The Greatest And Most Powerful Chapter Of Them All!
The first rule of magic, real magic, is that belief shapes the world. All other truth flows from this in a perfectly logical way, but it is a logic shaped by the emotions and thoughts of the ponies around it, a logic based in common sense and intuition and that momentary pure and sharp sureness that comes from seeing one's personal truth alive in the world.
Belief shapes the way every pony interacts with the world around them. A pony that believes a stove is hot won't put their hoof on it. A pony that believes they're clumsy or weak will become those things.
I am playing the part of a clever and worthy rival to one of the greatest sorceresses in the world. We’ve had our ups and downs. I didn’t even know who she was before she upstaged me, and I’ve let my personal feelings get in the way of my profession before. We’re on good terms now, and we trade words like we’re fencing with trick swords - even if one of us slips up and a thrust becomes all too real, there’s no hurt behind it.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie is surprised at you, Princess Sparkle! Coming to me for help? Your greatest and most powerful rival?!” I posed dramatically. We weren’t alone, after all. Like always her little dragon assistant was in the background.
I liked Spike. He was a wonderful dragon to have in the audience and was both always positive about my performances with the energy of a foal and also wise enough in the ways of magic to appreciate the art before him. Foals are wonderful because they applaud even mistakes, but one who understands why a successful trick is magic instead of merely ‘magic’ - and the subtle difference between the two terms - is worth his weight in flash powder and trick hoofcuffs.
The alicorn princess in front of me looked tired and annoyed. At least some of it was an act. She respected me as her rival, of course, but that meant she had to pretend she didn’t enjoy my company.
“Trixie, please, I just need some help with an illusion spell. Since Sunburst is still recovering overseas after Flurry Heart started teething, and Princess Luna couldn’t teach me in my sleep, and Princess Celestia reminded me I needed to stop leaning on them for help, and the other six mares I asked haven’t gotten back to me yet--”
I counted the number of ponies she’d named.
“I’m tenth on the list?!” I yelled, honestly offended.
“Technically fourteenth. I wasn’t counting the ponies I asked on my way here.”
I gritted my teeth and stomped a little in annoyance but kept my anger in check. She probably hadn’t really asked that many -- no, knowing Princess Sparkle, she had a notarized list of every pony she’d talked to. That’s probably why Spike was here.
We got on with the usual banter. I demanded to see the names, I acted offended at each one, then confused when I found Applejack on the list. Then we got down to business and I started teaching her the spell she needed.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie questions why you need an illusion spell that blocks scent,” I said. “It’s hardly the most useful or pleasant spell to learn.”
Both of us were doused with enough cheap perfume to give us shared headaches that had nothing to do with our personal differences. It was the only way to tell when the spell worked - you needed to start off by smelling strongly enough that even a pony’s nose could tell when it vanished. And neither of us was going to waste good perfume on the endeavor.
“There’s this giant mutant fruit bat near Dodge Junction,” she said. “We need the illusion to cover an orchard of cherry trees so it doesn’t smell them while we’re luring it somewhere it won’t cause trouble.”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie isn’t surprised there’s some kind of monster attack involved. It’s been at least a week, so we were due.”
“Why do you do that, anyway?” Sparkle asked.
“Do what?”
“Why do you always call yourself 'The Great and Powerful Trixie?' It’s not like we’re on stage. Nopony is here to hear you do it.”
I could have given her a simple non-answer, or just declared that I was so great and so powerful the world needed to be told. Which was true but didn’t get to the heart of the matter. We were alone, more or less. Maybe she deserved a real answer. Maybe she’d understand.
“When I came into town for the first time, nopony knew my name,” I said. “Now they all do.”
“That didn’t work out so well with the Ursa thing,” she pointed out.
I smiled, trying not to let any melancholy drip into the expression. “No. But they still knew my name. Sometimes all a pony wants is to be called by name. For ponies to have the right name, the right appearance and attitude and the right mare in their minds when they think of me. And I say it to myself, even when I’m alone, so I don’t forget who I’m trying to be.”
