//------------------------------// // A dinner with Trixie // Story: Background Currents // by Artrageous //------------------------------// By the time they stopped for camp, Artrageous knew every single one of Trixie’s magic tricks. He hadn’t seen them, for that he’d have to pay, but she talked about them, at length and in great detail. The shared journey did indeed make the travel easier, and shorter. Arty was free to mostly zone out and mostly only had to watch for moments of significant pause where he was expected to say, “Oh, yes, really? -or- and then what happened?” Trixie, ahem, the Great and Powerful Trixie, wasn’t the sort of conversationalist who expected a lot of reciprocation. She mostly wanted to hear her own voice, and didn’t like interruptions. Arty was glad, the mares you have to pay close attention to were the worst. Setting camp was mostly pulling over to the side of the road and discovering that Trixie slept in her wagon, so she was taken care of, and no you’re not invited inside, so figure out your own arrangements and build a fire while you’re at it. Arty had thought of flying on, he’d been rested enough hours ago to do so, but there was still the tacit competition of being ‘nice’ to each other, which both were struggling with. Also, though Arty was loathe to admit it, he wanted somepony around, and one he didn’t care about offending might be the best choice on a difficult journey. He had been practicing hard, with his flying, and regular pony training. Despite this, he still felt stiff through his whole body. Pulling a cart all day long was not the same as several hours of airsprints and stunts. He was in no small way impressed with Trixie, she’d pulled her own wagon, that much could be said, even if she used magic. That unicorn wasn’t as delicate as she looked. He dragged some sticks and branches out of the forest, stamped them into kindling and made a pile. It would burn, it was big enough to last a while. There were a few dead trees that were both rotten enough to easily break up, and not so far gone they turned into dust. He had nothing to start a fire with, so he’d need Trixie. Klok, klok, klok! He banged on the front of her wagon, “Oh Great and Powerful one. I need you to light the fire.” The top of her door slammed open and she stuck her head. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is not going to waste her magic on parlour tricks. Light it yourself. How were you planning to cook your food?” She looked at him like he had some; he looked at her like she was crazy. At this point, they both became aware of the flaw in his travel plans. Fortunately, Arty didn’t have to bother with recriminating himself, Trixie took care of that for him. “You didn’t bring any food? What were you planning on eating, how did you get so big and so old without learning the basics of taking care of yourself? Are you crazy? The Great and Powerful Trixie has never seen a pony so useless before, and you still smell.” She slammed her door shut. Thanks, thought Art. “Thanks.” He said, with his forehead tightening and mouth tasting like bile. I made a mistake in planning, he justified to himself. The Wonderbolts had a whole collection of support staff, to make arrangements, handle baths and brushing, accommodations, schedule and food. Even when the show wasn’t travelling, he had a filly hanging off every hoof each night, and his bits were no good in that town. He could get a free meal for a photograph and a signature. Food, was something he never thought about. You got hungry, you went out, and somepony gave it to you. That was the benefit of being a celebrity in a big city, annoying life details were some other pony’s problem to smooth over. Even after he... retired, the experience at Broke Mountain was similar. Other ponies were around to make sure you got on your hooves and wings, handle the details and it was easy to be insulated from responsibility. In Art’s defence, he had expected to stay the night in a town, inn, or homestead and would have planned differently if he had known there was so much empty flyover country in this part of Equestria. “Trixie cannot believe she has to share!” The door to her wagon slammed wide open, and she exited carrying a basket in her mouth. She dropped it beside the kindling, and her horn glowed as she started removing items from it. “Trixie cannot believe how you have forced her to cook for you, your utter incompetence. When I said I could do anything better than you, I never expected it to be so unspeakably easy. Take that, light the fire. Trixie is not spending the night in the dark and waking up to find you starved to death, stinking even more.” She nudged a flint and steel sparker his way and continued to arrange her pots and ingredients. Artrageous took the sparker in his teeth, leaning in to stack to get the business end near the kindling. He wondered why she didn’t just use her magic to light a fire, why she had this device at all. Then he considered that maybe her bluster is to keep his thoughts from going in that direction. She can’t, and she didn’t want to put her face near flames, so this was her distraction. The urge to hoof her one was growing, and he found his back hooves digging into the dirt. The frustration helped him repeatedly clench the sparker just right, and many tiny, glittering stars flew from it and landed on the waiting bed, and one of them caught. He carefully exhaled, watching the small red circle grow, and then pulled his head back once a flame appeared. He found he had his wings spread, creating a wind block, and the flame was growing well. He looked across the wood, Trixie was watching, and he couldn’t read her expression. “Trixie could have done it faster with her magic,” she said, tossing her mane with her eyes closed as she turned up her nose, then concentrated on using her magic to jam the pot holder-frame into the ground. Her mane looked good, Art noticed, she’d used the time he was collecting twigs in his and dragging wood out of the woods to brush herself down and clean herself up. Another advantage of unicorn magic, it was very difficult for ponies to be independent, almost everything they might do required another’s assistance. Only unicorns could effectively be independent in all ways. Arty wasn’t going to be able clean up without help, he wasn’t even sure which box he’d put his brushes in, or if he had packed them at all. “Well, then the Great and Powerful Trixie should have.” Artrageous said, snorting hard and sitting to rub at his flank. Perhaps he could clean off at least his cutie-mark, although all he was accomplishing was smearing some muddy sweat around. