just sorry we had to do that at all. You had a good plan, and I blew it.”

“Don’tcha worry, Sweetie.” Apple Bloom pat Sweetie on the back. “The show went over great!”

“Indeed,” said Trixie, smiling down at Sweetie. “Patent pending Trixie Trick of the Trade: in the end, a show is to be measured as no more or less successful than how it was received by the audience. Which, in turn…”—she bounced the pouch of bits with her magic, and a warm, metal jangling rung out—“is to be measured in the money. Nearly eighty bits, fillies, in the gold alone!”

“That’s her!” came a nearby voice.

Trixie and the Crusaders turned. Across the path was a pair of local guardsponies, decked out in green-white cloaks and sets of unadorned, full-length iron boots. Beside them, pointing at Trixie, was a mare—the buttercream mare from earlier.

The mare said, “She took my place and put on a performance without displaying a permit!”

The guards advanced, sternness in their gaze.

“A further lesson, fillies,” Trixie whispered to the girls. “Wherever your travels take you, you may only plead ignorance once, and even that will do you no good if you lack the talent to sell it.”

A sigh, and a shuffling of papers.

“And you say…” His voice was gruff. Unamused, but distinctively more tired than annoyed. “You claim, rather, that this is what you do for a living?”

It was a drab office. Interior design was not one of Trixie’s strong points, but this much she could tell. The carpeting was brown, with spots of browner brown. Coffee, her nose told her. Brick walls, but unpainted, empty but for another of the green and white town flags hung up, but even that seemed to be coated in a layer of dust. In fact, the only pristine—almost unused, was Trixie’s impression of it—thing in the room seemed to be the brass nameplate stand sitting on the stallion’s desk. ‘Tough Call’.

The state of the room didn’t seem to bother the fillies, who were at a corner table giggling over the letters they were writing. Except Scootaloo, Trixie noticed. That little one had finished her letter rather quickly and seemed to be trying hard not to look as though she was listening in.

“Quite right, Mr. Call. Trixie has been a travelling magician for upwards of thirteen years,” said Trixie as she looked back, a little frown upon her face. Her eyes hovered on the papers by Tough Call’s hooves. “It was an honest mistake. You see, Trixie has just taken on new apprentices, and in her company’s collective excitement, proper—”

“In your excitement,” said Tough Call, “you failed not only to register your group’s arrival and intentions, but you even managed not to notice any of the clearly displayed permits at your neighbors’ sales and performance stations?”

“Once more, quite right.” Trixie’s frown deepened. “And Trixie apologizes for the attempt to excuse her actions and the actions of her company.”

A half-cold smile on his face, Tough Call chuckled. He motioned to the Crusaders. “I assure you I’d be hard pressed to lay any blame on them, Miss Lulamoon.”

Scootaloo snickered, and Trixie’s frown grew deeper still.

“Regardless,” said the stallion, drawing himself up in his seat, “there are three types of ponies who don’t purchase a permit: the ignorant, the poor, and the criminal.” He gazed firmly at Trixie, and the mare nearly flinched. “You don’t have to stand there and convince me which type you are, because the beautiful part is that the punishment is the same in all three cases.”

Looking off, Trixie clicked her tongue.

Tough Call lifted a scroll out from behind the desk and unfurled it, moving his nameplate over as a paperweight. It was a pricing sheet. “You will purchase a day permit retroactively”—his free hoof pointed to the day permit, valued at ten bits—“at twice the usual price. If you can’t afford it, it’s an hour in the stocks for each bit’s worth of difference. Any additional permits can be purchased at their normal prices.”

Trixie let out a grumble-laced breath. She levitated her coin pouch out, but stopped midway through loosening the strings as her eyes roved over the sheet. “Why,” she asked, glaring up at Tough Call, “is a month permit only three times as much as a day?”

He just smiled, in a way Trixie might have mistaken for sincerity.

“No way to attract outside business…” Trixie quickly measured out thirty bits.

“Ha,” said Tough Call, retrieving two slips of paper from a drawer, dating them with a nearby quill, and passing them over. “And yet your money says you’ll be with us for more than just the single day.”

Trixie snatched the permits out of the air and made for the door. “Come along, fillies.”

Sweetie Belle stuffed her letter into an envelope and licked it closed, and the girls quickly dropped their envelopes off on Tough Call’s desk. “Thank you, sir,” said Sweetie.

“Have a nice stay,” he said, waving only to the Crusaders. He looked up to Trixie, and any warmth left his face. “Keep out of trouble.”

The door creaked open. “Hey Trixie,” said Scootaloo as the group made its way out, “does this mean you ‘lacked the talent to sell it’?”

“Shut up.”

Author's Note

The story can finally be considered alive again, and I'm deeply sorry for how long it's taken me to update it. While future chapters still won't be coming out by the week or anything, I'm willing to guarantee that—barring acts of god—they won't take anywhere approaching two and a half years again. Once every month or month and a half is what I think I'd like to shoot for, but that's subject to change in either direction, depending.

Sincere thanks go out to my friends ChromeMyriad, Pearple Prose, and RainbowBob for being willing and able to not only look this chapter over for me, but to read through everything leading up to it as well.

Chapter 8

“Trixie will state for the record, young Scootaloo, that she is far from being any sort of expert on pegasus magics.”

Scootaloo rolled her eyes and continued her walk about the little field. “You’re the one who said you’d rather teach me that than stunts.” Finding a nice patch of trampled grass by a recently used fire pit, the filly sat. She raised her fore legs and extended her wings, setting about doing stretches. “Rainbow Dash isn’t here, and you’re the next best thing. Or the next best thing around, anyway. Teach whatever and I’ll learn it, no prob.”

With a hint of bitterness, the mare said, “Trixie finds herself floored by your flattery.” She took her place a couple of hooflengths in front of Scootaloo. “Alright. Trixie shall begin as she did with Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom. How far along are you in your magic training?”

“Well…” Scootaloo pulled and popped the joints in her ankles. “I haven’t started? To be honest, I didn’t know pegasi could do magic, before this. I thought that was just a unicorn thing.”

“What?” said Trixie, brow raised. “Don’t be ridiculous. Surely you were aware that pegasi can fly and manipulate the weather?”

Scootaloo let her fore legs fall to the ground. “Oh, that’s what you meant by ‘pegasus magic’? Geez, that’s kind of a letdown.”

“Do you mean to tell Trixie that they no longer teach this?” Trixie’s magic flared up, and Scootaloo felt a gentle telekinetic pull on her primaries. “That a pegasus’ wings are the focal points for his or her weather magics, like a unicorn’s horn for arcane magics?”

Scootaloo shivered, giving her wings a little flap, and the magic dissipated. Looking back to Trixie, she said, “Well, I dunno. That’s news to me, but Ponyville’s not really a pegasus town. There’s no flight school or anything.”

“But what of your parents?”

The filly frowned. “I don’t think either of them ever went to a flight school either—they both lived in Ponyville their whole lives before they got together.”

“No,” said Trixie, “what Trixie had meant to ask was what they’ve taught you.”

“Oh! Well…” Scootaloo held up one forehoof and bobbed it theatrically. “Dad’s not really around anymore, and mom…” She bobbed the other, but slower. “She was never much of a teacher, I guess.”

Trixie blinked, then lowered her head. “Trixie somehow feels as though she was prying. She deigns to apologize.”

“‘S fine,” said Scootaloo, standing back up now. “And Rainbow’s the only teacher I ever actually wanted. But again, she’s not around right now, so I’ve got you.” A sharp hoof-jab at Trixie.

The mare rolled her eyes, saying, “Coming full circle, Trixie reiterates: how much magic training have you had thus far? What are you able to do?”

“Oh, yeah. Um, I can hover.” Scootaloo leapt into the air, wings buzzing. The grass around her tried in vain to retreat, and the air thrummed with her power—for all of two seconds, before her hooves met the ground again.

“Is…” Trixie looked off left and right, as though expecting to see someone leap out of a bush holding a recorder spyglass and laughing. “Is that all?”

Scootaloo went from grinning to scowling faster than Trixie could blink. “Nu-uh! I can cloudwalk and stuff, too, if somepony brings me up there!”

“Th-that’s literally as basic as it gets!” Trixie all but spluttered. “That’s merely your passive air cushion. Trixie grants that you are only a filly, but you should at least be capable of bursts of sustained flight by now!”

Scootaloo winced. “I know,” she said, looking to the ground, “but that’s always been kinda tough for me—sometimes it feels like my wings are only good for scooter tricks.” She looked back up, eyes steelier. “But I’m gonna get Rainbow to whip me into shape, someday. Until then—” She found a blue hoof over her lips.

“Trixie will not hear your insult a third time.”

Scootaloo snickered around the hoof before smacking it away. “I was gonna say that until then, I’ve got my scooter, and I love that thing.”

Tapping her chin, Trixie said, “Yes, your scooter…” She walked around to Scootaloo’s side, leaning in to prod a hoof at the filly’s legs. “That is a difficult mode of transport to master, as Trixie understands it. It asks a lot from quadrupeds.”

A proud smirk erupted on Scootaloo’s face. “Whatever that means, I’m taking it as a c—”

Trixie thrusted a hoof under Scootaloo’s front and lifted, and the filly—wide-eyed and wobbling—found herself standing on her hind legs in an instant.

And she remained that way for the next instant, even without Trixie’s hoof. And then for a few instants more.

“Hm,” said Trixie, when Scootaloo had finally fallen back onto all fours. Her horn lit up, and a sphere of magical light appeared on the ground at the filly’s hooves. She pointed to the sphere, saying, “Kick it.”

Eyebrow raised, Scootaloo did as she was told, and with a deep thunk, the sphere flew most of the way to the field’s treeline—a good fifty hooflengths at least—before dissipating.

“Huh.” Trixie’s eyes glazed over, staring at the spot where the orb had stopped.

“What?” asked Scootaloo as she looked between the spot and Trixie. “What am I supposed to be learning here?”

No response.

Scootaloo waved a hoof in front of the mare’s eyes. “Trixie, what the hay?”

Trixie shook her head and looked to Scootaloo. “Trixie apologizes,” she said, “but she shall have to cut this lesson short.”

There was a beat of silence, then Scootaloo said, “Why?” Her little wings sagged, but her frown was bordering on red hot.

Trixie’s face remained blank. “Trixie is afraid that she needs to visit a bookstore.”

Stomach skyward, Apple Bloom tried her best to enjoy the feeling of the bed beneath her, in spite of her racing mind. “Over an hour,” she said.

“Oof,” said Sweetie Belle from the cot by their room’s wall. “My show was awful, but at least it only lasted a few minutes.” She stared out at Dappleton through the adjacent window, watching the town chug along beneath the pre-noon sun. “Still, though, I think I would’ve liked being bored more than being scared out of my mind…”

Apple Bloom turned and caught the frown her friend was wearing, and it spread to her own face. “Ah’m sorry, Sweetie,” she said. “Must ‘a been rough.”

“Mm. I definitely want to ask for something less hooves on next time. But it could’ve been worse, I guess.” Sweetie Belle sighed, but slid on a small smile. “At least Scootaloo was there, doing her best to cheer me on—even if she drank my birch beer before I got back off the stage.”

They both giggled, but the air quickly settled into silence. Apple Bloom went back to staring at the ceiling, and Sweetie lay her cheek on the windowsill.

The door swung open, slamming into the wall, and the pair turned towards the sounds of stomping.

