“Quick question before we start,” Reggie said, lifting the strap of his messenger bag and setting it down on the grass.
Starlight drank from her strawberry mango smoothie. “Sure, ask away.”
“I’m not sure what the event description meant by ‘cinnamon nuts’,” Reggie said, pulling out a plastic bag of almonds and handing them to Starlight. “But I found candied almonds, which have cinnamon on them. Is that okay?”
Starlight received the bag from Reggie, without quite accepting it. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Why would you think to bring…”
Starlight turned to Trixie sitting in the lawn chair next to her. She looked past Trixie at the mound of bags piling up beside her. “Oh,” Starlight said, her eyebrows crinkling. She sighed and rubbed her temple with a hoof. “Trixie.”
“Hmm?” Trixie lifted a cucumber slice off of one eye. She squinted at Starlight from her throne—a lawn chair arguably identical to Starlight’s. A human behind her massaged her shoulders. “Yes, Starlight?”
Starlight lifted the bag of almonds and shook them. “Explain?”
Trixie glanced at the almonds dancing inside the bag, offering Starlight an innocent shrug. “I thought there was no harm in suggesting a modest donation of cinnamon nuts.”
Starlight leered at the mound of bags next to Trixie.
Trixie scoffed. “Sure. Strongly suggest.”
“You know, these cafés are supposed to be free. This seems like an admission ticket to me.” She handed the plastic bag back to Reggie. “Not only that, but don’t you think it’s a little self-centred? Even for you?”
Trixie double-scoffed. “Me? Self-centred? Starlight, I’m the least self-centred pony I know.” She gestured to the rest of the small group of people scattered around the park. “Look around at how many people get the chance to pet me today! I never gave anypony that privilege in Ponyville, that’s for sure.”
“I have no problem with you gifting the humans with your presence,” Starlight said, rolling her eyes and hiding a smile. “Just no more demands for cinnamon nuts, okay?”
“Hmmph.” Trixie turned up her nose and curled up on her lawn chair. “Trixie needs pets of great consolation for Starlight’s viscous bullying.”
“Aw, Trixie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be mean like that.” Starlight said. “Would you like to hog the limelight with flashy magic tricks? Would that make you feel better?”
Trixie blushed, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Mmmaybe.”
“I’ll even let you pretend to upstage me,” Starlight sang.
The other cucumber slice came off. “You know me too well.” In one swift motion, Trixie sprung to her hooves and donned her cape and hat, striking a triumphant and heroic pose atop the folding lawn chair. “Behold! Would you like to witness the Great and Powerful Trixie perform some real magic?”
“Sure,” Reggie said. Other people in the park walked over and converged around the table.
Trixie leapt up onto the chair next to Starlight, rearing back and waving her hooves as if guiding a mystical breeze about her horn. “Behold, the transfiguration spell! Using the great magical wealth of power within me, I will attempt to transform your ordinary soda pop bottle into… a teacup!”
“Pff. Easy. Let me try,” Starlight said, her horn glowing a soft light green. She huffed, squinting as Reggie’s bottle quivered, but ultimately retained its soda bottle shape. “I can’t,” Starlight said, leaning her head back and holding her hoof to her forehead in despair. “I’m simply not great or powerful enough.”
“Stand back!” Trixie said, summoning a great deal of magic in her horn and fired at the bottle.
With a mighty piff, Reggie’s bottle became a teacup. Applause broke out among the eleven or so audience members.
Trixie took a large and grandiose bow. “Thank you, thank you. Don’t forget, the Great and Pettable Trixie’s Great and Powerful Magic Spectacular starts every hour, on the hour! In but five more minutes, you’ll witness even more amazing teacup-related feats of magic!” The small crowd dispersed, some wandering over to the stage-carriage set up by the water fountain.
Reggie held up the empty pink teacup by the ear. “I, uh, I wasn’t finished with that.”
“Phew, that’s enough for now,” Trixie said, flopping back onto her throne. “Trixie has been performing real magic all day. She requires more petting to restore her magical energy. Come, Nate. You may continue to pet me.” She raised her hooves and clapped twice. When her shoulders remained hand-less, Trixie got up and looked around. “Nate?”
“I think his five minutes was up,” Starlight said, pointing to a human approaching Trixie’s chair. “This must be your next devotee.”
“Hey,” the woman said. “I’m Katrina, it’s nice to meet—”
“I know.” Trixie sat back. “We can save the adoration for later. Now, if you would be so kind, I have a show soon and must be adequately prepared. You may start with the shoulders, as well as the upper back, and then perhaps move on to—oh.” Trixie’s eyes widened as Katrina kneaded her shoulders. “Oh wow.”
Katrina grinned. “Yeah, I’m a part-time masseuse.”
