//------------------------------// // 7: Known places // Story: To Die Twice // by Quite Quiet //------------------------------// ”You can’t have her locked up in there forever. She needs to get out sometime.” Being awaken by shouting wasn’t exactly how Trixie imagined her day would begin when she went to bed the previous day. Regardless she couldn’t get back to sleep with the heated debate going on seemingly just outside her door. One of the voices was immediately recognizable as Winter, but not the other one. Straining her ears as much as possible she could vaguely make out the voice as male. She was sure she had heard the voice somewhere before but she didn’t know where. “Of course I can. I signed the papers that made me her guardian and that means I know what’s best for her. And I say she can stay where she is.” The argument seemed to have gone on for a while, but most likely had only just recently gotten heated enough for her to overhear through the door. “How can it be healthy for her to stay locked up after her time downstairs? She should be moving about and exercise, not stay cooped up in a small room.” “I know best and I say it is. Every foal I have taken care of has been down there and none of them took any harm from it. I don’t see why you all of a sudden care about this one when you looked away with all the others.” “None of them was locked in that room for four days.” The statement was followed by a small thud, as if a hoof hit to floor as the sentence ended. “It’s because she’s a unicorn isn’t it?” “How dare you accuse me of that? I will have you know I left that behind me long ago. I want to hear nothing more of this right now mister. Either you leave peacefully or I will personally see that you’re thrown out of here sooner than you can say ‘good bye’.” What began as whispers through the door slowly rose in volume so after a while Trixie didn’t even have to try to listen in on the argument going on outside the door. The voices clearly passed through the walls already. Even still she took care not to make any sounds as she ate more of that rubbish they called food at this place, just in case she would accidentally disturb them or miss what they said. “So it is, isn’t it? She’s the only unicorn in here and you treat none of the other kids like you treat her do you? Wait! Wait, I know. No more of this. Just give me an hour or two to talk to her and I’ll leave? Deal?” The silence that followed that question was fairly surprising to Trixie, she never expected the offer to even get a second thought, not if you accounted for how she’d been treated this far. Not that she knew how this mysterious pony was but compared to Winter she’d take him any day. “You get one hour. Then you take your sorry behind out of here and don’t come back.” “Fine, fine. One hour then I go back home to my own place. Now can you please unlock the door so she can get out, or do I have to take the keys from you?” No verbal reply came but a few moments later the sound of a lock turning could be heard and before she knew it the door swung open to reveal a less-than-happy Winter standing in the middle of the door facing straight at her. Staring at the spot where Trixie was seated on the floor Winter narrowed her eyes before opening her mouth. “You have a visitor. I don’t know why you know him, but he’s out of here in an hour. Celestia knows how you two met.” That was the only thing she said before she turned around and left, leaving the door open for the first time ever. The door didn’t stay empty for long, for moments after she had left the other pony stepped through. Standing in the doorway was a very familiar pegasus, blue both to coat and mane. For a moment he just stood there and looked at her while she stared open-eyed at him. The first smile in days slowly crept up on her and before she knew it both of them just smiled at each other. “Mister Soarin’ what are you doing here? I thought you said you were going to the auditions?” The question broke the comfortable silence between the two. “Hey kid, been there done that. They accepted me of course. I was just around to pack up so I can move to Cloudsdale, can’t live here and be a part of them it seems. So I figured while I was around I could come say hi to my one and only fan. That, and I want to apologize.” “Apologize?” Trixie asked, clearly confused. She couldn’t remember anything he had done near her that could possibly require him to ask for forgiveness. They barely knew each other either. “Yeah well, you remember what I said about believing in yourself and stuff?” He continued after she gave a clear nod of her head. “Good. You see kid, it was unfair to you. I was finally going somewhere with my life and here you come, from nowhere and know my name. It’s a big deal for me to have a fan. So I tried too hard to be a role model, and I feel bad for that.” “It’s fine Mister, I took no offense for it. Really it’s fine.” She enforced her point by flashing him an ever greater smile than before, which seemingly sealed the deal for Soarin’. “That’s great kid. Now I know you’ve been sitting around for way too long, so let’s go for a walk,” Soarin’ warmly responded, before moving out of the way so the exit was left clear. “After you, kid.” The conversation halted during the moments that Trixie jumped down from the bed and got up beside the much larger stallion. Without exchanging a word the duo left the room behind and stepped out into the hallway. The planks underneath their hooves ominously creaked as they moved towards the stairway. “You know kid, I used to live here once. Then I grew up and moved someplace I could call my own.” The faraway look in Soarin’s eyes appeared as he spoke, as if he stared at something only he saw. “Really?” Trixie was surprised. She knew very little of the Wonderbolt, but the things she remembered about him never said he was raised in an orphanage. Then again she couldn’t recall her Trixie ever mentioning something like that either, so it was possible. “Oh yes, I used to spend every second awake outside in the skies, practicing. Sometimes I didn’t come back for days at a time, but they never really worried after the first few times. By the end of it nopony even knew where I was if somepony would ask.” With a smile he added, “But don’t think I never ate, I always came on time for lunch and dinner. Free food after all.” As they talked they made their way down the second set of stairs and turned the other way from the entrance down another hallway. The hallway looked much like the others in the same run-down state that was the norm for the house at this point. At the end the hallway spread out in a small reception room with a couch and a dresser you could put clothes in, if you had any. On top of the dresser sat a couple of picture frames, but from Trixie’s angle she couldn’t see exactly what pictures they contained. “But, how did you know where I was? I never had time to say anything when we met last time.” The awkward look on Soarin’s face either meant she asked something uncomfortable or that he thought something embarrassing. “To be