“Scootaloo?” said Apple Bloom, making room as her friend leapt up onto the bed. “Y’all weren’t gone half an hour. What happened?” It seemed to Apple Bloom as though Scootaloo’s scowl was radiating off of her in waves.

“Nothing,” growled Scootaloo.

“You can tell us, Scoots,” said Sweetie with a note of concern. “We’re here for you.”

“I did tell you!” Scootaloo threw her hooves up. “Literally nothing happened! That mare—she takes me out to a field, tells me I suck at flying, has me kick a ball, and she freaking leaves!” She threw her head forcefully back onto a pillow. “I didn’t learn a thing. Except that she’s terrible.”

Apple Bloom’s head rose. “A ball?” she said, inching over to Scootaloo. “Like a magic one?”

Letting a raised eyebrow loose on her friend, Scootaloo said, “How’d you know?”

“‘Cause she did the same thing with me…” Apple Bloom’s mouth twisted up. “Ah think it let her know how strong ah was?”

Scootaloo turned now to Sweetie Belle. “Did she do it for you, too?”

Sweetie shook her head, and Scootaloo’s mouth tightened.

“Well,” said Scootaloo, looking to Apple Bloom again, “you were gone pretty long, so she didn’t cut your lesson short before it even started, right? What did she have you doing after that?”

Apple Bloom sighed. “Boiling water.”

A moment passed, and then Scootaloo’s ear twitched. “That’s it?”

“Mhm…”

Scootaloo sat back up. “Lemme get this straight.” She pointed a steady hoof at Sweetie Belle. “You get your head messed with and then thrown into the manticore’s den.” It moved to Apple Bloom. “You get the most boring-sounding lesson ever.” It dropped back to her side. “Then I don’t even get that much? We need to do something, you guys.”

Apple Bloom nodded. “Me an’ Sweetie were talkin’ it over before y’all showed up.”

“Yeah,” said Sweetie Belle. “Did you notice that she didn’t even ask how my show went before she left with you, Scootaloo?” She frowned. “That’s not how a teacher should be.”

“Forget ‘teacher’!” said Scootaloo, fire kicking back up. “That’s not how anypony should be! I remember how down you looked, and I know she saw it.”

“So, um.” Apple Bloom gulped. “Are we gonna ask to go back home again?”

“I don’t know,” said Sweetie.

“No,” said Scootaloo forcefully, in the same moment.

The pegasus deflated some, letting her wings fall and slumping further back onto the bed. “Really, guys?”

“I think…” Sweetie turned to look out the window again. “I think I would be fine whether we go home or we keep going with Miss Trixie.” Her eyes moved back to Apple Bloom. “Even if today hasn’t gone well so far, I really do think she knows a lot of stuff I want to learn, whether it helps me get a cutie mark or not.”

Eyes back to the town outside, she tapped a free hoof softly against her forehead. To herself more than the others, Sweetie said, “A cutie mark isn’t the only thing I’ve been waiting for.”

Apple Bloom, expressionless, said, “So what are we gonna do?”

Scootaloo sat back up. “Let’s just tell her that—” There came a riotous gurgling. “…Er.”

“Let’s tell her,” said Scootaloo, shoving another few red-dripping hay fries into her mouth, “fhat we don’ wanna pugh uff wiff any more weffons if—”

“Please,” said Sweetie Belle from across the table. “Once, have some table manners. I’m spending all I got from—” An orange hoof pushed fries into Sweetie’s own mouth.

Scootaloo said, “Don’ be your fifter.”'

Sweetie Belle grumbled, blushing, and ate.

The Paddock was picking up with the lunch crowd, but the fillies had managed to snag a booth all to themselves, and their order of a plate of hay fries with firesauce had arrived in only minutes. Apple Bloom hadn’t had a bite of it yet, preoccupied as she was watching the inn’s small-town ponies being with one another.

Scootaloo drank from her water, then said, “So yeah, we just have to say we don’t like the way she’s been teaching. She has to listen, right? ‘Trixie’s name depends on her company not sucking,’ or whatever.”

Sweetie Belle frowned. “That’s not a nice spot to put her in.”

“So what?” Scootaloo dunked a few more fries in firesauce, not looking at Sweetie. “It’s been days away from Ponyville and I don’t feel any closer to a cutie mark. We need to be more… that thing you say.”

“‘Proactive,’” said Sweetie, rolling her eyes. “I still think we should be nicer about it than that. How about you, Apple Bloom?”

“Hm?” Apple Bloom turned to the table. “What were y’all talkin’ about again, sorry?”

Scootaloo groaned. “Come on, Bloom. Telling Trixie to stop being awful. What are you even doing?”

“Nothin’,” said Apple Bloom, mouth slipping down from neutral. “Just thinkin’.”

“What, not about this?”

Apple Bloom shook her head, then turned back towards the other patrons. “This town feels weird, is all.”

“How do you mean?” asked Sweetie Belle.

A pair of earth ponies at the bar had Apple Bloom’s attention. One green, one dark red, one a mare, one a stallion, one with a homegrown air, one thin and delicate. Both laughing for all they were worth. One was bellowing the laughter heartily, the other trying to restrain it. There was an unmistakable light in their eyes.

“What’s a town,” said Apple Bloom, “without Pinkie Pie? Ah never thought about that kinda thing before. Ah never had to.”

“What?” asked Scootaloo, eyes watering from a hoofful of fries that was more firesauce than hay. “It’s a town that isn’t Ponyville, duh.”

“That’s not what ah mean.” Apple Bloom looked Scootaloo in the eyes. “What if Ponyville never had Rainbow Dash, Scoots?”

Scootaloo stuck out her (bright red) tongue, looking disgusted. “It wouldn’t be anywhere near as cool.”

“Scoots,” said Apple Bloom, shaking her head, “y’all told me ya wanted to be Rainbow Dash ever since she helped you up when ya crashed yer scooter, forever ago.” She sat back. “Ah’m not askin’ ya what Ponyville would be like. Ah’m askin’ what you’d be like, if Ponyville was different.”

Scootaloo slowed her chewing, and she swallowed. “Trick question,” she said. “I wouldn’t be me then.”

“That’s…” Apple Bloom raised a hoof. “Well, that’s not what ah meant exactly, but ya get the point. Ponies back home made us us.”

Sweetie Belle asked, “And you’re worried about being away from them too long?”

Apple Bloom nodded. “Who’m ah gonna be without Applejack?”

“Still a trick question,” said Scootaloo, “because you’ll still be you.” She pointed a hoof and the hay fry it was holding at Apple Bloom. “You can’t not be whoever you are, because once you’re not, you’re really just the you that’s what you are then, and not the one that’s not what…” The hoof drooped, along with Scootaloo’s face. “Y’know what I mean?”

Before Apple Bloom could respond, the fry in Scootaloo’s hoof shimmered purple and zipped off to the side. The trio tracked its flight, right into the mouth of a passing Trixie.

“Ack!” Spitting the fry up, Trixie coughed and sputtered. She sent a glare up at her still-lit horn, and then she turned to the Crusaders’ booth. “Oh!” she said, putting on a light smile. She closed a book that had been floating next to her and placed it into her saddlebags. “Hello, all.”

“Um, hi,” said Scootaloo, sitting up rigid. She leaned into the table, held a hoof over her mouth, and continued in a whisper, “I can’t remember if we picked a plan of attack, you guys.”

“What’s that?” said Trixie. “Plan of what?”

Scootaloo snapped back into place, smiling.

Trixie shook her head, saying, “No matter. Children, listen. Trixie’s company has enough coin to afford another night here yet, so there are a good many options available.” She slid herself into the booth, Apple Bloom scootching over to accomodate her. “One more show to bolster those reserves would be a wise decision—Trixie would recommend in the evening. She would offer more lessons in the meantime, if you would all give her an hour or two to prepare.”

As one, the Crusaders opened their mouths—

“And on the topic of lessons…” Trixie looked to Scootaloo. “Trixie apologizes once more, young Scootaloo. She promises that her next attempt will have more… content.” To Apple Bloom, at her side. “The same for yours, Apple Bloom. Trixie judges you to have taken naturally enough to boiling water that you would be more than capable of simple potions.” To Sweetie Belle. “And Trixie is pleased to see that your spirits are back up, Sweetie Belle. She’d wanted to ask about your performance, but you’d seemed so distraught before. She hopes it wasn’t too awful an experience.”

“Oh,” said Scootaloo.

“Uh,” said Apple Bloom.

“Huh,” said Sweetie Belle.

Apple Bloom trotted back into that same field as earlier. It looked different now, with the sun in the other side of its sky—shadows from the trees reached out into it, shading her approach.

Trixie had said to meet her there in about an hour, but she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Apple Bloom saw only that same cauldron as before, set out over the fire pit by a wood pile. She made her way over to it.

The cauldron was full. Apple Bloom was unpleasantly surprised to find that her hooves were reflexively reaching out to the flint set beside it. She reined them in.

“Ah, right on time!” came Trixie’s voice from the treeline.

Apple Bloom turned. Trixie was heading her way with what looked like a gunny sack slung over one shoulder. As the mare got closer, Apple Bloom spotted lots of little scrapes and scratches pockmarking her blue coat red.

“Are y’all alright, Miss Trixie?” she asked.

“But of course. Trixie's expedition was a marked success.” Trixie flung the sack down by the cauldron. Her horn lit up, and some of the sack’s seams vanished, the whole thing unfolding—just one of the cloths from the wagon, Apple Bloom realized—to reveal a set of pouches and something that looked almost like fruits. More magic, and the pouches emptied themselves out onto the cloth. A line of seven small, vaguely leafy piles, with the fruits set at the end.

“With but a short foray into the nearby wilds,” the mare continued, “Trixie has collected common thyme, running thyme, quitting thyme, blood yarrow, lemon grass, lime grass, bug basil, and she was even skilled enough to recover a pair of perfectly intact crab apples. Come and have a look.”

As Trixie set about lighting the fire, Apple Bloom approached the collection. To the furthest left on the cloth was a pile of tiny, grayish-green leaves. Bringing her nose close, Apple Bloom found that the pile’s scent reminded her somewhat of Sugarcube Corner’s kitchen. Just the thyme, she guessed.

Another pile of little leaves, brownish-green this time, was set to the right of the first. The filly leaned in to sniff this pile as well, but reared back suddenly; the leaves appeared to be moving! Each one twitched and jiggled of its own accord, aimlessly. Apple Bloom hesitantly reached a hoof forward to poke at the pile, and once she made contact, the leaves all seemed to swarm around it. Life and energy—a simple urge to run anywhere and everywhere—filled the filly’s mind. Before she knew it, she found herself giggling helplessly. She extracted her hoof from the leaves, and they resumed their aimless wiggling, Apple Bloom’s sense of their energy gone.

She turned to the third and final similar pile. The leaves in this one were colored a matte gray, and looked a bit older and more curled up than the others had. The filly found herself almost not wanting to touch this pile, but did so regardless. She pulled her hoof back immediately—her mind had been invaded by a feeling of crushing sadness, if only for an instant.

“This earth pony sense,” said Trixie, her voice making Apple Bloom jump. “It has always been fascinating to Trixie. Every earth pony she has taken the time to speak with about it seems to describe it a little bit differently. Tell her: what is it like for you?”

