"Now!" Trixie announced. "A feat which I suppose none of you have ever seen a unicorn perform." Trixie gestured at the pair of sawhorses upon the stage, and the shocking spectacle they propped up. "Without the concealment of a box or a cabinet. In full view of each and every one of you."
With one forehoof, Trixie lifted a long, sharp tool. The stage lights glinted off its sharp, shiny teeth. "At incalculable danger to life and limb..."
In the audience, a mare fainted. Trixie smiled. She held the audience in the hollow of her hoof. "Trixie shall...SAW A LOG IN HALF!"
"No!" a pony gasped. "Unicorns can't do manual labor. Once I saw a unicorn try to use a pocketknife. It wasn't a pretty sight. Especially what was...left over, afterwards. That poor unicorn."
"Fear not!" Trixie proclaimed. "Medical staff are standing by backstage. The chances that everypony here tonight will drown in a shower of Trixie's blood are really not all that high."
As if by reflex, many ponies flinched and covered their faces.
Trixie lifted the saw high, and slowly lowered it against the center of the log.
Vooooob. She pulled the saw across the log.
Woooba. She pushed it back to its first position.
VOOOB! Sawdust flew from the cut, drifting through the air and sprinkling the stage.
"Impossible!" an earth pony said. "But she's really doing it!"
Wooooba. VOOOOB! Sawdust flew everywhere.
"A REGULAR OLD UNICORN," Trixie said, "would make you wait for half an hour or more while they tried and failed to cut through this log. Let's see how TRIXIE does it."
Trixie put down her saw, lifted the log with both forelegs, and flipped it over. She lifted the saw again.
A pony in the audience said, "You showed us you can use a saw without dying. We all saw you make three strokes. You even made SAWDUST. Don't take it too far! This is a new suit I'm wearing. I don't want any bloodstains!"
Trixie grinned mischievously. "Some earth ponies," she said, "wouldn't BOTHER to cut through the entire log with a SAW."
A large stallion with neither wings nor horn shouted, "Not ALL earth ponies! Don't do something crazy like bucking it! Just juggle some balls or something!"
Trixie lifted her saw and gave the log a quick and shallow cut, almost even with her first cut on the other side.
Ponies sighed in relief. Maybe she'd only done that to show her first shallow cut wasn't a fluke. Maybe she wouldn't take any insane risks...
Trixie laid down her saw, and leaped high into the air. With an acrobatic grace unusual among non-pegasi, she landed atop the log. The log shuddered slightly, but neither broke nor fell.
Throughout the audience, ponies blinked and stared. Had they really seen what they thought they'd seen? A unicorn leaping through the air as gracefully as a pegasus?
With her deceptively strong legs, Trixie flung herself almost straight upwards. As she neared the top of her arc, she tossed her mane. Why not look as good as her performance made her feel?
The audience held its collective breath as Trixie fell directly towards her precariously stacked perch. Would the weakened log even hold? Or would something break? Would Trixie be seriously injured by jagged edges or splinters? This was no earth pony to push right through it. No pegasus to spread her wings at the last moment and catch herself or veer off. This was a unicorn, practically defenseless against the implements and dangers of any earth pony shop class.
Trixie landed with both rear hooves at once, striking the log forcefully. Was it a safe, secure landing? Not exactly! The log broke under her hooves. The wood fell into two main pieces, but each piece angled away from her. The freshly broken ends where she had struck and snapped the log fell fastest. The ends supported by the sawhorses stayed high at first. For a brief moment, each chunk of wood seemed to rotate around its sawhorse, almost like a door turning around a hinge.
Once Trixie's rear hooves landed on the stage, she made a second leap, gracefully flipping backwards hooves over head. She landed on all fours behind the sawhorse. Chunks of wood bounced and rolled, but she avoided them neatly by stepping over the one piece that rolled towards her, letting it continue onward backstage.
Trixie's horn glowed brightly as she levitated her pointy wizard's hat off her head. "Mares and gentlestallions, The Great and Powerful Trixie's Unicorn Log Bucking Trick!" As she tipped her hat, she bowed with pride.
Throughout the audience, ponies stomped and cheered. A few in the back whistled loudly and long. She could see something she liked within their big smiles. Most of them were genuinely pleased that Trixie had survived what most ponies would have thought sure death for any unicorn.
Was her performance a huge, dramatic leap? Or in the greater scheme of things, was it only one tiny step? One way or another, she believed, it was a bit of movement in the right direction.
***
After the show, Trixie went out into the theater's lobby. Astonished ponies crowded around her. Unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi alike gazed at her admiringly. Fillies and colts touched her as if they hoped a little something would rub off on them. But not magic. Something better than magic: possibility. The hope that what their parents had been and were, might not confine them.
Really, they craved the feeling that this world had at least a little room for wonders and miracles.
Trixie knew some ponies who bought tickets to her show thirsted for spectacles of blood and disaster. But partway through her show, many of those bloodseekers changed. When they saw the frail-bodied unicorn defying her own destiny, applying the courage many of them thought the sole property of earth ponies and pegasi? She won their sympathies as if she were one of them. And at least a few of those former bloodseekers, Trixie believed, would be forever changed by the experience.