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is cooking dinner for a pegasus who should have planned ahead,” she snorted back. Beside her, a potato was spinning against a peeler, which was also glowing. Skinned, it went into the pot, followed by another, then some carrots, equally peeled and sliced. Trixie continued to anywhere except at him, provided it kept her nose pointed at least 15 degrees above the horizon. Art saw her sneaking glances at the vegetables while she worked, though she continued to act as if the entire effort required absolutely no attention. “You should be grateful.” “And you’re not making any for yourself?” “You will eat after the Great and Powerful Trixie eats. You will get what she finds unappealing.” She waved a hoof, like she was shooing away a fly. Actually, she was, several had been attracted by something, Trixie decided to blame Art. “You stink. You are attracting bugs, stand downwind in the smoke.” “You know, you could help me clean up, or lend me a brush. It’s not like I planned for this.” “The Great and Powerful Trixie is not doing you any favours.” “You could do your stuck up nose a favour then, if I smell so much, lend me a brush.” She dropped her head down and stared at him, her forehead furrowed, her eyes narrow, her mouth smiling. An expression collision of annoyed and amused. Art couldn’t tell which was her, and which was the show-pony. “I would have to burn it after you used it. I do not have any spare brushes.” “Well then make some with your magic, oh Great and Powerful Trixie, what good is it if you can’t do practical things.” Her horn flared. The onion, which was in the process of being sliced, reacquainted itself with the ground. The knife, which was doing the slicing, flew off and found a new friend across the track. Knives, incidentally, do not make good friends. Trixie was immediately on her hooves, and stomped into her wagon. The door stayed open this time. She re-emerged and stomped down the steps, then around the fire. She carried a long-handled brush and a currycomb in her mouth. She spat them at him. She returned to her side of the first, thumped her haunches down and stuck her chin in the air. Her poise was ruined a few seconds later when she had to cross the road to find her knife and pull it out of the tree. She didn’t have a spare of that, either. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is not helping you,” she announced, as vegetables started to spin beside her again and enter the soup. “I didn’t ask for help, I asked for a brush. I’ve got this.” Arty said, his teeth clenched on the handle as he twisted and rubbed. The curry-comb had a band to hold it on the hoof, and he could reach most places with it, but it still would have been easier to have another pony do. His back between his wings, and his wings where nigh impossible. He might as well rub against a tree like a bear. He grunted, snorted, twisted, flexed, strained, stretched, growled, snarled and ground his teeth on the brush-handle, but managed a passable grooming. Then Arty noticed that Trixie was watching. Her eyes met his, and she immediately wrenched her head to the side. Several more vegetables loudly landed in the pot, and water splashed out, making the fire hiss. Artrageous stood and walked around the fire. He gently dropped the brush and comb beside Trixie. If his wings were a little bit flared, and his chest puffed such that he looked bigger, it was unintentional. Really, Art told himself, I don’t like her. He returned to his side of the fire, stretched out and said, “Thanks.” Not one to pass up an opportunity to be criticial, Trixie said, “You did a terrible job on your tail, and did nothing with your mane, you didn’t touch those braids. How do you do them?” Her question wasn’t as vehement as everything else she said. “I don’t, I’m a pegasus, I get somepony else too, I can’t braid my own mane.” “Oh... I thought maybe you were flexible and skilled with your...” She shut up. Coughed, then said loudly, “The Great and Powerful Trixie will braid your mane, since you are so incapable.” “And you want me to do yours?” “No, my mane is stellar. You will have to listen to the Great and Powerful Trixie as she talks about things that interest her.” “Like what? Politics?” “No, myself.” It figures, Arty thought. He stood, tenderized the ground and made a little hollow, then knelt and laid down again. Trixie joining him on his side of the fire and started brushing his mane, and talking. Another advantage unicorns have, not having to hold the brush in their mouth, or disadvantage as it was turning out. Trixie had run out of things to say about her magic. So, she moved onto her relationships. Not immediately, she had several scathing things to say about the state of his mane as she undid the knots, and clearly took pleasure in yanking out the twigs and brambles he’d picked up as hard as possible. Artrageous didn’t make a noise, he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. At some point though, when the knots were undone and she was running the brush through