Apple Bloom sat back on her haunches, Trixie following suit. After a short while staring up at the clouds, the filly said, “Well, ah guess ah just get a feelin’. Not like the kind ‘a feelin’ like when yer just scared or hungry or somethin’, though. It’s like…” She shut her eyes. One hoof lifted up and pushed purposefully into the ground. “It’s like how it feels when ya remember a memory, ‘cept ah don’t have a memory to remember. Like, this dirt is makin’ me feel full ‘n happy, like how ah’d feel if I was back home, after a good supper. ‘Cept without all ‘a that. Ah just get the feelin’.”

“Mm.” Trixie looked on at Apple Bloom’s half-buried hoof. The fur all along the filly’s extended arm seemed to bristle slightly, in time with her breathing. “Though Trixie would never want to be anything other than what she is, she admits to having often thought about what it is like to use earth pony magic.”

Apple Bloom opened her eyes back up, and looked between her own hoof and Trixie’s stare. She hastily yanked the appendage out from the ground, a slight blush on her face. “It’s nothin’ all that special.”

“Mm, it is so easy to think that, is it not?” Trixie looked down to her own hooves. “Because it is subtle. Every step you take, you feel some hidden facet of the ground beneath your hooves—something beyond the shapes and texture of it. Something all your own.” The mare set off her horn, petals from a nearby flower plucking themselves and floating over. They danced about one another while Trixie stared on, no emotion on her face. “Unicorn magic is rarely so tactile or… romantic. Even if it does impress.”

Apple Bloom didn’t know how to respond, so instead, she turned back to the cloth. Past the piles of thyme she’d touched were more bits of plant matter—a mound of delicate-looking crimson petals, a matching set of yellow and green grasses that the filly could smell distinctly even from where she was sitting, a collection of leaves that she almost mistook for dragonfly wings at first, and the pair of brownish-red apple-like fruits that seemed to be armored and covered in little protrusions. “What exactly are we gonna be doin’ with all ‘a these?”

“Hm?” Trixie said, looking up from her still-dancing petals and following the filly’s gaze down to the cloth. “Ah, yes. An age-old examination, this.” The mare turned off her magic and sat up more rigidly. “You, little one, are a beginner pony apothecary, and what Trixie has planned for today is a sort of rite of passage for just such a person.”

Before Trixie could continue, Apple Bloom picked up on a sound she’d become all too familiar with—the cauldron was boiling.

“Ah,” said Trixie. Standing up, she released the petals she’d been holding and floated up a number of the dainty red ones from the cloth. Those she dumped promptly into the cauldron, and she extinguished the fire simultaneously.

Apple Bloom got up as well. She craned her neck to see over the cauldron’s rim; the petals were swirling around in the bubbling water, but nothing else was happening.

Patting Apple Bloom’s shoulder, Trixie said, “Never mind that, little one. This easy sort practically makes itself.” She sat back down. “Speaking of, that will be half the nature of your assignment. Using any single one of these ingredients”—she swept a hoof over the cloth—“you are tasked with creating a potion and then investigating and describing its effects and what makes it identifiable.” She paused, then added, “Not the blood yarrow, mind. That shall be my example—too easy.”

A grin sprung up on Apple Bloom’s face. “And if ah do it? Ah’ll be a full-on apothecathy?”

“Apothecary, yes.” Trixie was smiling a smile of her own. She raised her head and peered into the cauldron. “Ah,” she said again, before standing up. “Come, come.”

Apple Bloom got up and looked in. The water had gone a cloudy pink, slowly swirling.

“Notice the color,” said Trixie. “Not just of the concoction, but of the air around it.”

Apple Bloom shifted her gaze and saw that, indeed, the air itself was almost imperceptibly pinkened.

Trixie continued, “A potion such as this would radiate that ‘steam’ even if it was cold. Raw magic seeping off—that is how one knows it is simple and inefficient.” She leaned over the cauldron and sniffed, undoubtedly catching what Apple Bloom recognized to be a sweet, very floral scent. Suddenly, Trixie dipped her mouth into the mixture and started gulping a few mouthfuls of it down. She rose back up and said, “One must either use or store an inefficient potion as soon as one can, lest all the magic escape and it become nothing more than colored, flavored water.”

Before Apple Bloom’s eyes, all the cuts and scrapes along Trixie’s body seemed to quietly hiss and steam—and then they knit themselves shut. Even the blood was gone, as though it had been selectively burned away.

“Wow,” she said.

Trixie chuckled. “Refrain from being impressed, initiate. This is one of the simplest healing potions possible—wounds any more serious and it would have been useless. Besides…” She lit her horn and overturned the cauldron, pouring its remaining contents out over the grass. Calling up more water from the stream, she filled it again. Trixie turned back to Apple Bloom. “It’s your turn now.”

Apple Bloom took the flint in hoof, sparked a fire in the pit, and all but leapt over to the cloth. She eyed each ingredient in turn, tapped her hoof to them and felt what they wanted her to feel. She took in their scents. She… felt her grin slowly fade.

“Do not worry,” said Trixie from behind. “All are valid ingredients for potions—even the common thyme, though that might offer a bit too much of a challenge in discerning its effects.” She nudged the filly. “All are perfectly safe, as well, with not a single recorded case of aberrant misfire. All you need do is make a selection, and I have every confidence in you, little one.”

Apple Bloom set her jaw and nodded to herself. With a steely grunt, she reached out for the gray, wilted quitting thyme.

“Ooh…” said Sweetie Belle. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” said Trixie over the polite sizzling. “Soon to be even better, once she replaces her stock of healing herbs, incinerated as it was.” She shook her head mirthlessly—her blackened, wiry mane tumbled all about. “Your little friend certainly has a… talent for the unexpected.”

Frowning, Sweetie said, “I’m sorry. Did you want to postpone?”

“No, no.” Trixie sucked in a breath. “First, just let Trixie espouse a bit of personal sense and caution with a fresh life lesson: simply because she says nopony ever recorded a case of something does not mean that it never happened.” She licked her lips. “Merely that whoever it happened to probably died.”

“Um.” Sweetie gulped. “Got it.”

“Good.”

Sweetie Belle followed as Trixie pushed through the parquet door, out of Dappleton’s little family-run Wellwishers’ Burn Clinic and onto Midsummer Street. Walking there since Apple Bloom had gone and gotten her, Sweetie hadn’t failed to notice that most every business—and there were many—along this side street and others seemed to be owned and operated by some family or another. That, the decreased hoof traffic, and the warm quiet made the area feel almost residential.

Trixie led the way to a nearby open-air cafe. Perky Later’s, according to the hoof-painted sign hanging from its green- and white-striped awning. The hostess, a rather peppy and wide-eyed young mare, sat them promptly at one of many empty tables.

“An espresso,” said Trixie, lowering her menu, “with the white bean and escarole soup.”

“Um,” said Sweetie Belle. “The same for me, please, but a grape juice instead.” She turned to Trixie. “Should we get something for Apple Bloom and Scootaloo?”

“No need.” Trixie floated their menus up and stacked them. “Trixie gave Apple Bloom a bit of money for them to split.”

“O-okay,” said Sweetie, grimacing. Turning back to the hostess, she said, “That’ll be it, thank you.”

“Comin’ right up!” The hostess took the menus and practically bounced off to the back.

Trixie tapped a hoof on the wood of their table. A hint of something like regret in her voice, she said, “You never did give Trixie the details of your… ‘homework’.”

Sweetie stared down at her hooves on the seat. “There’s not a whole lot to say about it. Not really.”

A smile slowly snuck across Trixie’s face. “Melodrama suits you a touch too well, little apprentice.” At Sweetie Belle’s solemn pout, she continued, “How about starting with this much: what were your expectations for the show, before you began?”

“I…” Sweetie sighed, and she met Trixie’s eyes. “I don’t know. None?”

Trixie shook her head, saying, “Trixie sincerely doubts that.”

The filly put her forehooves up on the table, rubbing them together. “I knew it was going to be bad,” she said, not sounding sure even to herself. “But…”

“…But you also knew it could be wonderful.”

Sweetie frowned. “Yeah.”

“Excellent,” said Trixie, leaning forward. Still smiling, she went on, “Basic fact, little one: not-having is an important step on the road to having. Wanting and imagining are, too.” She pointed a hoof to herself—still blackened, still missing small patches of her coat. “When you find yourself having all that you wanted and imagined, you shall have developed the capacity to appreciate it!”

The clocktower rang thrice in the distance.

Sweetie Belle severed her stare to bury her mouth in her hoof, but couldn’t stifle her giggling. She said around it, “Now who’s melodramatic?”

Trixie sat back—formal posture, spine rigid, but grinning on. “The term ‘apprentice’,” she said, “implies that there exists a master.”

Sweetie giggled through the hostess bringing out their orders. Even through the first few unfortunate spoonfuls of soup.

“There, now,” said Trixie. “Spirits lifted, yes?”

The filly nodded.

Trixie blew on her espresso. “No resentment for putting you through it all?”

It took a moment, but Sweetie shook her head. “None, Miss Trixie. Or—” She bit back the rest, but then said, “Just please don’t make me do it again?”

“Nonsense,” said Trixie, smile evening out. She set the drink down on its saucer. “Whyever not? Trixie assures you that you will improve.”

“I just…” Sweetie stirred the spoon around in her bowl. “I’m not sure I can take being up there, everypony looking at me.”

There was a shimmering sound, and Sweetie felt a force beneath her chin. It pushed her head up, until her eyes were level with Trixie’s.

“There exists an easy remedy, little one.” The glow of Trixie’s horn started to fade. “The next time, Trixie shall simply make sure that you aren’t on stage alo—” The horn flashed sharply, and a bubble of her soup rushed into her open mouth. She reared back, spluttering, “Oh, come now!”

The hostess bounded over. “Miss?” she said with heavy concern. “Is everything alright? Problem with the food?”

“It’s fine,” grumbled Trixie, dabbing a napkin over herself and the table. “Too good, even.”

“O-Oh…” The hostess’ eyes narrowed—the first time Sweetie Belle had seen her eyelids fall even minutely. “Um, should we be charging more, or…?”

Trixie shot the hostess a sidelong glare.

“Er, right. Sorry for… interrupting?” The young mare bowed and scurried off.

Trixie turned her eyes back to the task of cleaning herself up. She dropped the soiled napkin down after, taking up her spoon in its place.

“Miss Trixie?” asked Sweetie as her lunch partner shoveled down soup. “Why does that keep happening?”

A discontented grunt was the response, along with metal rapidly clinking against the bottom of a bowl.

Sweetie just went back to her own meal.

Bowl empty, Trixie sighed. “Trixie does not permit you to laugh, understood?”

“Promise,” said Sweetie Belle.

Trixie folded her fore legs on the table. Frowning, she said, “There is something that they do not tell you about horns, Sweetie Belle.”

The filly set aside her juice and cocked her head.

“Use your horn to do something enough times”—Trixie floated up the last remnants of soup from her bowl—“enough that it becomes second nature, enough that you do not even have to think about it to do it”—she took it into her mouth and swallowed—“and your horn can develop a mind of its own.”

Sweetie Belle’s eyes widened. “Horns can…”

“Yes,” said Trixie. She glared up at what of her horn her forehead wasn’t blocking. “And Trixie’s horn is an idiot.”

Sweetie snickered, and Trixie’s glare shifted down. “Um, sorry!”

Trixie’s eyes softened into a tired look. “It is perhaps the single embarrassing aspect of being Trixie’s self.” She shifted her gaze again, staring off down the street. “In an earlier stage of her life, Trixie found it to be an invaluable trait, this food-lust. It has long since outlived its merits, though, and there seems to be nothing Trixie can do.”