honest, kid I had no idea. I came here to visit and when she told me of you things sort of just happened. Not anything more to it.” His grin showed no signs of lying so Trixie assumed he had to be telling the truth. Why would he be looking for her in the first place? She just happened to be in the same place as he lived in when he was young. Leaving the subject she turned her attention back to the photo frames up on the dresser once more. Standing on her hind legs and stretching she got her head up over the edge, but only just. What met her on top were several pictures of Winter with the foals of the orphanage. Foals of both genders stared back at her, and of seemingly every colour combination possible. There was one thing that stood out to her in all of the pictures, none of the foals were unicorns. More pegasi and earth ponies than she could count and not a single unicorn among them. Quickly scanning over all the group pictures once more confirmed her earlier discovery. With a puzzled expression she turned away from the group shots towards the only frame of a different size, placed away from the rest of them. The picture showed a group of two adults and a child around Trixie’s current age, maybe a year younger. The young unicorn filly looked very happy and Trixie could only assume the adults were her parents. Finding nothing more interesting than the smiling white filly and her two parents she moved away from the dresser to get back down on all fours. “I take it you noticed?” Soarin’ asked, motioning his head back towards the pictures. He had apparently been quite all throughout her examination of the photos. “That there are no unicorns in any of the group shots? Yes I did.” She wondered about that, but asking didn’t seem appropriate. “That too, but you missed something. Go look at the last picture again and tell me what you see.” Giving in to his prompting she moved back to the dresser and stood up in the same uncomfortable position as before. Focusing on the smaller picture again she started just describing it to him. “I see two ponies and their foal. Possibly the parents. The male is an earth pony and the female is a unicorn, as is the child. Both unicorns have some shade of white in their coat, the child brighter than both adults. With her mane the filly could almost be Miss Heart if not for the fact she’s not a unicorn.” Trixie attempted to continue but Soarin’ cut her off before she could. “Hate to ruin it for you kid, but that’s Winter all right.” Surprised Trixie turns her head to look towards Soarin’. “Don’t look at me like that, she’s really good at hiding it.” “How is that possible? She doesn’t have a horn now.” Trixie is visibly upset at this fact. She could barely stand not having magic at the moment, much less forever. “Do you really want to hear it?” A nod quickly came as a reply. “Are you really sure? I can’t imagine it being good for fillies your age.” “I won’t mind I promise.” “Well, if you insist but don’t say I never warned you. Now let’s see. Winter lived here when she was just a kid, even younger than you are now. She was born here. Her parents used to run this place like she does now, until they passed away a couple of years ago. The most energetic filly I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Winter couldn’t sit still for ten minutes if she wasn’t eating, and I can count the times I saw her without a smile easily.” “So you see kid, she was a real sunshine to be around. Everypony in the house love her and she loved all of them. Then one day it all changed, as you probably noticed. I can’t remember when, but I hadn’t been here long yet I felt like I had known her my entire life. When she was only a year older than you are now, that day came. I had been out practicing like usual, but I decided to take a different way home.” “Winter’s parents had this ladder of sorts placed against the backside of a shed. The shed is broken now by the way. Anyways, I usually took the fast way back that didn’t pass the shed but I had some extra time so I figured I’d take the longer route back.” “So as I got up to the shed I saw all these fillies playing around it, that wasn’t unusual. The shed was so run-down nopony cared if we broke it some more. Normally only the pegasi like me used the roof, but for some reason Winter had decided she should sneak up and scare them down. She did those kinds of things.” Taking a break from the story Soarin’ looked down on Trixie again. With an equally parts frightened, curious and knowing expression she looked back up at him, urging him to go on. “She jumped at them, laughing loud enough for them to hear it and with enough time to move away. That was her definition of ‘scare’: that was nopony really got scared and she could have fun. For some reason this day was different. She slipped on the floor and went off the edge of the roof.” “I was so far away I didn’t make it in time and the others never noticed until it was too late. She hit the ground, head first. Her horn shattered against a rock that shouldn’t have been there and small pieces laid everywhere, soaked in blood. I rushed back with her to the house and got her to hospital not twenty minutes later.” “She screamed the entire time. You see, that was the first time I heard her really upset. She was always so happy, and to see the hurt in those eyes did nothing to calm me down. The doctors could do nothing to help her, but they promised the horn would grow back in time, if she let it be.” “But something inside her broke that day. Despite all our attempts to help her she stayed locked up for a lot of the times. I barely saw her over the next two weeks after that, but the next time I saw I wish I didn’t.” “She had broken her horn clean off and filed down every hint of it ever being there. If you look close enough you could see the base, but by now that’s most likely gone too.  She grew cold, distant and alone fast. She shunned all her friends, spent more and more time staring out windows for hours on end.” “Eventually I moved out, free to pursue my dreams. By then she had no friends left who stood out with her, and the pony you met had started to show up even then. I never got a real explanation for what happened, but don’t talk to her about this. She doesn’t want to hear it.” Trixie can only nod in response, still processing everything that had just been told to her. Winter lost her horn in the early stages of magic, one of the most crucial points in a unicorn’s life. To lose her magic just as she got it must have been soul crushing for her. Still that was not a reason to treat her the way she had. Frowning slightly Trixie looked back up to Soarin’, about to thank her for telling her the story. But before she had a chance to do so, she got interrupted by a loud knock on the front door. As it turned out the front door was just around the corner from where she stood right now, so she had an easy time spotting the visitor. And what she saw made her blood freeze. Standing outside the door, clad in golden armour was none other than the royal Canterlot guard, politely knocking on the door.