She was quiet for a moment. I could see her chewing on that. She was a smart pony. Smarter than I ever was. I was sure she understood, or suspected, at least a little. No showmare is who they claim to be on the surface.
“I’ve got to go deal with the giant fruit bat,” she said. “But when I come back, maybe we could have tea or... something?”
“I’d like that,” I said. She nodded and took to the air, leaving the one way she knew I couldn’t follow. I don’t think she did it consciously. I think she just needed space to think and re-evaluate things. Tea sounded nice, though. The role of being her rival was wearing thin and scratched at the edges. Maybe something new would come along to replace it.
That is the second rule of magic. Becoming is born from shared belief. I've performed in stage shows from one side of Equestria to the other and there is a magic there on set. Everypony knows the magic of theatre, that ponies go on stage and for a time a really great actress can make you believe they're Princess Platinum or Pony Pan or the Tooth Flutterpony. That's one type of magic, but the spell is broken all too easily. They aren't truly becoming what they portray, at best most of them manage to pretend to be great actresses.
When a pony truly Becomes is when they convince the world that they are what they say they are, when they believe in something strongly enough that the world buckles under and submits to them, when they live a new truth with the force and gravitas to make it the truth of the whole world. It's something that can start as an act, but an act where the actor or actress turns the whole world into their stage and the lines between audience and cast blur.
When that kind of act is put on, it can start out weak, the actress shunned and told they play their part badly. It is the harshest criticism a performer can ever receive, being told their own self is a poor show. But the show must go on. Even with no one to play for, the line between audience and actress is so blurred that the strength of one's will is tested. One performs for themselves, and that can be enough, a cold comfort in a private showing until the actress is ready for the big time.
On another night, I was playing the part of the dutiful and perfect marefriend. It’s one of the more difficult roles I have to play because I have to fight against my own bad habits. Doing the same show night after night leaves one with instincts they must fight against sometimes, lest they start reciting lines from Fiddlesticks on the Roof during a performance of My Mare Lady.
I was blessed in that Starlight Glimmer was forgiving of my occasional, small slips. She understood me in a way that few ponies could. Our paths had gone in very different directions before they’d crossed, but I had seen her fight the same sort of fear I had. She’d returned to a place she called home as a different mare than when she left.
True, not for the same reasons as me, and with far less pomp and circumstance, but the fear had been there. The terror of having to go in front of ponies you knew and let them see how you’d changed and not knowing how they would judge you. Had you done enough? Could you ever do enough? Would they still see who you were instead of who you are?
Even knowing they would be supportive, that they knew about her reformation of spirit, it was still a deep terror that preyed upon a pony’s deepest foundations, the part of themselves that isn’t sure they’ve really changed. The little mare or stallion inside that says you aren’t different, that you’re just dressed up and playing a part and everypony will know.
“Thanks for helping out with that illusion,” Starlight said. “I know you and Princess Twilight don’t get along all that well.”
I shrugged. “Even if she isn’t one of Trixie’s friends, she’s one of your friends. And she did ask nicely. Sort of.” I frowned a little. I was admittedly still kind of sore about being the fourteenth pony she’d asked.
Seriously, though, why would she ask Applejack before asking me?
“Can you keep a secret?” Starlight asked.
I raised an eyebrow.
“I guess that was kind of stupid question,” Starlight admitted. “What I wanted to say was, Princess Twilight’s having a tough time in Canterlot. I’m worried about her.”
“Her? Having a tough time?” I scoffed. “Starlight, she’s Princess Twilight Sparkle! The Great and Powerful Trixie is incredibly, self-destructively jealous of how easy her life is! She is beloved by the masses of common ponies, primped and pampered at every turn!”
Starlight smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “You know how tough the nobility can be on ponies, Trixie. Better than almost anypony.”