“You can’t, um.” Sweetie’s eyes were locked on the horn. “You can’t retrain it somehow?”

Trixie shook her head, saying, “The only references to the phenomenon that Trixie has found have amounted to old mares’ tales, and they tend to leave off at ‘or it’ll get stuck that way.’” She gave a mirthless chuckle. “And it doesn’t help that Trixie’s carbuncle is rooted firmly in her stomach.”

Sweetie Belle’s brow shot up. “A carbuncle in your stomach—like a boil? Are you al—”

“You know far too many words, young one.” Trixie shook her head. “Not that sort of carbuncle. And it is merely an expression.”

“Um, not one I’ve ever heard.”

Trixie sighed again. “In reference to dendritic carbuncles?”

Sweetie opened her mouth, but shut it and shrugged her shoulders.

“Oh ho,” said Trixie, rising up in her seat and smirking. “Trixie had come to wonder how rare would be the occasion that she would need to define something for you.”

Frowning, Sweetie said, “If you’re going to be that way…”

“Lighten up, little one. In brief, dendritic carbuncles are a superstition, similar in nature to one’s horoscope.” Trixie slumped back onto the table. Her smirk retreating again, she continued, “Trixie would remind you that we are quite off track for our lesson. Please tell her that you would rather not spend any more time delving into such rubbish?”

“We~ell…”

“Ugh.” Trixie snorted out a puff of air, sending her crumpled napkin flying. “Alright. Riddle Trixie this: what determines which spells a given unicorn is skilled in casting, apart from practice? What determines base aptitude?”

Sweetie Belle looked up to the cloudless sky, and she said, “Their special talent does?”

Trixie nodded as much as she could without raising her head from the table. “That is the dominant modern hypothesis, yes, and the one to which Trixie subscribes.” She waved a hoof about dismissively. “Some centuries ago, this was not the case.

“Ponies theorized,” she went on with yet another sigh, “that there existed in the unicorn body a crystalline or pseudo-crystalline object of indeterminate size, enmeshed with the flesh—or bone, or nerves, or whatever there happened to be wherever it happened to coalesce.” She stuck her tongue out, closed eyes crinkling. “Nasty thought. At any rate, the idea was that the specific location of this so-called ‘dendritic carbuncle’ influenced magical aptitude. Massaged it towards or away from certain categories of spells.”

“And yours,” asked Sweetie, “is in your stomach? Or would be, if it was real?”

“Perhaps,” said Trixie, all but rolling her eyes verbally. “As with horoscopes and birthsigns and such, carbuncles were also supposed indicators of personality. Trixie merely feels that she fits the description.” She shrugged. “They say that one who has one’s carbuncle in the stomach is possessed of a hunger for power and fame and the like.”

Sweetie Belle tapped a hoof to her chin. “That does sound about right.”

“Or, of course,” said Trixie, tone serious, “that one is just literally hungry remarkably often.” Her smile crept back, and she continued lightly, “Trixie would not argue with either description.”

Sweetie gave a quiet giggle, then she asked, “So they never found one, then? If it’s just a theory, I mean.”

“Pshaw,” said Trixie. “Proponents would claim that carbuncles go away when observed or damaged, or that they weren’t actually physical things at all and were ingrained instead in the body’s magic. Any number of excuses that defy being disproven.” She held up a forehoof. “Thus, superstition.”

“Hm,” said Sweetie, and she started in on the last of her meal. When metal met bare porcelain, she said in a tentative tone, “Twilight always—Twilight Sparkle, back home, I mean. She always says ponies often don’t pay enough attention to ‘superstitions’ and ‘the supernatural’. Knows from personal experience as a formerly close-minded cynic, she says.”

Trixie groaned, saying, “So she’s the expert, is she?”

“Well,” said Sweetie, “probably?”

Sitting back up, Trixie said with ice in her voice, “Twilight Sparkle is just the sort of ‘disillusioned’ university-age pony who would try Zebrican meditation or other such nonsense to ‘find her carbuncle’ and then think it a revelation.” She clicked her tongue. “Perhaps not an inherently useless exercise, but far outpaced in reason and practicality by simply learning useful spells and seeing which you’re naturally best at.”

“Um, I don’t know about all that,” said Sweetie, wincing. “She does seem to spend most days just learning spells, though.” She could faintly hear the teeth grinding in Trixie’s mouth.

“Little one,” Trixie breathed, “this has been more than enough copperstore mysticism and-or Twilight Sparkle for one conversation, would you not agree?”

“Sure…?” said Sweetie meekly. “So, um, spell practice, or—”

“Spell practice.”

The door opened, and Scootaloo heard little hoofsteps slowly and heavily make their way into the room.

“Scootaloo?” came Sweetie Belle’s exhausted voice.

Scootaloo sat up on the bed. “Right here.”

“Hey, cool bandanna.” Sweetie walked to the bed and scrambled up. Lying back and looking once more to Scootaloo, she said, “So, Trixie wants to meet you out in that field you all go to. But…” Her brows creased some. “Is everything alright, Scoots?”

Scootaloo realized then that trying hard to look like you weren’t feeling anything probably looked a lot like trying hard to look like you weren’t feeling anything. “Yeah, no,” she said. “I just know that Trixie’s gonna try and give me some bad news.”

“Where did you get that?” asked Trixie, pointing to Scootaloo’s chest and the bandanna—purple, with black geometric designs around its visible edges—that rested there.

Scootaloo shrugged, taking a seat on the grass. “A little store in town, with the money you gave me and Bloom.”

“That was for food!”

“Hey, calm down!” said Scootaloo, holding her forehooves up. “I already ate.”

Trixie brought a hoof to the bridge of her nose. “And Apple Bloom?”

“She got something to eat with it, yeah.” Scootaloo settled back. “It was kinda crazy, actually. We found a place where that many bits gets you like a full-on pound of candy.”

Without hesitation, Trixie said, “Sweetie Belle is now in charge of your per diem.”

“Okay,” said Scootaloo, shrugging again. “Whatever that means.”

The sun was well on its way to the horizon, and the field was almost entirely shaded by the tree line—the only object set out nearby, the cauldron, was ominously black already. It would soon be getting a bit too dark out, Scootaloo noted gravely, for flying practice.

“Alright,” she said, “what’s the deal?”

Straightening up where she stood, Trixie said, “During Trixie’s last lesson, you h—”

“Just to be clear,” said Scootaloo, one hoof raised, “you mean that talk we had instead of a lesson, yeah?”

Trixie cleared her throat. “Precisely. And Trixie apologizes once more for that. At any rate, during that talk, you had said you were the child of two pegasi born and raised in Ponyville, correct?”

“I am,” said Scootaloo, starting to frown.

“Well,” Trixie said more slowly, “Trixie has a theory for you in regards to your flying that might come as something of a sh—”

“You think,” said Scootaloo evenly, “that I’ve got too much not-pegasus in me to be a normal pegasus.”

“That’s…” Trixie blanched slightly. “That was not how Trixie would have put it. How did you…?”

Scootaloo scoffed. “I’m not the smartest filly around, but I’m not a complete idiot either. You ask me about my family—three earth pony grandparents, by the way—you give me some strength test you gave Apple Bloom, and I saw that book you got.” She pointed to Trixie’s saddlebags. “‘The Potency of Parentage’? Sweetie told me what that means.”

“Okay,” said Trixie, mouth twisting. “Clearly, Trixie has failed to give you enough credit. Once again, she finds herself apologizing.” She paused, and then she sat down across from Scootaloo and leaned to eye level. “The fact remains, however, that you do not seem to have the flight capabilities of a pegasus years your junior. An uncommon multi-racial deformity could be a viab—”

“Deformity?” said Scootaloo, shooting up to her hooves. “I know that word. You calling me something, here?”

Trixie’s head reared back. “No, young one! Trixie only meant that—”

“No, you know what?” Scootaloo all but shouted. “I’ve freaking had it.” She started to pace-stomp around the area, her little form the very picture of seething tension—wings flittering, jaw gnashing. Without looking to Trixie, she continued, “You tell me I suck, you won’t give me a lesson, and now you try and say I’m freaking crippled.”

Scootaloo brought her hind legs up and kicked out at the only thing in range—the cauldron flew nearly ten hooflengths.

Scootaloo stared at it where it landed, her eyes wide.

“Er,” said Trixie, cutting through the silence. “This was what Trixie had meant to get at, Scootaloo.” She opened up her saddlebag and levitated the book out, turning to a bookmarked page. She read aloud, “‘In roughly seventy-eight percent of recorded cases, ponies afflicted with multi-racial deformities were seen to develop secondary or tertiary racial characteristics in the absence of or to the detriment of primary racial characteristics.’”

Looking back up to Scootaloo, Trixie said, “In short, you are—to some extent—capable of earth pony magic.”

“I…” Scootaloo moved her stare down to her hooves. “What?”

Trixie flipped to another bookmark, and she brought the book over to Scootaloo. On the pages was an illustration—exact and clinical, all sharp lines and no frills—of three pegasi in profile, wings extended. The first was normal apart from its baldness. The second and third, though, had smaller wings drawn within dotted outlines the size of the first’s set. The second pegasus was unique in that it had flowing lines superimposed over it, these lines collectively labelled ‘Flumen pollentis’. The third pegasus had a slightly bulkier frame, and in the provided cross section of its hooves was depicted a shaded layer beneath the skin labelled ‘Terra corporis’.

Trixie brought a hoof up and tapped the third pegasus, saying, “Trixie imagines you’ve been coming into some earth pony magics instead of the pegasus magics you’d been expecting, and for some time now.”

Eyes coming back into focus, Scootaloo looked up to Trixie and said harshly, “I think I’d notice it if flowers started sprouting around me everywhere I go.”

“That is not at all how it works,” said Trixie, grimacing, “and Trixie is sure that you know it.”

Scootaloo gritted her teeth. “I don’t care how it works, okay?” She started turning back to the field’s path, continuing, “If you don’t have any pegasus stuff for me, then—”

Trixie reached out and grasped Scootaloo’s fore leg, and the filly’s ears drooped back.

“Stop, little one,” said Trixie softly. “Trixie understands that this was not what you wished to hear, but…” Her mouth twisted up. “Well, it is the reality. What can be done but come to understand it?”

Scootaloo gripped back with her own hoof. She turned her head to Trixie, saying, “That’s what you’d do, huh?”

Trixie nodded, no hesitation.

A moment of the field’s stillness passed silently, then Scootaloo sighed, and she took her hoof back. “If I wanted to, where would I start?”

Trixie’s mouth split into a grin, and she said, “The basics, of course.”

Scootaloo sat back down, hesitantly. “And those are?”

Taking in and releasing a deep breath—and pointedly ignoring Scootaloo’s reemerging frown—Trixie began, “It could be said that an earth pony’s core abilities can be boiled down to just two bullet points: spellcasting of a generally passive sort, and what is known commonly as the ‘earth pony sense’.”

Trixie started to pace, as though she were a teacher in front of a blackboard. “For the former,” she continued, “there are rare exceptions, but most earth ponies enjoy some inborn measure of above average strength and balance, at least or especially when in contact with the ground. Or something solid which has itself been in contact with the ground for a long enough time.”

“Howzat work?” asked Scootaloo, her head tracking Trixie’s little circuit.

“I'm not certain you'd be able to grasp the technical details…” Trixie’s hoof shot up as Scootaloo’s mouth opened, and she added, “No offense intended, of course. Have you had any arcanodynamics at school?”

