Trixie did find ponies on the other side of the park, but these ones were a little different from the crowd she’d just been performing for. They were in their teenage years, much like the green Pegasus who had heckled her earlier. There were about twelve of them, and they were all kicking around some kind of small beanbag. Trixie gave herself a reassuring smile as she tied her curtain to another branch. She gave herself a quick touchup, then took a deep breath.
“Come one, come all!” she called from behind her curtain as she tossed another hoof-ful of confetti, “Come and witness the amazing magic of the Great and Powerful Trixie!” She leapt through the curtain and saw all the teenaged ponies turned to gaze in her direction. The magician was so engrossed in the moment that she didn’t notice the odd looks that they gave her.
“What the Tartarus?” murmured a gangly unicorn.
“Watch and be amazed by the awe-inspiring feats performed by the greatest, most famous unicorn in all of Equestria!” continued the show-mare, “The Great and Powerful Trixie will leave you spellbound!” Once again she made a bouquet of roses appear in her arms, and tossed it all over herself. But rather than the applause she expected to hear, she instead heard snickering.
“Are you a clown?” a chestnut earth pony asked with a grin. Trixie’s face went from proud to incredulous as this comment drew another laugh from the small crowd.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie is not a clown!” she barked, “She is a magician of the utmost importance!” Trixie was perplexed when this only drew more laughter. However, she responded with boisterous laughter of her own.
“You poor little foals,” she said in an infuriatingly smug voice, “I can’t believe that you’ve never heard of the Great and Powerful Trixie!”
“Hey wait a minute,” said a petite mare, “Wasn’t there a Trixie at the Grand Galloping Gala last year?”
“Naw,” responded the gangly unicorn, “I think that was Twilight Sparkle.” The moment Trixie heard this, she exposed her teeth in a very threatening grimace.
“Wasn’t she the one who, like, got rid of an Ursa Minor?” asked an elfin Pegasus.
“Yeah,” replied a stout earth pony, “She totally owned it!” Trixie’s face turned an interesting shade of scarlet.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie demands that you pay attention to her, and her alone!” she roared, “And stop discussing that bumpkin of a unicorn this instant! Trixie wants to entertain you!” The twelve ponies gave her the kind of look one would give to a ranting lunatic standing on a street corner. Though Trixie was unaware of it, she had been getting this look quite a bit for her last few performances.
“Take a chill pill, lady,” replied the gangly unicorn.
“No, The Great and Powerful Trixie will not take a chill pill!” bellowed the magician as her face screwed into a furious scowl, “She will amaze and astound you blithering idiots if it’s the last thing she does!” The reaction to this statement was quite predictable.
“Go buck yourself,” said the elfin Pegasus as she and the other trotted away, once again leaving Trixie alone. This time, however, she did not gleefully pack up her things and move to a new location. Instead she continued to sit in the dirt with a seething look on her face.
“Naw, I think that was Twilight Sparkle!” she spat mockingly. “Of all the garbage I’ve ever heard…” As Trixie sat broodingly next to her rag of a curtain, her head hosted all manner of mean-spirited thoughts about the purple unicorn and her friends, who had left her humiliated and penniless. Trixie did not take into consideration that they had saved her from becoming an Ursa’s midnight snack, or that they sent her belongings to her via mail, along with a heartfelt note forgiving her for her abhorrent behavior. While any other pony would have been moved by these gestures, Trixie was not any other pony, and therefore regarded them with about as much empathy as one would regard a lumpish pebble.
“Twilight Sparkle,” Trixie hissed venomously as she scratched a crude image of her ‘nemesis’ in the dirt, “This is all your fault. I’m supposed to be performing for Canterlot socialites, not prepubescent miscreants!” A vein throbbed in the unicorn’s forehead as she began to beat the earthen sketch with her hooves. “You and your imbecile friends ruined my life!” she screamed, “Because of you I’m talking to dirt right now!” Trixie suddenly noticed a flash to her right. She looked over to see a puny Pegasus with a camera around his neck. “What are you looking at you little twerp?” she snarled, “Get out of here!” The Pegasus quickly followed her advice and shot up into the sky faster than physically possible. The demented magician stood up and brushed the dirt off of herself, “I’ll show you,” she sneered at the ruined face in the earth, “I’ll be more famous than you’ll ever be!”
After deciding that two shows had been enough for the day, Trixie began walking back to her caravan, which was parked in a thick cluster of trees. Trixie absolutely hated her caravan. It was a rickety, secondhand piece of junk that she had bought for twenty-five bits. The axels weren’t even, and it was incredibly hard to transport from place to place. The roof leaked horribly in the lightest of drizzles. The wooden walls were unfinished, and she got splinters every time she brushed against them. But the thing Trixie probably hated the most about her home was that there was a knothole somewhere in one of the boards that whistled whenever the wind blew through it. Despite searching the entire wagon from top to bottom she had never been able to find its source, and thus spent many sleepless nights listening to the infuriating noise.
As Trixie neared her mobile home, she was quick to notice that something was amiss. The cart stood more unevenly than usual, which at first she ignored because it tended to shift whenever the wind blew. But as she drew closer, she noticed that one side was much higher than the other. It was only when she came right up to it that Trixie saw that the wheels were gone, and the uneven axels were propped up on cinderblocks. Scrawled across the side of the wagon in red spray-paint were the words ‘Trailer Trash’. Upon processing this sight, Trixie’s face contorted to make the most frightening face a pony could make, riddled with fury and hatred.
“TWILIGHT SPARKLE!” howled the unicorn. She had no reason to associate the bookish mare with this misfortune at all, but it had become a nasty habit of Trixie’s to blame all of her shortcomings on her nemesis. The thoroughly perturbed unicorn began to say words that nopony should ever utter as she stomped her hooves on the ground childishly. The unicorn then proceeded to flop onto the grass and kick and scream in a manner most horrible. It would be most accurate to say that she was throwing a temper tantrum. In her youth, Trixie had been known around her neighborhood as the Tantrum Queen, a title well-deserved. Her skill in this art had not diminished, as she was still prone to throwing them on an increasingly regular basis.
“I hate Twilight Sparkle!” she bawled for nopony to hear, “I hate Ponyville! I hate, I hate, I hate-” She suddenly froze as a flash went off in the bushes, followed by a mechanical whirring. If there was one sound Trixie recognized in this world, it was the sound of a camera going off. She knew as well as any that a camera could be a dear friend or a hateful enemy, depending on what kind of photos it held. Realizing that it had had managed to capture one of her lower moments, her heart began to race with fear and panic. These emotions quickly morphed into anger as she leapt up from the ground and dove into the bushes.
“Give me that camera!” she shrieked as she thrashed around in the brush. Twigs and leaves flew in every direction as the magician madly tore the bush apart looking for the perpetrator. By the time the shrub was devoid of its foliage, she realized that the photographer had escaped. Enraged, Trixie tore the bush out of the ground, ripped it to pieces with her bare hooves, and used her magic to start it on fire. As she watched the broken branches wither and burn, Trixie seethed about her current situation. Nothing had gone right for her since her performance at Ponyville. Up until then her life had been smooth sailing. The unicorn couldn’t understand why all these terrible things had been happening to her. Trixie was certain that there was no possible way she could deserve this, as she was perfectly flawless in every way.