I flinched at that.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean--”
“You’re not wrong,” I admitted. “But she has something Trixie didn’t! For as much Greatness and Powerfulness as I had, I lacked legitimacy! It took Trixie years to prove to the world that she was as great as she said she was! Sparkle was thrust into greatness, and Trixie, as somepony who has also saved the world, is willing to admit that the perky purple princess deserves at least some modicum of credit.”
“That’s very generous of you,” Starlight quipped.
“It is, isn’t it?”
Starlight rolled her eyes and shook her head, trying to hide a smile. “It’s easy for you to say. You know how to make ponies respect you. I’m not sure Twilight does. They don’t care about how many monsters she’s killed or what amazing new forms she’s created for the tax bureau. What they care about is that she’s not Princess Celestia.”
She let that hang in the air between us.
“So is she having a panic attack trying to fit into the very large hole Celestia left behind, or are the nobles doing the usual gossip rounds?” I asked, eventually. “Or… it’s both, isn’t it?”
Starlight nodded.
“And the more she tries to fit in, the more they see she doesn’t quite fit,” I sighed. “The Great and Powerful Trixie knows what that’s like.”
“It’s mostly behind her back, but that just makes her more paranoid and worried,” Starlight said. “I figure we’ve got a month until she abdicates the throne or goes Nightmare.”
“Nightmare Sparkle…” I thought about that. “She’d plunge the world into eternal friendship? That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“This is Princess Twilight we’re talking about. She’d snap and decide that Equestria needed to be properly ordered. Then she’d spend a thousand years arranging us in different ways on some kind of giant shelf.”
“Maybe we should take a long vacation in Saddle Arabia,” I muttered.
“I was thinking we could help her out,” Starlight suggested.
I gave her a look that I hope communicated things as well as a whole page of stage directions.
She grinned sheepishly. “You know better than anypony else what they’re like! When I think of Trixie, I think of a Great and Powerful stagemare that can get up in front of a crowd and demand respect! And that’s what she needs right now. Respect.”
“That’s not the only reason you thought of me,” I said quietly. “You want me to tell her how to play a role.”
“No, you know what it’s like to have to prove to other ponies that you are who you really are,” Starlight said. “You’re Trixie. That’s just who you are, and nopony is going to forget it. She’s the ruler of Equestria… and I don’t even think Princess Twilight believes in herself.”
“That’s the hardest part,” I said. “You always start without anypony else believing in you. It takes… a while before you feel it inside, that you’re doing it right.”
“See? You know what to say to her.”
I sighed. “She isn’t going to want my advice.”
“I already talked to her, and she’s willing to give it a chance,” Starlight said. Now I understood. She’d closed this noose around my neck already. I was caught up in the part and my name printed on the playbill and there was no way to escape it without embarrassing her and myself. Starlight had taken herself hostage on my good behavior, and I cared about her more than I did about myself, so it was frustratingly effective.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie assumes you have a plan, since you have everything else figured out in advance?”
She smiled and pulled something from her saddlebags. Tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala.
I gave her a smile with my teeth grinding together so hard they practically shot sparks from the corners of my mouth. Sometimes, being the perfect marefriend was an incredibly difficult role, because it meant having to be a bit part in somepony else’s story.
Opening nights are always the hardest, aren't they? One never knows what kind of criticism they'll receive. Some ponies get all the praise in the world, support and applause and demands for an encore. It is only good form for a fellow showmare to offer praise, but one can easily become jealous as well, of ponies so bold and skilled that they can act in front of a grand audience every day without a self-conscious sabotage that sends them back to the dressing room in a panic.
In this kind of show, the greatest show on Equestria, there aren't really fans or ponies just watching on the sidelines. Everypony is a critic in their own way, and even the best actress finds themselves torn between the tale they want to tell, the part they want to play, and what the critics think they should play. Just look at the endless debates about the Hearth's Warming play and just which ponies are right to play General Hurricane!
Every part has its own expectations. Princess Platinum is a unicorn, Lady MacHoof is ambitious, the Phantom of the Opera is a bit of a creepy stalker. A pony born into the right role can experiment with their part, and they have that freedom because nopony can tell them otherwise.