“Um…”

“Right.” Trixie rolled her eyes. “Essentially, magic flows in one or more of three directions naturally, with few exceptions: from hot things to cold things, from insubstantial things to tangible things, and from moving things to stationary things.” She pointed a hoof to the ground. “The magic in the planet itself is of a form that abides primarily by the second and third directions, and it spreads by physical contact.

“Everything here but the air,” she continued, sweeping the hoof about the field, “is a tangible thing that has been touching the ground for some time, and so is permeated by some amount of this magic.” The hoof settled to point at Scootaloo. “This includes you, and as an earth pony, your body—specifically your hooves, with the alicorn-like material they contain—is able to passively and very efficiently expend this kind of magic into spells. Generally performance-enhancing ones, hence the strength and balance.”

Scootaloo’s eyebrow rose. “You’re saying my hooves are princess—”

“No,” said Trixie, smirking. She tapped her horn. “‘Alicorn’ is a term for the core material of a unicorn’s horn—or any horn-based spellcaster’s.” She motioned to Scootaloo with her head. “You have a related material in your wings as well, of a hollower sort.”

Wings twitching, Scootaloo averted her eyes. “Look,” she said, “can we just get to something useful?”

Trixie’s smirk softened, and she bit her cheek. “Gladly,” she said. “Learn by doing.” She took in Scootaloo’s half slumped-over form, and she added, “But perhaps a small lesson first, agreed? A bit of practice?”

“Fine, I guess.” Scootaloo stood. “What am I doing.”

“Well…” Trixie coughed into her hoof. “Trixie takes this opportunity to admit that she has only the benefit of word of mouth from here on.”

Scootaloo’s frown was going full force. “So you’re saying you don’t know.”

“No,” said Trixie, voice muffled by the hoof still in front of her mouth, “merely that Trixie doesn’t know for su—”

“Let’s just get on with it,” said Scootaloo, rolling her eyes.

“Of course…” Trixie walked around the filly, inspecting her stance, loose as it currently was. “So, two bullet points, two broad options to explore. Passive spellcasting or the earth pony sense.”

Scootaloo looked back to Trixie. “You didn’t tell me what the second one is, y’know.”

Trixie pshawed, and she said, “You gave Trixie the distinct impression that the time for talk had come to a close.” She nodded to herself. “The earth pony sense shall be our starting point, then, why not. It is usually the first of the two to manifest anyway, in full earth pony foals.

“This question may strike you as odd,” she continued, staring at where Scootaloo’s hooves met the ground, “and I would bet that the answer will be ‘no’ regardless, but have you ever noticed a new sensation that you’d never noticed before? Different feedback for touching different materials or objects with your hooves?”

Slowly shaking her head, Scootaloo asked, “What kind of feedback?”

“Quite impossible to say.” Trixie sighed. “Every earth pony describes it differently. If you’ve never noticed it, then your earth pony sense—assuming you do indeed have one, which you should—must be either fairly weak or fairly subtle.” She rubbed a hoof to her chin. “Or, Trixie supposes, so specialized as to be all but worthless day to day.”

“Trixie…” Scootaloo’s frown changed then, and a mish-mash of expressions fought for a foothold in its place. “Come on. I’m, like, past my limit on hearing that kinda thing today. It’s a pretty high limit, too…”

“What do…?” Trixie’s eyes shot up to Scootaloo’s face. Her mouth opened, but not until a moment later did she ask, “Would you believe Trixie if she said that she was genuinely not intending for this all to come off the way it has?”

Scootaloo looked down. “Probably not, honestly.”

Mouth twisting, Trixie said quietly, “I suppose that’s fair.”

Scootaloo’s ear twitched. A few seconds, and then she looked back up to Trixie’s eyes. “What do we do now?”

“Right,” said Trixie, and she took a sharp breath in through her nostrils. “Describe to Trixie what your senses are currently telling you, if you please.”

“Um, what, like touch, taste and all?” At Trixie’s nod, Scootaloo looked to the ground and worked her hooves against it. “Um, ground’s kinda warm. Grass’s prickly.” She worked her tongue around. “Don’t taste anything. Tastes like mouth?”

Trixie sniggered.

Taking a great whiff of the air, Scootaloo went on, “Smells like grass, plus I guess a little me-sweat.” She waggled her ears. “Sounds like a breeze, and myself talking.” Her eyes roved quickly around. “Aaand looks like a fie—”

“Sorry,” said Trixie, brow raised, “breeze?”

Scootaloo nodded. “Tiny one, yeah. You can’t hear it?”

“No…” said Trixie. “A pegasus would have better eyes and ears than Trixie, she supposes, but she doesn’t feel a breeze, either.”

Scootaloo looked down at her body. Up at the tree line with none of its leaves rustling. The clouds moving slowly high up above—she pointed a hoof to them. “Wind up there, yeah? Planet stuff? That’s always going, right?”

“Hm,” said Trixie as she followed Scootaloo’s hoof up to the sky. “Possibly…” Her gaze came back down to the filly. “Humor Trixie, though. She would ask you to touch that bandanna of yours.”

Scootaloo did so, bringing her fore leg back down and nestling it up against the fabric. A moment later, she said, “Hearing it still.” She looked to Trixie.

“Forget your other hooves.” The mare came forward and tapped her hoof against Scootaloo’s. “Try focusing on this one.”

“‘Kay.” Scootaloo shut her eyes. She rubbed the bandanna, feeling the threads against her coat. She breathed deeply.

Her eyes opened, then narrowed. “That’s… huh.” She looked to the sky again, at the still-moving clouds. “It stopped.”

Trixie brushed her mane back, saying, “Little one, Trixie believes that we have identified your earth pony sense.” She clicked her tongue. “Sort of.”

“Still nothing I can use,” said Scootaloo, voice empty. “I probably forgot half her explanations already, and I couldn’t get any of the earth pony junk to… y’know, work right. Tell me anything.”

Sweetie Belle corrected for the weight of the bag over her shoulder, and she leaned in. “I know it’s not what you wanted,” she whispered, “but you didn’t tell me if you were right before. If it really was bad news.”

“It’s not the worst I’ve ever gotten.” Scootaloo stared at the cobblestones passing by beneath her hooves. “Past that, I dunno.”

Sweetie wrapped a hoof around her friend’s shoulders as they walked.

Up ahead, the wagon clattered and shook its way along, lamppost to lamppost.

“No need,” said Trixie, strapped in at its front. “It was not your fault, little one, and Trixie believes she said as much then. Just a touch of bad luck.”

“Ah know,” said Apple Bloom from the adjacent sidewalk. “Ah’m still sorry, Miss Trixie.”

Trixie smiled, saying, “Really, what is there to be sorry for?” She stared ahead at the lights of the approaching town square. “Trixie is not ashamed to say that she was not always so perfect as she is today. It took effort, and no small number of explosions.”

“Okay,” said Apple Bloom, chuckling. She looked to Trixie, whose mane was freshly washed and whose coat had no visible interruptions. “Y’all cleaned up well enough, ah s’pose.”

“But of course.” The mare brought a hoof up and bounced her mane. “What an awful waste all of that experience blowing herself up would have been if Trixie hadn’t also come away knowing how to look good afterwards.”

Apple Bloom just smiled lightly and kept walking, shouldering past the legs of other pedestrians.

Trixie spared her a glance. “Are you alright, little one? And do you grasp what you shall be doing?”

Nodding, Apple Bloom said, “Ah’m feelin’ fine, and ah get it. It’ll just be what everypony said y’all tried doin’ in Ponyville, yeah? Challenges and such.”

“Correct, but…”

“…But it won’t be me.” Apple Bloom looked back, at where Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were holding one another and talking. Blankly, she continued, “You and Sweetie’ll be the ones doin’ all the work. Ah just have to not mess up too bad.”

Trixie cleared her throat, saying, “It would be best to think of it more that you ‘have to act naturally’, surely. But yes.”

The group breached once more into Dappleton town square. Evening acts and sales were well underway, lit by copious lampposts placed periodically where the pathways between the spaces crossed. By flames that danced up from cooking stations and fire eaters, makeshift smithies and poi artists.

Still, many uncontested spots to set up were in sight. Trixie and the Crusaders trotted over to the closest, set between an earth pony caricaturist and an older mare hawking seaweed soup from a cart.

Out of the harness and around the wagon’s back, Trixie drew out her outfit and the group’s permit. The latter floated over and slotted itself into a frame affixed to a nearby wooden post.

“Alright, final check,” said Trixie, turning to her charges and donning her clothes. Her eyes met Scootaloo’s. “Are you certain that Trixie cannot convince you to take part, Scootaloo?”

Scootaloo just nodded.

Trixie shrugged. Eyes to Sweetie next, she asked, “You did manage to locate a costume shop before meeting back up with the rest of Trixie’s company, Sweetie Belle?”

“Yes, Miss Trixie!” Sweetie let the bag fall from her shoulder, and she pushed it forward.

Trixie peered inside. “Excellent. Shall we begin?”

“High in calcium!” called the dark green mare with the stringy black mane. She held her ladle high. “Regulates the blood! De~etoxifies!”

A hissing, popping sound rung out off to her side. She didn’t turn. “Helps maintain a healthy thyroid! Drops pounds fast!”

The ponies were walking past her cart faster than usual. She grumbled, following them with her eyes—the direction the sounds had come from. A little group had gathered at the gaudy wagon that had pulled up earlier, and she saw flames past them. She spat at the ground, turned back to her cart, and kept on yelling to passersby.

Trixie and Apple Bloom appeared from the dying flames, the former in her regalia and the latter wearing a cheap Nightmare Night vampire’s cape.

“Good evening, fillies and gentlecolts,” called out Trixie, sweeping a hoof through the air. “The Great and Powerful Trixie—”

Apple Bloom leapt forward, cutting in, “An’ the Stupendous Sweet Apple!”

“—bid you welcome to the show!”

The pair bowed to the pocket of ponies around the table-stage, then rose.

Trixie opened her mouth, but a stallion from the audience yelled accusingly, “Hey, wasn’t that filly in your crowd before?”

“Ah, of course,” said Trixie smoothly. “Valued patrons of yesterday’s performance will recognize young Sweet Apple.” She turned slightly and gave Apple Bloom a cheesy, sidelong smile, continuing, “So thrilled was the Great and Powerful Trixie’s darling assistant that she approached Trixie after the show, asking if she could participate again whilst Trixie is in town. How could Trixie refuse?”

Apple Bloom turned quickly to Trixie, seeing only an easy showmare’s smile directed out at the audience as it d’awwed. The filly’s mouth hung slightly ajar, but she blinked and faced the audience again herself, saying, “Um, yep!”

“In fact,” said Trixie, slipping into a tone of no small amount of gravity, “the Great and Powerful Trixie saw in this filly such potential—such a showmare’s spark, so much like Trixie’s own at that age—that mere participation on Sweet Apple’s part would be to rob you all of a true talent!

“No,” she continued, “this shall be the Stupendous Sweet Apple’s performance. Behold!” The mare floated out from beneath her cape a costume piece unicorn horn, off-yellow in color and with a suction cup at the base. The gathered ponies started chuckling even before the chintzy thing sealed itself to a snickering Apple Bloom’s forehead.

Trixie brought a hoof to the brim of her hat and lifted. A glimpse of her own horn, glowing, showed through, and she gave an exaggerated wink to the audience. “Now she shan’t have need of my assistance, of course.”

A murmur went through the small crowd, and smiles split most visible faces.