As the crowd thinned out and departed, Trixie looked around. Soon, she knew, the shy ones would come to her. The ones who didn't want to share their feelings with everypony else.
A little colt trotted up to her, and veered off at the last moment to run around the showpony. He seemed to try to hide behind Trixie, between her and the poster-bedecked wall. Trixie turned partway around to smile down at him.
"Hello," she whispered. "What's your name?"
"Lucky Escape," he said. "On account of I was born very tiny and weak, and I almost died just as I was born."
"Lucky, I am so happy to meet you. Did you enjoy the show?"
He frowned, embarrassed. "I didn't get to see the show. No ticket. But I've heard all about you. You do things...what ponies say nopony of your race can do."
Trixie smiled. "I do things. But they're things that more than one race of pony can do. I'm the living proof."
Lucky giggled. "You ARE the living proof. Because here you are, still alive."
"Yup. Still alive." Trixie bent down to pat the colt on the head. She could have nuzzled him, but so close to Saddle Arabia some ponies were a bit weird about nuzzling. So she preferred not to take the risk. Risks should be chosen only after all due care and preparation, she liked to say to her close friends. She wasn't really as much a daredevil as she liked to appear.
She only made her life LOOK incredibly dangerous. She always tried very hard to make sure she knew exactly what she was doing, and how to survive it.
The colt wasn't speaking. Was he too shy? Freshly out of stored-up courage?
Trixie smiled reassuringly. "Lucky, are there things you like to do?"
"There are a lot of things I like to do. I like to run and play sports. Uncle and Auntie say it will help me grow up strong. But there's one thing I've never told hardly anypony. Because it's a secret. I think a lot of ponies might not like it."
"What's that?" Trixie whispered.
The colt mumbled, "I want to learn how to do magic. Like a unicorn can do."
"Wow," Trixie said. "That would be amazing, wouldn't it?"
"It would. Ponies think only unicorns can do magic. I could show them the world can be so amazing, and ponies can be so amazing. Just like you."
Trixie didn't know what to say. She admired the little colt's ambition. But she didn't know how he could achieve it. An earth pony doing magic? It seemed unlikely.
"Well..." she said. "Do you have any ideas, about how to do that? Maybe a way to use plants to make it LOOK like you're doing magic?"
The colt giggled softly. "I can make things appear and disappear. Look." He reached up to touch Trixie's ear, and pulled his hoof back down. In the center of his hoof lay a coin.
There had been no "poof" sound, and no flash of light. It wasn't the same as if a unicorn's magic had done it. The coin was just there, where it hadn't been before.
Trixie was genuinely surprised. "Wow. With a lot of study and practice, some unicorns can teleport things. But I've never seen an earth pony do it."
The colt smiled mischievously. "Can you keep a secret?"
"If it's a good secret. I think this must be a good one."
"It is. I don't really know how to teleport. But I didn't just think about how what I wanted to do was impossible. I thought a lot about what I CAN do. I'm not very strong, but I'm good at doing fine, exact work with my hooves. So I thought, maybe I could learn to move small objects in just the right way, so ponies wouldn't even see me do it. I thought about it, and I practiced, and I thought and practiced some more. And at last I worked out how to do it."
"That's wonderful." Trixie's eyes shone brightly with admiration. "You're a real showpony, just like me. Has anypony ever seen you do this before?"
"Hardly anypony. I don't know what they would think. I'm probably just foaling myself, to think about this stuff."
"Well, I think it's magnificent." Trixie pulled a notepad and pencil from her saddlebags. "Do you have a mailing address? I want to follow your career. Do you have many fans?"
"I'm afraid to show anypony what I can do."
"Well, don't be too afraid. I think if you keep working hard and thinking like you've been doing, someday you could be a lot like me. I don't know how long it will be before I swing through here again. It could be years. But when I do, I want to see you again and catch up."
She took a poster from a stand next to her, autographed it, and handed it to the little colt. "To remember me by."
"I can't afford--"
"Free of charge. From one of your biggest fans SO FAR." Trixie smiled gleefully. "You know what one of the best things is, about my job?"
"There must be a lot of things."
"Getting to meet ponies like you." Trixie gently nuzzled the top of his head.
A stallion approached. "Miss Trixie? I'm very sorry if my nephew has been bothering you."
"He hasn't been bothering me at all. We were just talking, one showpony to another."
"I'm sorry about his little thing with the coin. To a unicorn like yourself, it must seem silly. Pretending like he can do magic."
"Not silly at all. I feel honored that he chose to share it with me. If he keeps working at it, I can hardly wait to find out what he comes up with next. Even the biggest, strongest, most impressive oak tree has to start out as an acorn, you know."
"Excuse us." The stallion pulled the colt away and out the front door.
Trixie sighed. Would the little colt get a chance to show the world his talents?
Maybe, she hoped. Maybe nopony in this world could stop him.
Author's Note
Some artists would claim the hardest part of Trixie's stunt is the mane toss partway through that bucking leap (to do it without messing up the leap's precision and buck placement.)