his long, blue locks, playing with the hair, he became a surrogate for all the slumber parties she never had and it was confession time. She could easily have finished sooner than she did, but something was always not right, had to be completely re-done, and was his fault, of course. The brushing did feel nice, and all that was expected of Arty was to lie there and say “okay, uhuh, really?” occasionally, just like before. Artrageous strongly suspected she might be flirting with him, but a few casual, ‘accidental’ bumps with his wings were reciprocated with immediate, awkward silence that went on too long. So he stopped doing that, well the ones that weren’t accidents, sometimes his wings did just move. Trixie talked about her relationships, and she. had. lots. So many ponies trying to crack her brusk exterior and soothe the wounded mare they believed lay within. A veritable line of confidants that stretched from Canterlot to the edge of Equestria, all showering her with kindness and teaching her the meaning of friendship, forgiveness and generosity. All mares too, she was very specific. She was not interested in stallions. Stallions were big, insensitive, brutish lumps and she would take Flutterbutter or whatever her name was over them, any day. So he mustn’t get any ideas, at all. Arty was starting to suspect she was making some of these encounters up. It was simply impossible in the apparent time-line for her to have had a relationship with so many ponies. She would have to be an emotional, gymnastic disaster, bouncing from high and low extremes almost daily to be in the pitiful state she was invariably found and rescued from. It was only plausible because the Great and Powerful Trixie’s presence was just that absurd. If any pony was stuck and would never change, it would be her. Arty had had enough when she started on the third recount of her meeting with Princess Luna for the first time. How wonderful and sensitive she was, how tragically misunderstood. How she was reminded of her every night she was out under the moonlight, how comforting the quiet darkness was, the velvet expanse of sky, how much it reminded her of the beautiful blue hues of her body, and how much she missed having her near. It felt like she was stealing his night from him, Artrageous couldn’t take it anymore. “Enough! I get it. You’re a filly-fooler of the highest pedigree and the Great and Powerful Trixie wants to sleep alone tonight. I’m not interested, okay. Stop shoving it in my face. I’m sleeping out here.” She stopped talking. She stopped brushing his mane. The brushes hit the ground, hard. He heard her stand. She said, “Your mane is done, you stupid pegasus. The Great and Powerful Trixie is going inside now,” and he felt like a worm. “Trixie, I didn’t mean...” “Whatever!” She cut him off, and stomped up the steps to her wagon. She slammed the door. She opened it a second later and shouted, “The Great and Powerful Trixie”, then slammed it again. Artrageous listened to the fire crackle, and the crickets, and for any sounds coming from Trixie’s wagon. There were none at first, then a sort of rhythmic, springy thump followed by rapid clattering hoofsteps which might have been failing to kill a bug several times, but was probably a temper tantrum on the bed. It was followed by several loud thumps against the wagon wall, then silence again. “You didn’t have any dinner,” Artrageous called out, as he ate his portion. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is not sharing with you.” Came her voice, from inside the wagon. “All right then,” he said, and he finished eating in silence. He placed the lid on the stew pot and left it on the back of her wagon beside the door. He slunk over to his cart. For no reason he planted his fore hooves and slammed both his back ones into the side. They dug into the wood, leaving crescents and rocked the cart. Inside he heard his boxes banging about. He slunk up top, stretched out and laid down. A few minutes later Trixie shouted, “Shut up out there!” Arty found he had been thumping the roof. He stopped. He wanted to go to sleep, instead he started thinking. Perhaps he was supposed to get some message from all those things she had been saying, perhaps she thought he was listening. Maybe she kept insulting him because she thought it only was teasing him, and she never grew up from being a filly, and thought that was how adults got along and what they did when they liked each other. Certainly possible, especially if she was exposed to a lot of badly written plays. All those stories, her with this mare, her with that mare, might have been intended to arouse him. Some of the imagery was certainly very pleasant, and she had gotten descriptively carried away a few times. The awkward silences when he brushed her, might have been awkward because she didn’t know what to do, and her hesitation came across as cold compared with the enthusiasm he was used to from fans when he indicated an interest. Or maybe she was just the same self-absorbed, smug, egotist under the surface as she appeared on top of it. Maybe she didn’t want to be alone either. This line of thinking was making Artrageous feel like a complete jerk. He didn’t like her, he didn’t want to fix her, she was amusing to talk to at first but it swiftly became grating. He could see ways of taking advantage of her, but wouldn’t, because he hadn’t sunk that low, but it was pretty obviously someone would, sooner or later. Mostly, he felt bad, because while he had no intention of upsetting her he still muddled his way into adding to her burden. He felt he should have been better, somehow, even though he wasn’t sure how, and he didn’t have enough of the patience she so obviously required. Whatever common ground they had was still too rocky. Trixie was too much like Artrageous, and he simply didn’t like him self.