Turning to Apple Bloom fully, Trixie, asked, “So, Miss Apple, what spectacle shall we be party to this evening? And how might the Great and Powerful Trixie participate?” She bowed to her knees before the filly.

Apple Bloom raised her head high. “Challenges!” she intoned. Her eyes roved the audience. “Miss Trixie, ah want y’all ta find anypony with a talent, if ya please, an’ send ‘em up.” She stood on her hind legs, waggling her forehooves around mock threateningly. “Ah’ll match anypony if ah don’t plain whup ‘em!”

Laughter rippled through the audience once more, and Trixie stood, saying gravely, “One only hopes there could exist so bold a pony, after such a declaration.” She dropped a pouch by Apple Bloom and leapt down from the table, and before she hit the stone below, hooves had shot up all over.

Trixie held a whispered conversation with a nearby mare whose hoof was raised. The mare, a dark sienna earth pony in a flashy jester’s costume, climbed up onto the stage a moment later.

“Howdy, ma’am,” said Apple Bloom, waving. “What’s yer name and what’s yer challenge?”

Grinning, the mare said, “They call me Meel, sweet little miss.” From across her back she produced a set of four juggling clubs. “Tell me, now. Can you do this?”

As one, Meel tossed the clubs into the air. She reared onto her hind legs, and as each club fell, she caught it expertly in the crook of an ankle and sent it back up. The crowd whistling and cheering her on all the while, she moved between increasingly more complex patterns of cascades and showers.

With a flourish, she sent one last club high up while the other three were falling. Two she caught in her ankles, one apiece, and the third’s handle landed squarely in her chomping teeth. Finally, the last club landed handle first between her eyes, and she balanced it there. Another whoop went up from the crowd.

“Amazin’,” said Apple Bloom, her eyes shining. She stood up herself and held her fore legs out. “May I?”

Meel stacked the clubs up, and she passed them over with an exuberant nod.

Without hesitation, Apple Bloom threw them into the air. When the first fell back down, she nudged her hoof up to meet it—in the same moment, her costume horn and the club shimmered purple. The club shot up, spinning so fast that it looked like a solid circle.

The same happened with each of the other three, and the whole set flew up and back down. Then off to the side, boomeranging back. Zigzagging, looping-the-loop, even orbiting one another, all while the audience cheered.

All the clubs in the air at once and heading back to her, Apple Bloom balanced on one back hoof, outstretching the other and her forehooves. Upon each hoof and her nose, she intercepted and balanced a club by its handle. The gathered ponies hooted and hollered, and with a radiant smile, Apple Bloom kicked the clubs back up one more time—they met in the air and came down as a stack, and they and her horn glimmered again.

“Thank you!” said Apple Bloom, bowing to the audience and to a laughing Meel. She passed back the clubs.

Meel made to hop down, but Apple Bloom called, “Hold up a sec, Miss Meel!” The filly reached into the pouch Trixie had dropped, drawing out two gold bits and putting them in a fold of the jester’s costume. “Great work.”

Smiling ever brighter, Meel bowed herself and vacated the stage. Down on the ground, ponies in the crowd scrambled to give her bits of their own.

“So,” yelled Apple Bloom, “who wants ta try ‘n top the Stupendous Sweet Apple next?”

Sweetie Belle levitated the permit back out of its frame and came over to the wagon. To Trixie, counting bits into the coin pouch with Apple Bloom, she asked, “How did we do?”

“Over seventy bits of profit, little ones.” Trixie stowed the pouch and ruffled Apple Bloom’s mane. “Trixie begrudgingly admits that that routine goes over markedly better when the performer is the adorable dark horse.”

Scootaloo said from the sidelines, “So we’re leaving tomorrow?”

Trixie nodded and set about strapping herself in. “Right after breakfast. Trixie also means to pick up some supplies on the way out of town.” She looked to Apple Bloom. “Do you still aim to build props, little one?”

“Yeah, but…” Apple Bloom frowned, meeting Trixie’s eyes. “Miss Trixie, can ah ask… Where’d ya get so good at lying?”

Blinking, Trixie started, “Whatever do you…” She blinked again. “Ah, the bit about your role in the show?”

“Mhm.”

Trixie waved a hoof. “One key to a solid lie is forethought.” She finished strapping herself in with a sigh. “Trixie has been in that very situation before, with a past lovely assistant who’d been a plant in the audience the previous day.”

Trixie turned to the pathway, continuing, “Come now. It has been a remarkably long day, my apprentices. What say we get ourselves some dinner and some sleep?”

The Crusaders followed dutifully after the departing wagon.

1 Sweet Apple Dr.
Ponyville, EQS 2403
9/19/1428

Dear AJ

I miss home. You didn’t say how long it took you to miss home after you left sis, but it was at least more then a week right?

I’ve been trying to bring up going home to Sweetie and Scoots, but I think they think I’m just complane a winer. Or maybe just Scoots does, still though. I think the two of them are having fun and don’t want to stop.

I’m having fun too, but it dosen’t keep me from missing Sweet Apple Acres. I hope I’ll be back soon.

Sincerley, Apple Bloom

44 Longstride Street
Ponyville, EQS 2403-367
September the 19th, AM 1428

Dear Rarity,

Hi, again. And I’m sorry, again. I know you must still be worried, even if you got my last letter by now.

I found out yesterday that I don’t like being on a stage, or at least not by myself. You know there’s a lot of things I’m scared of, but most of it doesn’t keep me scared for ten straight minutes. Do you ever get scared when everypony’s paying attention to you? They must pay attention all the time. Everypony knows you, and loves you so much.

I’m happy to say that I’ve been learning a lot more than new things I’m scared of. It’s just been days, but I already feel like I know more about magic than I learned all last year. I can’t wait to show you! I bet you’ll be impressed.

Love,

Sarah “Sweetie Belle” Bellany Gem

3 East Fields Path
Ponyville, EQS 2403
9/19/1428

Dear Rainbow Dash,

Hey Rainbow! Man, I should’ve sent my last letter to you.

So I’m on an adventure now! It’s not as cool as any of yours yet, but I bet it’ll still be great. I’m hoping for some monsters.

So hey, you know how I keep asking you to teach me flying stuff? I found I hope I haven’t been bothering you too much with that. When I get back, I promise I’ll hold off on that a while.

Also hope you don’t mind if I keep sending you letters.

Awesomely yours,

Scootaloo

Author's Note

Sorry about the wait, but I hope the sheer chapter size (if nothing else) makes up for that some.

Thanks to Wanderer D and ChromeMyriad for the pre-reading/proofreading.

Chapter 7

The Paddock was abuzz tonight, good-natured laughter filling it from finely hewn stone floors to cherry wood rafters. Patrons lined the bar, no seat there vacant for more than a minute at a time, and rarely even that long. Twin streams of ponies moved up and down the wide staircase to the rooms above. A small stage ate into the ground floor’s space, empty; even so, the room had a music all its own in the small-town conversation, a touch of theatre in the pockets of romance and good humor and sorrow-drowning scattered about it.

And at one corner booth, supper had just arrived.

“Perhaps—” Trixie nearly choked as her horn levitated a bite of well-crusted summer squash casserole right into her speaking mouth. She shrugged, and she chewed. After, she tried again, “Perhaps you were right before.”

Breaking away from a big bowl of three-cheese grits (“heavy on the pepper jack!”), Scootaloo said, “About getting food?”

“No, no. Well, yes, but no.” Trixie pointed a hoof to Sweetie Belle, who looked up. “You were right, little one. Regarding training.”

Sweetie swallowed her mouthful of burdock root soup, tilting her head. “You mean about you giving us training before we do a show?”

“Precisely,” Trixie said, her horn deciding she needed another bite. Then, “Trixie had apparently forgotten just what it means to be inexperienced. She thinks training will be in order before her company tries anything remotely like a professional magic show again.”

Apple Bloom pushed away a mostly empty plate, streaked with applesauce and an apple sauce. “So,” she said, dirtying a napkin with her lips, “where’s that leave me ‘n Scoots?”

Trixie raised a brow. “Has Trixie not just stated her intentions to train you all?”

“What, like,” said Scootaloo, “to do stunts and stuff?”

“Certainly, if you wish.”

Scootaloo was a great big set of pearly whites, and Apple Bloom wasn’t far off herself.

“Really, though,” said Trixie with a smile of her own, “Trixie is prepared to attempt to fill any gaps in knowledge you turn out to have.”

“How do you mean?” asked Scootaloo, before tucking back into her dinner.

Twirling a fork in her magic, the mare said, “Trixie shall just have to determine where her company is weakest, and work from there. And for the sake of her show’s reputation…”—her eyes alighted once more on Sweetie Belle—“she supposes she shall have to start with you.”

Sweetie gulped.

“Rest well, young mage.” One last morsel of squash made its way to Trixie’s mouth. “Your training will come at dawn.”

The curtains ripped back.

“So when you told me dawn…”

Trixie hissed as the light fell over her. She rolled away from it, deeper into her quilt.

“Hey, come on!” Sweetie leapt onto the bed. She did what she could to tear away the covers. “It’s been almost an hour now!”

The mare groaned, her upper body exposed to the slightly chilly air. In the nest of her bedraggled mane, her horn surrounded itself with a murky glow.

Sweetie felt a weak, quivering field of telekinesis try to push her off, but it was easy to stand her ground. “Why did you even say dawn if you were just going to sit in bed? I could be sitting in bed, too!”

The magic dissipated, and after a moment, Trixie sighed. “Because it’ll be a very long day,” she said, sitting up and rubbing at her eyes. “I knew I needed an early start.”

Sweetie jumped down to the floor, but froze. “Hey,” she said as she turned back, “you lost your illeism!”

Trixie’s face scrunched up. “My what?”

“Your third-person speech thing.”

“Ugh.” Trixie peeled her covers back fully, stepping out onto the too-cold wood of the floor. “Why do you even know a word like that?”

It was a small room, sparsely furnished apart from the bed and a large chest of drawers. One window sat on a wall papered in light green patterns, a stark but not unattractive contrast to the bare fitted planks that made up the other three. Cherry wood, like the floors, the ceiling, and much of the rest of The Paddock.

The room did come with an adjacent bathroom, small though it also was, and it was to there that Trixie trudged. A bit of drowsy-horned magic turned the bathroom sink’s knobs and filled a tin cup that had been sitting on the rim.

Back in the main room, Trixie’s magic field held the cup up in the air, stationary. The glow of her horn brightened, and a light fwoosh accompanied the appearance of a little flame just beneath the cup’s base.

“What are you doing?” said Sweetie. She had a hoof raised, unsure whether to retreat or go in for a closer look.

Trixie rolled her eyes, and she moved to the chest of drawers. “Ponies in my line of work have a clever word for it.” She sucked in a breath and intoned with decidedly fake awe, “Magic.” She slid open a drawer, out of which floated one of her many pouches. This one was a dark green, embroidered with a simple, spade-shaped leaf—and it looked like it was wriggling. As she made her way back over to the cup, the mare went on, “Magic’s probably something pretty foreign to you, right?”

With a note of apprehension, Sweetie asked, “What do you mean?”

“Weak abilities with levitation,” said Trixie, “no knowledge of mana marbles apart from what you’ve heard from me, and if your performance yesterday was typical, a lack of self-control and perhaps even knowledge of the basic principles of thaumaturgy.” She dropped the pouch to the ground before crushing it underhoof. There was a dirge of tiny squeals, then the wriggling stopped. “Tell me. What other gaps in your training will I be forced to correct?”