My role today was a difficult one. I had to play the perfect lady in front of a very discerning crowd. It had been a long time since I’d been in Canterlot. Leaving school had been difficult, but it had been easier than facing the rejection I felt every day I was there. They hadn’t been ready for the Great and Powerful Trixie, and I was still new at the role, excited to play it and rough around the edges. Some parts can’t wait for you to be ready, or you’ll never work up the courage to play them at all.
“That dress looks good on you,” Starlight said.
“Everything looks good on the Great and Powerful Trixie,” I said, practically automatically. It was a line I’d occasionally repeated to myself to force the voice inside me to quiet down. A pony who believed they looked good could make others believe it too.
It was the only explanation for some of the designs out of Prance. A few of the braver ponies in attendance had tried wearing the more experimental outfits that were the fashion this year. I could see the appeal in artfully applied strips of sticky tape, but I had no idea how they were planning on getting their outfits off after the Gala ended.
Really, what was the point of a Gala dress if you couldn’t even fantasize about your marefriend ripping it off you later that night?
“So what is your plan, exactly?” I asked, studying my perfect hooficure. I’d learned how to do them myself, of course, but the spa twins in Ponyville did a better job than I ever could have. It was one of the few places relaxing enough to soothe the frayed nerves of long months spent touring.
“Well, um,” Starlight hesitated. Bless her, she was as powerful as a thousand exploding suns and no qualms about putting that power to use, but she was occasionally helpless when things called for a subtle and skilled touch. The kind of touch that could pick a lock with a wave of a fetlock or escape from even the most sturdy straightjacket. And now that the statue of limitations had come and gone I could even return to the site of some of my greatest escapes.
“You had no plan,” I said. “You need the Great and Powerful Trixie to come up with an amazing and stupendous method of saving the Gala and our fair and extremely pure Princess Sparkle!”
“Something like that,” she admitted. “But you were my first choice for coming up with a plan!”
I nodded, blushing only a little at the complement. Still, there was business to attend to. I took a glass from a passing servant and took a sip as part of subtly scanning the room. The nobility of Equestria were a lot like high schoolers. There were the little cliques here and there, knots of talking ponies on the Gala floor, with the gossip-mongers and social climbers flitting between them, trying to slide into conversations and wedge themselves into place among the elite.
Sparkle was easy to spot. If I had to pick a name for the clique that had descended on her, it would be the bullies. The ponies that used their position not just for personal gain, but to tear down others merely for their own amusement. They circled her like sharks, and I could see her getting increasingly flustered, getting a question from one direction and then another from the other side before she could properly answer, throwing her off-balance and making it look like she had no answers at all.
I had to do something. It was frustrating to see somepony trying to act so poorly that it was turning a stately drama into a bad comedy. I not-so-subtly inserted myself into the conversation, by way of stepping gently on Duke Huffenpuff’s hoof and bumping him out of the way once he was off-balance.
“Here, hold this for me,” I said, pushing my half-full glass towards him. He took it and looked confused, giving me plenty of opening to take his place in the ring. The endless questions sputtered out as the formation shattered under the metaphysical gravitas of The Great and Powerful Trixie.
Sparkle watched him stumble away with mild shock, which was better than the way she’d been about to break into tears.
“We need to talk,” I said, with a big smile.
“Trixie--”
“I agree! I am Trixie!” I said, gently leading her away. The royal guards were very confused, but as long as we were smiling and moving quickly enough I was sure Starlight would have everything explained before it became an international incident. I pulled the Princess into a somewhat private alcove, the velvet curtains offering a barrier against casual eavesdropping.
“Trixie, please, this is a bad time! I need to make a good impression! This is my first Gala as the only Princess and if I don’t get this right, there’s going to be mutiny and rebellion and civil war and I don’t want my friends to end up on opposite sides of the war, Trixie! I don’t care how dramatic and tragic Rarity says it is, ponies get hurt in war!”