“Hey!” Sweetie Belle was blushing hard, but it didn’t keep her from scowling. “I always hate it whenever I’ve got to play this card, but I’m only a little girl! What did you expect?”

Trixie gave a pshaw. “Spare me. By whatever tender age you are, I’d been using my magic to turn a profit on the schoolyard.” She wore an empty smile as she stared into the fire, but it broke into a yawn. Smacking her lips, she continued, “No, even after applying the Trixie Curve, you’re miles behind where you should be. What idiot do you go to to learn magic?”

“My sister,” said Sweetie, a frown cropping up. “Why are you acting so much meaner than usual, Miss Trixie?”

Trixie’s ear twitched. “Your sister’s a regular magical scholar, is she?”

“Seamstress.”

The flame and the cup wavered wildly for a second, and Trixie burst out laughing.

The red was erupting full force on Sweetie’s face. “Well, she’s taught me loads more magic than you, hasn’t she? Is this a lesson or are you just going to make fun?”

Trixie’s laughter died down, and she wiped a tear from her eye. “One, your sister’s had you for more than a day or two.” She snickered. “And two, I bet I’ve already taught you some magic much more complex than she ever did.”

Sweetie tilted her head. “What, how to use the marbles?”

“Yes and no.” Trixie reached up to her still unkempt mane and, face tight, ripped a hair free. She floated the long, silvery strand over into Sweetie Belle’s hooves. “Make it invisible.”

Looking between Trixie and the hair, Sweetie said, “Um, alright. Where’s one of the little black pouches?”

“No,” said Trixie, rolling her eyes. “Use your own magic this time.”

Sweetie’s jaw dropped. “I can’t do that!” she said, voicing shooting up to the highest registers. “I can barely levitate, and invisibility is supposed to take way, way more magic.”

“Actually,” said Trixie with a chuckle, “with a small enough object, it can wind up taking less, depending. A hair has a tiny enough surface area for the magic to barely matter.” She let out another yawn, then shot a glance to the still-heating tin cup. Sighing, she sat herself down on the cold hardwood with a wince. “With magic out of the picture, the only thing keeping you from casting it is the complexity, but I urge you to give it a try anyway.”

Sweetie shifted her eyes up and down again, and Trixie nodded. Sparks flew out from the filly’s horn as it kicked into gear, and a pale glow formed. The haze shifted about, dancing in the air around the horn, and then around the hair.

But nothing happened.

“What’s in your head right now?” asked Trixie.

“Um…” The glow dissipated. “I read a book about magic at the library, once. It had a few lines about an invisibility spell, and I’m… It said I had to—”

“Stop.”

Sweetie looked up.

Trixie’s expression was stern. “I distinctly recall telling you to ‘learn by doing.’ And what did you do, yesterday?”

Face falling, Sweetie said, “I messed up your magic show.”

“Ha!” Trixie’s hard look broke slightly. “Yes, I suppose so. But you know what else?”

Sweetie shook her head.

“While you were dismantling my reputation, you cast a good two dozen invisibility spells.”

“Huh? But all I…” The filly’s face scrunched up. “The marbles, then? In that little ‘crash course,’ you told me they were concentrated magic, but I didn’t think—”

The distinctive, burbling sound of the water in Trixie’s cup coming to a heady boil filled the air. Trixie sighed heavily, smiling, and put out the fire. “Matrons be praised,” she said as she upended the leaf-themed pouch—a bit of greenish mush plopped into the steaming water. She swished the cup around in her telekinesis, and continued, “You’re remembering wrong. I told you that mana marbles were composed of concentrated magic, but I also said they were spells.”

“Well, okay, but what’s the difference?” Sweetie sniffed the air, which now seemed to be full almost to the point of fogging with a sharp, spicy smell. “And what’s that in the cup?”

Trixie grinned, but the way her teeth were set made it seem almost predatory to Sweetie. “Want a sip?”

“…No thanks.”

“Your loss.” The mare took a deep breath of air, and she chuckled, saying, “Doing wonders for me already. Back to the matter at hoof, though.” Trixie stood, advancing on Sweetie Belle. “The difference between magic and a spell should be obvious to you, in hindsight. Magic is what fuels spells, and spells are both the magic that make them up and the form that that magic is given. The pattern, the flow of it—there are a million applicable terms.”

Sweetie frowned. “So when you say a marble is a spell…?”

Huffing, Trixie said, “Come now. I expect you to do some thinking.”

Frown etching itself ever harder into Sweetie Belle’s cheeks, she said, “It means the ‘pattern’ is baked in when you make one?”

“Precisely,” said Trixie, now beginning to walk in a circle around the filly. “And what do you suppose that means when you activate one?”

“That the marble casts the spell itself?” Sweetie strained her neck to follow as Trixie disappeared behind her. “Because it’s got all of the magic right there and knows what form it’s supposed to end up in?”

Trixie shook her head, not looking at Sweetie. “A decent try—and in some situations, you’d actually be right—but guess again. Remember that it’s you who activates the marble, with your own horn.”

Sweetie Belle looked to the hair still resting on her hoof. She narrowed her gaze, and her horn began to spark and glow once more. Not a moment sooner did the glow extend to the hair than both the hair and the glow disappeared. “Ha!” The filly jumped for joy. She whipped her head to Trixie, saying, “The spell goes through my horn—through me, doesn’t it?”

A nod and a prideful little smirk met Sweetie’s eyes. “Correct,” said Trixie. “You can imagine why they’ve seen widespread use as teaching aids, no?” She patted Sweetie’s stub of a horn. “Budding unicorns such as yourself don’t often have the magical reserves necessary to get in a lot of practice with any but the least demanding spells, but with mana marbles, you’re at least able to pick up the patterns.

“The tricky part,” she went on, making her way back over to the bed, “will come later, when you stop relying on instinct to cast them.” She clambered up onto the sheets. “Until then, you won’t have a full understanding of them, and that will limit you immensely.”

Trixie, situated firmly on the bed, floated the cup to her face. She took one last, great whiff of its steam, then promptly blew on it and poured it down her throat. Her eyes went wide, and her face went deep purple. The cup gave a tinny clang as it hit the floor.

Sweetie rushed forward, all but shouting, “Are you okay? What is that stuff?” But Trixie just wheezed out a laugh, falling over backwards. Sweetie slowed.

All four legs pointed right up at the ceiling, and still laughing, Trixie managed, “Something far stronger than coffee, Trixie will say that much.” Angling her head up, she caught Sweetie Belle’s raised eyebrow. She gave a contented sigh, then rose, before ruffling the filly’s mane. “Trixie apologizes if she’s caused any offense, little one. She is far from being a morning pony—and rarely does she allow anyone to catch her so indisposed.”

“You’re weird, Miss Trixie,” said Sweetie, ducking away from the hoof before her hair could get ruined any further.

Trixie giggled. “Trixie assures you that weirdness all but comes with the showpony territory. And speaking of…” Her horn lit up, and a drawer over on the chest slid open, relinquishing a slip of paper. Floating it into Sweetie’s hooves, she said, “Trixie has a little assignment for you to undertake. You could call it ‘homework’.”

Scootaloo had always loved the sound her hooves made on wooden stairs. It always sounded more alive than when she walked on most other kinds of things—like the wood was where it wanted to be, somehow. She shook her head, remembering that this was supposed to be a conversation, and said, “So when are they getting back?”

“I don’t know,” said Sweetie from alongside her, the pair of them making their way down to The Paddock’s main floor. “She didn’t even say she was leaving, exactly. Just that she might use the wagon for Bloom’s lesson, so I should get anything I needed out of it.”

“Performance stuff?”

Sweetie Belle nodded.

Scootaloo wore a skeptical look. “It doesn’t sound like she gave you much of a lesson, to be honest. More like she just got in your head a bit.”

“I guess that is what happened.” Sweetie giggled. “Still, it seemed like she might know a lot more than Rarity. Maybe I’ll get a better lesson next time if I make sure I’m not the one who wakes her up.”

“Seriously, though,” said Scootaloo, “are you actually ready for this?”

The two fillies reached the bottom of the staircase, and Sweetie Belle looked around. The restaurant portion of The Paddock was almost deserted now compared to the night before—there were just a hoofful of patrons scattered about, eating light breakfasts and brunches. “It…” She licked her lips, which suddenly seemed very dry. “It shouldn’t be that bad.”

The pair made their way over to the bar, where a white-coated, carnation-maned stallion seemed to be the only member of staff out on the floor. They leapt and scrambled their way up onto the stools. Once victorious, they met a wry smile from across the counter.

“Bit young to start your morning off right, aren’tcha?” said the bartender. “How’s about a pair of birch beers, instead?” He reached beneath the counter and brought two glasses under a tap.

Cheeks reddening, Sweetie said, “Thank you, sir, but I’m here to make a request.”

The smile didn’t leave the bartender’s face, and he didn’t stop pouring. “Not one of those ‘I swear my dad sent me to get’ sort of requests, I hope?” He set the birch beers out in front of the fillies. “On the house, this time.”

“Hey, thanks, mister!” said Scootaloo. Not a second later, she was gulping hers down, savoring the light burn.

“Thank you again, and no.” Sweetie Belle cleared her throat. “This is more of a ‘can I use your stage?’ kind of request…”

The stallion’s smile finally began to fade a little. “For what, exactly?”

Sweetie mumbled too low to be heard, but her friend elbowed her in the ribs. “Ouch!” She scowled at a grinning Scootaloo, then turned an apprehensive look back to the bartender, saying, “It would be a magic show. A practice one.”

“Sorry, little miss,” he said, out and out frowning now. “Practice or no, I don’t think I’m allowed. A free drink to a cute filly now and again’s one thing, but hosting a show that don’t have a permit? That’s…” He found a signed and dated slip of paper floating in front of his face. Grasping it, he held it up to the light of a nearby window, before giving it back. “Well, huh. Free show?”

Sweetie Belle nodded. “My master said I can take anything the audience wants to give me, but that I should give The Paddock some of whatever I get.”

“We usually book acts ourselves…” The bartender tapped a hoof to his chin. “Don’t know that we’ve got any official rules for this. A fifth for us sound okay to you?”

“Sure!” said Sweetie.

“Long as nothing gets burned or blowed up, that should work.” The bartender held a hoof out, and it took the filly a second, but she shook it.

Sweetie Belle looked to the stage, tapping her hooves together. She felt a light shove against her shoulder, and turned to see Scootaloo, mouth still occupied with birch beer, motioning with a hoof for her to get going. Sweetie nodded and hopped to the floor, landing awkwardly but managing not to fall.

With as much poise and gravity as she could muster—which turned out not to be as much as she’d hoped—Sweetie Belle strutted her way over to the stage’s steps.

As she climbed them, she could hear a jaunty marching beat begin to play.

Sweetie marched up onto the platform with a measured pace. Once she’d reached center stage, she stopped and faced the room, but kept rhythmically clopping her hooves on the hardwood.

“Come one, come all!” she called, and every eye in the room turned to her. She set her mouth into a determined line. “Witness the birth of a new star!”

One stallion, awe gleaming in his eyes, asked, “What’s your name?”

“This star’s name? This young master—this paragon?” said Sweetie, blessing the stallion with a glance. “Her name is…”

Sparkling lights leapt from Sweetie’s horn, fizzling and crackling as they rent the air. In time with her hooves, she sang,

“The Magnificent Sweetie Belle, here to surprise!

She’ll razzle!

She’ll dazzle!

You won’t trust your eyes!”

From the nothingness by her side shot a black-and-white wand, spinning ‘round and ‘round the filly, held in the glow of her magic.

“The Magnificent Sweetie, no equal in sight!

She’ll shock and

She’ll awe and

She’ll be here all night!”

With every stomp of her hoof, Sweetie’s wand paused in its flight and shot a whistling orb of color out to the audience. They oohed and they ahhed, and they scrambled in close to the stage, begging for more.

“The Magnificent Sweetie Belle, here to amaze!

Prodigy!

Destiny?

Lavished with praise!”

The audience had the beat now, stomping with Sweetie for all that they were worth—but they almost lost it when a cape and hat of pure starlight shimmered into being on their new goddess!

“The Magnificent Sweetie Belle,”

She upturned the hat.

“The never been beat–y belle,”

She gave it a pat.

“The in the hot seat–y belle,”

And out fell a bunny…

“Don’t call her a cheat-y belle,”

A dragon!

“The best on the street–y belle,”

Some money.

“Her presence a treat–y belle,”

A wagon, shaped funny!

“The high-class, elite-y belle.”

And squashing all flat came a fat-bellied cat!

“This prim filly, neat-y,

Says never did she see

A magician alive who’s an ounce more discreet-y,

Offbeat, petite-y,

Or even complete-y,

As she, the Magnificent, Marvelous Sweetie Belle!”

In a final display, Sweetie’s wand flew over the audience, raining its majestic lights down upon them. The filly, bowing, found herself nearly deafened by their maddened cheers and their fervent, still-paced stomping. Flowers and bits flew up to the stage in equal measure, Sweetie’s smile growing more radiant with each addition to the pile.

The audience, with its cheers dying down, called out in a chorus of harmonious mares’ and stallions’ voices,

“The Magnificent Sweetie makes grown ponies squeal!

So daring!

So bold!

Can she do it for real?”

The marching beat cut out with an ear-piercing gramophone scratch.

Sweetie shook her head roughly and climbed the stage’s steps, somehow managing not to trip over herself. When she reached center stage, she turned and faced the room, hoping no one heard her gulp.

“Come one,” said Sweetie in what could just barely be called an indoor voice, “come all…”

Apple Bloom had to admit that Trixie sure could pick a nice spot for a lesson. The stream by where the wagon was parked babbled, the breeze blew through her mane and the silk of her bow, and the grass reached out to tickle her stomach. Fall wasn’t in Dappleton quite yet, but it wasn’t hot, either. It was just right.

It almost seemed a shame to her when Trixie finally said something.

“Okay, little Apple Bloom.” The mare was seated a few hooflengths off, wearing that outfit of hers, like she didn’t want to feel the breeze on her. “Trixie shall begin, once more, by asking how far along her pupil is with magic training.”

Apple Bloom’s head reared back a bit, and she cocked an eyebrow, but the look passed quickly. “Ah know a little bit,” she said, “ah guess. Big Mac back home—he’s mah brother—knows a whole lot about it, and he taught mah sis’, and he started teachin’ me a year or two ago.”

“Inherited knowledge. Interesting. Might Trixie ask what you know so far?”

Looking up to the clear blue overhead, Apple Bloom said, “Well, ah know an earth pony’s magic is all in our hooves.” She waggled her forehooves where they sat. “We can use ‘em to feel the life in the ground—see where’s good to start plantin’ things. Ah also know a bit about the firmen— firmoma… Er, the stars an’ stuff.” She rubbed her mane. “Sorry, Big Mac’s a little too wordy fer me.”

“Trixie sees that ‘Big Mac’ underwent very traditional magic lessons.” Trixie nodded. “She supposes that is to be expected, if your family keeps its magical knowledge… well, in the family.” She stood up, cape flaring out, and Apple Bloom had to fight not to roll her eyes. “Trixie regrets to inform you, however, that your brother was not entirely correct. The basics sounded classical, but Trixie knows for a fact that in the past century, the theories on the positioning of the firmament in relation to the performance of an earth pony’s magical abilities were found to be thoroughly ungrounded in all but superstition.”

The wind whistled through the trees at the edge of the field.

“Um… pardon?”

Trixie shook her head. “The ‘stars an’ stuff’, as you so elegantly referred to them, do nothing for an earth pony aside from providing moral support. The notion that they make you stronger is a simple myth.”

“Oh…” Apple Bloom opened her mouth to say more, but she was cut off.

“Beyond that, the assumption that an earth pony’s magic is ‘in your hooves’ is similarly incorrect. The magic is outside of yourself”—here Trixie swept her hoof all about—“a part of everything. It is an earth pony’s unique hooves that allow you to work with the magical energies in organic and otherwise physical materials, yes, but the magic within your own bodies has no bearing on it.”

“Right…” Apple Bloom’s ear flicked, and a little frown was taking shape on her face. “How do y’all know all that, exactly? Bein’ a unicorn ‘n all, that is.”

“Trixie is no earth pony, yes, but she is ever sure to keep abreast of magical knowledge.” The mare waved a hoof, like Apple Bloom’s budding concerns were meaningless. “Even knowing as little as Trixie does about earth pony magic specifically, she has at least made herself aware of current developments. She suggests that you have your family do the same, upon your return. Tradition is fine, but fact is better.”

Apple Bloom found herself rubbing one fore leg over the other. “Ah guess.” Feeling and sounding decidedly less enthusiastic than when Trixie had first fetched her for training, she said, “So, uh… what’ve ya got to teach me?”

“Well, that depends. Back to your earlier experience—you’ve told Trixie your knowledge of the mechanics of earth pony magic, but what have you actually been able to accomplish with it, as of yet?”

“Um, not a whole lot, ah guess.” Apple Bloom ran a hoof over some of the grass before her, and a patch of out-of-season dandelions. “Ah’ve been able to grow little things like flowers, and even a fern once, with just mah magic an’ some sunlight. Nothin’ big like a tree, ‘a course. With the other stuff—the strength and co’rdination ‘n all—ah still can’t buck the apples out of a tree anywhere close to how mah sis’ does it, but ah’m gettin’ better.”

Trixie smirked, and she pointed off towards the field’s edge. A half-wild apple tree rustled in the breeze there. “Show Trixie.”

Hoof met mane one more time, but Apple Bloom stood and made her way over all the same. She stared up into the branches as she came to a stop at the trunk.

It was something like a Jonagold. Fruit looked ripe, or nearly. Sort of small, but no severe cankers, no infestations—that certainly didn’t argue against it being a Jonagold, the hearty things. Not terribly misshapen despite not having had a pony to guide it. All in all, a pretty good tree.

Thwack, then a rain of thumps, two of which sounded a bit meatier than the rest.

Trixie’s eyes were wide.

“Ya see?” said Apple Bloom. “If it was AJ, she’d ‘a had that tree empty in the blink of an eye, all the fruit landin’ right in her baskets, not a one of ‘em hittin’ her.”

And now Trixie’s mouth was wide. In a moment, she said, “I-is that so?” She shook her head—Apple Bloom wondered how long it would be before the mare got a crick in her neck. “Come here a moment, if you would.”

Apple Bloom marched right back on command. Trixie’s horn was building up some magic, and after a few moments, an orb of pinkish light flared into being in front of the filly.

“Kick it,” said Trixie flatly.

Apple Bloom shrugged, turned and kicked—

Trixie zipped down to the ground as the orb shot past overhead. She turned, tracking its flight off into the trees. Gulping, she stood and faced the filly once more. “Little one, Trixie dares to say she feels you are selling yourself quite short. This ‘AJ’ pony sounds like a very accomplished magic user, but Trixie assures you that you are no simple initiate yourself.” Trixie motioned to the almost fruit-bare tree. “She has seen ponies nearly twice your age fail to approach that level of competence. Often, in fact.”

Blushed very lightly, Apple Bloom kicked a hoof against the dirt. “Yer just sayin’ that.”

“And Trixie says it because it is the truth. You have an excellent grasp of your strength, as well—that kick you gave Trixie’s magic was far more powerful than she had been expecting. In fact…” Trixie’s brows knitted. “In fact, Trixie is unsure that she could instruct you in earth pony magic as well as you have already been instructed.”

Apple Bloom’s mouth couldn’t decide whether to grin or to frown. It settled for saying, “Stunts, then?”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “It has yet to become apparent to Trixie from where, precisely, this idea of stunts arose.”

“Scootaloo’s idea, ah thought. Why? Can’t do ‘em?”

“What Trixie means to say is that they would not have been her first, second, or even tenth suggestion.” The mare held her hat aloft in a magic field—the white gold trim was glinting in the light, giving the whole thing an almost delicate look. “Physical stunts have never been a large part of Trixie’s performances. Things like escape effects have, certainly—when she’s had the right accompanying talent—but she leaves outright daredevilry to the daredevils.”

Frown it was, then. “So there’s nothin’ y’all can teach me?”

Trixie scoffed, pulling her hat firmly back into place. “Trixie didn’t say that. It is merely a matter of making a decision. Currently, she is equipped to teach biothaumaturgy, legerdemain, escapology, apothecary, ment—”

“Ain’t gonna be much good decidin’ if I can’t even understand ya.”

Trixie gave a defeated sigh. “In the common terms: race magic, sleight of hoof, escape tricks, potion-making, psych—”

“Ooh!” Apple Bloom’s hoof shot up. “Potions! Ah’ve done some ‘a that.”

Raising an eyebrow, Trixie said, “At your age? What, did you brew your first cup of tea?”

“That counts?”

Trixie waggled a hoof noncommittally.

“Nah,” said Apple Bloom, “ah’ve made a full love potion and a Heart’s Desire potion, but neither—”

“Wha—!?” Trixie fell flat on her face. She leapt back up, never mind the grass stains, and shouted, “What ignorant psychopath would teach such dangerous— You mean you actually got potions like those to— I mean, I…” Trixie coughed into a hoof, and she straightened her hat where it had gone askew. “What Trixie means to ask is how?”

Apple Bloom’s head fell to the side, her expression blank. “Ah just… did ‘em? Love potion, me an’ mah friends followed a recipe, and with the Heart’s Desire ah sorta did whatever.”

Another breeze blew by, rustling, jostling. At this point Apple Bloom wondered if nature was just having fun with the awkward silences.

“Potions it is,” said a formerly slack-jawed Trixie, “before you kill anypony.” Her horn began to glow.

Apple Bloom turned to see Trixie’s cauldron floating out from the wagon, along with a mass of water from the stream.

“Dig a pit, would you?”

The filly did, and a fire sprouted up within it a moment later, above which a filled cauldron now sat.

“Apothecary one-oh-one,” said Trixie with an air of authority. “The most basic fact of apothecary is that it deals with reactions, and the most basic reaction an apothecary engenders is arguably this: water boils when heated.”

“Duh,” said Apple Bloom.

“Shush, little one. There is mastery to be had even here. Are you familiar with the phrase ‘A watched pot never boils’?” At Apple Bloom’s nod, Trixie continued, “You will find this phrase seems to ring doubly true for cauldrons. It is best to occupy oneself with the preparation of ingredients and the like while the cauldron heats up, so it can be an invaluable skill to hear when the water is boiling at the proper stage. Come and practice.”

Slowly, Apple Bloom’s eyes grew wide as small planetoids. “Fer… Fer how long?”

Author's Note

Thanks once more to Chrome and Pear for the proofreading/pre-reading.