“Stop,” I said sharply. “Calm down. You’re starting to panic and they can all tell.”
“I’m not--”
“And don’t lie to Trixie,” I said. “Take a deep breath. Tell Trixie what happened.”
“It’s stupid,” Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, Slayer of Various Polysyllabic Monsters, Supreme Ruler of All Equestria said like a scolded filly. “I’ve known most of these ponies since I was a foal, and when I went out there in front of them all I could think of was… it’s stupid.”
“Tell me,” I said softly. “It can’t be stupid if it bothers you.”
“When I first became Princess Celesta’s student, she took me to court and I didn’t know any of the protocol, so I kept making mistakes, and then when I did read a book on protocol I tried to correct them and that was even worse because I was a filly trying to tell an adult to have proper manners.”
“You can’t learn everything from a book, Sparkle.”
“I know that now but back then I made a foal of myself. I can tell when they look at me they still see an angry little filly tugging at their sleeves and telling them to button their jackets properly or- or that they were wearing the wrong colors, or…” She trailed off, biting her lip.
“And you thought if you acted more like Princess Celestia they’d respect you,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I could read her like any one of the literally dozens of books I’d read in my lifetime.
She nodded, her eyes wet. I sighed. If I was just playing the role of her rival tonight things would have been so easy. She was vulnerable and ready to break at any moment, and all it would take was one little push to send it crashing down. Instead I had to fix things, which was far more difficult.
“It won’t work,” I said, with a lazy shrug. “You can act like her as much as you like but it won’t help. You’ll just make yourself miserable.”
“But that’s what they want!” Sparkle snapped. “They want me to be perfect like she was!”
“No,” I said firmly. “They want you to be the perfect Celestia that only ever existed in their minds. No matter how well you play that part they’ll always imagine it could have been a little grander, a little more perfect, a little, hm. Taller.”
She stood up straighter, not meeting my eyes. I smirked.
“That said, Trixie thinks you do have the chops to play Celestia’s role if you wanted. It would just be foalish to try. Tell me, do you think you could be The Great and Powerful Trixie? Could you be me, and go out on stage and do my show? I think you could if you put your mind to it.”
“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“It is.” I huffed dramatically. Sparkle giggled, and the mood lifted a little. “You could be the Great and Powerful Trixie for a while. But could you be her, could you be me forever? Could you go out on stage every day and pretend?”
“It would be really hard,” she admitted. It would actually be impossible because nopony can replace the Great and Powerful Trixie but I was making progress and I didn’t want to squash what little self-confidence the alicorn princess had. After all, if she could admit it was difficult when she could fight ancient gods, she was at least in the right ballpark.
I nodded to let her know she was right. “You would make mistakes. Ponies would compare you to the real Trixie and even if you did everything right, which is impossible, they would just think of you as a stand-in. A substitute. Diet Trixie.”
“And I can’t do the same thing with being Celestia,” she mumbled, catching on faster than I had expected.
“If you try to be the same kind of princess Celestia was, you’ll have to be somepony you’re not for the rest of your life,” I said. I grabbed her hoof and squeezed, making her look me in the eyes. “Don’t do that to yourself. You have to be Princess Twilight Sparkle. If you try to be anything else it’ll be like wearing somepony else’s old laundry every day. It took me a long time to realize I couldn't torture myself like that. I had to be Trixie, not... somepony else.”
“Then… what am I supposed to do?”
“Go out there and don’t be anypony else but yourself. Don’t be the little filly they remember. Don’t be Princess Celestia the Second. Be Princess Twilight Sparkle.”
“And when I make a mistake?”
“Then let it be Princess Sparkle’s mistake, not anypony else’s! And, I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Blast something with a rainbow laser. That seems to fix everything.”
One trying to fit into a role that one was not cast for, that becomes difficult. One can feel it in their bones, that that role was meant for them, that they were always supposed to be Princess Platinum despite being born a pegasus or a kelpie or otherwise inappropriate for the part. One can even play it better than any mare on stage. But even so, one has to follow the script. Follow the guidelines. Say every line exactly so, match the stage directions exactly. The only way to be accepted is to be perfect, even if that isn't how one wants to play the part. Even then, even as perfect and beautiful as it is possible to be, one will never be accepted by every critic.
There are always, always, always dissenting voices. Hateful voices. Telling you you can't succeed, that you will always be the ugly bit part you were meant to play and to aspire to more is foolish! Sometimes those voices come from inside.
More often, they come from somepony who just wants to hurt you just because you can be hurt.
I hated having to be the hero sometimes. At least when I wasn’t going to get any of the credit for it. Having to act strong for other ponies means you can’t tell them how weak you really are on the inside. You can play the role while wounded, but only for a short time, perhaps just long enough to give a magical princess a few words of wisdom and make an escape.
A good magician knows all about entrances and exits. The ideal was to always be making one or the other so you never had to explain how the rest of your tricks worked. Show up by surprise, leave making ponies want another taste.
Also it was a little too warm in the castle and I wanted to take a walk in the gardens to cool off. I’d stopped at the statue garden looking up at the frozen form of Queen Chrysalis and the other two villains whose names I had never bothered learning because only one of them had really personally tried to kill me and my marefriend.
“Well look who it is, Aster!”
My hackles rose when I heard the voice. I am not by nature a violent mare, unless under the influence of dark forces including, but not limited to, magical amulets, mind control, and cactus juice. Even so my instincts fought for me to fight and make sure the mare behind me spent the rest of the night trying to find somepony who would undo curses at two in the morning.
“If it isn’t Rosy Sunlight and her little flunky,” I said, turning around with a smile as fake as her too-perfect too-round flank. “Trixie didn’t know you’d be here or she would have brought a restraining order and pepper spray.”
“He’s still doing that stupid third-person speech,” Rosy said, ignoring my barbs despite how much better they were than her own. “I thought he would have outgrown it by now.”
My eye twitched. My mask slipped just a bit.
“And that dress,” Aster said, the flunky clearly trying to come up with something to impress her… well, I wouldn’t use Rosy Sunlight and the word ‘Superior’ together. It was disrespectful to everypony superior to both of them, a list often confused with a census of Equestria. “It’s so… inappropriate.”
I tossed my head and chuckled, holding my hoof over my mouth to pretend I was being demure about it. The little touches matter. “The Great and Powerful Trixie’s dress was made by one of the finest fashion designers in the world, and a personal friend of Princess Sparkle. Trixie isn’t surprised you don’t have an eye for the finer things in life or you would have found better company to keep.”
“I didn’t say the dress wasn’t well-made,” Aster said, as sweet as cyanide. “I said it was inappropriate. It would look lovely on the right mare.”
“Oh come now, Aster,” Rosy said. “At least it’s not as bad as when he tried wearing a dress to the school dance. That was right before he dropped out, wasn’t it? He’s even had a little spellwork done since then.”
She gave me a condescending smile.
“You can barely even tell,” Rosy continued. “It must have been expensive, Top Hat.”
Rosy might as well have slapped me right across the face. It was ponies like her that had driven me out of Canterlot to get a fresh start somewhere - anywhere - else. Somewhere they didn’t know that name.
“She was a lot more skilled than whoever you went to,” I said. I was rapidly running out of civility. “Did your thaumaturgist get your ass confused with a watermelon, or is that what you actually wanted them to do?”
Rosy scoffed, looking away. She’d flinched in the battle of words and wills. A hero would let her escape gracefully. I wasn’t feeling much like being a hero.
“If you actually finished school, maybe you’d have learned some manners!” Aster snapped, stepping in to shield Rosy in the way only a very well-paid employee would.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie learned more than you can imagine on her own!” I shouted, rearing up. “While you were snubbing ponies at parties, Trixie studied the arcane arts!”
I cast a quick spell, and fireworks crackled in the air around them, throwing cold sparks in their faces, blinding them and keeping them where I wanted them.
“While your parents spoiled you with bits you never earned, Trixie practiced the greatest and most powerful spells!”
A second spell and multicolored smoke rose up from their hooves.
“While you wasted your days trading on your family name, the Great and Powerful Trixie’s name became known all over Equestria!”
As always, theatricality and deception were powerful tools against the uninitiated. If they’d bothered thinking or remembering even a fraction of what they’d been taught they would realize all I’d done was cast a few quick illusions to bottle them up and put them off balance while I readied something a little more potent.
“Tremble, brief mortals! For her next trick, the Great and Powerful Trixie will make two annoying mares… disappear!”
The harshest thing in the world are hecklers. They don’t care how good an act is, they just want to complain and invent new problems. The only joy they have in life comes from tearing other ponies down to their component parts and putting them in tiny little boxes.
An awful truth is that these hecklers are not only tolerated by society, they are a fixture in it. Ponies make excuses for them. Do they really believe it’s impossible to stomp out hatred? Or are they more afraid that they might be the next target? For some it might even be worse than that - they are too cowardly to tear down ponies themselves and live vicariously through the pain they pretend they’re not a part of.
Instead of questioning how they can stop the world from being a cruel place, they praise those that survive it and manage to avoid being shattered. They damn with faint praise about strength of will and courage, but the hecklers and the enablers lack both to such an acute degree that they would break out in hives if they were ever truly exposed to them.
The ponies that can’t put themselves back together again are forgotten and broken by the world.
The second-best thing a pony can do is leave and find some haven to heal themselves in, a place to get a fresh start and a new beginning. This is only avoiding the problem. There is no place without critics in this or any other world, and a fresh start simply means the hunters have not yet found their prey.
The best thing a pony can do is make a place safe for others. To quiet critics and hecklers. The enablers are afraid the hecklers will rock the boat and make life uncomfortable for them. They are hostages pretending they are some kind of mediator.
Rock the boat yourself. Refuse to acquiesce. Be Great. Be Powerful.
I tossed a piece of popcorn into the pond. The two newest additions to the castle’s menagerie ribbited angrily at me.
“What was that?” I asked. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak frog. You’ll have to wait for a prince to come along and kiss you.”
It glared at me. I smiled back at it. My night had greatly improved.
“There you are! I was worried about you,” Starlight sighed. She sat down next to me and I leaned into her a little. She was soft and warm and the world was cold and hard.
“How’s the Gala going?” I asked. I didn’t care all that much, but it seemed like the kind of thing to ask given the circumstances.
“Well, there was sort of a… thing,” Starlight said. “The kirin ambassador got into an argument with a dragon that had come as somepony’s plus-one and they decided to have a pepper-eating contest in the VIP area.”
“A pepper-eating contest against a dragon?” I frowned. That seemed intensely foalish. I could do it and win, of course, but that’s because I was The Great and Powerful Trixie. No mere kirin could possibly manage to match the kind of feats that only the highest tier of unicorns could achieve!
“Stupid, sure, but I thought it was harmless. Until the kirin brought out a Guatamarelin Insanity Pepper, grown only by inmates in a mental asylum hidden in the hidden jungles of Guatamarela!”
I looked back at the castle.
“Is that why everything is on fire?” I asked.
“That’s actually unrelated. It’s been a long night.” Starlight sighed. “Do you think Princess Luna can tell if somepony is on the moon? Because I think Princess Twilight accidentally sent somepony there when she got upset about overdue library books...”
I nodded along and relaxed, bouncing another popcorn kernel off the frogs. The spell wouldn’t last all that long, but the warning not to trifle with me would endure for a lifetime.
Later, I’d need to apologize, pretend to be remorseful, promise to do better and check myself in for another round of dark magic rehab and talking about my feelings. For now, the only thing that mattered was, well, now. I was with the mare I loved, and I didn’t have to pretend to be anything at all.
I could just be me.