“Mmmmhm,” Trixie said, melting as her body rocked back and forth in sync with Katrina’s kneading. Her mouth lolled open and her eyelids drooped. “Uh huh.”
Starlight laughed. “Oh gosh, Trixie, the look on your face. If I only I had Twilight’s tablet right now—and knew how to use it.” She lifted her glass using telekinesis and drank some of her smoothie.
Reggie slid his chair closer. “Hey,” he said, stuffing his hand into his pockets. He pulled out a handful of coins. “Can you levitate these?”
“Um, sure,” Starlight said. She wrapped the coins in her magic, lifting them up off the table and letting them hang in midair. “Why?”
Reggie leaned in close, grinning widely. He flicked a penny, watching it twirl gently. “That’s so cool.”
Starlight opened her mouth, then closed it. “Yeah, it is kind of cool.” She bit her lip, glancing at Reggie’s entranced stare. “Bit of a rudimentary spell, I guess, but still fun to watch.”
“Feels like dry water,” he said, passing his finger through the pale green aura of Starlight’s magic. “It’s amazing. I never thought magic was real, but wow, here it is.” Reggie shook his head. “We don’t have anything like this. This is fantasy here, or was, at least. Only in books and movies and video games.”
“Yeah, I guess I keep forgetting that.” Starlight floated the coins around in a circle. “I keep looking at all your guys’ cell phones and iPods and other doohickeys and gadgets and I keep thinking you’ve got some magical talismans or something in there. You guys can store an entire DJ turntable—and thousands of records—in one tiny little television!”
“Huh, yeah. I guess I keep forgetting that.” Reggie shrugged. “The things we take for granted, I guess.” He rubbed his jaw. “Maybe an unfair question, but would you rather be here with all the technology or there with all the magic?”
Starlight smiled. “No offense, but there. I like the magic too much, I guess. I can do magic here, but it’s harder. It’s almost like it’s suppressed or muffled, like breathing at a high altitude. I have to save the more advanced stuff, the Fiducia Compeluses, the Occulus Accios, the—oh, oh dear.” Starlight’s face paled.
“What?” Reggie said.
“I forgot,” she told Reggie, then Trixie. “I forgot! I was supposed to help Twilight research spells for the café this morning. I’ve got so much reading to do!” She held her head in her hooves. “Oh, I could’ve gotten so much research done by now. Twilight’s going to be so upset…”
“Hey, calm down,” Trixie said. She brushed aside Katrina’s hands and sat up, reaching out to rub Starlight on the shoulder. “Relax, you’re okay. Breathe.” She lifted her hoof up with her chest to simulate proper breathing.
Starlight followed, taking breaths in unison with Trixie.
“Good,” Trixie said. “Now relax, dummy. The All-Important Twilight isn’t an obsessive neurotic anymore. Well, she’s less obsessive, at least. I’m sure if she needed you so badly, she’d come to fetch you, right?” Trixie pouted. “Can’t you afford a day to help your best friend Trixie do her show?”
Starlight exhaled and smiled. “Yeah, I guess so. Sorry. We researched all day on Monday, and I was only supposed to alternate days with the café stuff—”
“Hup bup bup!” Trixie pressed her hoof to Starlight’s mouth. “No more on that. How about you finally ask the nice human to pet you?”
Starlight glanced at Reggie. “Ohhhhh. Right. Forgot about that.”
Reggie nodded. “Yeah, was going to bring that up at some point.”
“Good,” Trixie said, lounging back onto her lawn chair. She released a long sigh as Katrina got to work again.
Starlight blushed. “You can, um, start with the neck,” Starlight said, pointing to it. “It’s my favourite spot, especially the sides.”
“Sure,” Reggie said, running his fingers through the soft fur of her neck. “So, what sorts of spells were you going to research?”
Starlight snapped out of her momentary petting trance. “Hm? Oh. The purpose of the research was to try and solve a big problem we’ve run into with the café. There’s been so much demand for us ponies, there’s quite frankly not enough of us to go around.”
Reggie nodded. “Not enough ponies in your world?”
“Not enough Twilights, actually. Not enough Rainbow Dashes. That kind of thing. Each of us have fan clubs now. It’s insane.” She winced. “Well, most of us. But it’s probably because I’m new here, like Twilight says. And she and her friends were here first. Which is fine.” Starlight gave a tired smile and shrug. “Perfectly logical.”
Reggie raised his hand. “I’ll be the first member of your fan club.”
Starlight chuckled. “Thanks, I appreciate it.” She smiled and leaned into Reggie’s hand as he stroked her neck.
“So, how’s a spell going to fix this? What kind of spell?”
“Well, between Twilight and I, we’ve already come up with several ideas. Teleportation was our first. We tried to think creatively about teleporting from one city to another for maybe an hour at a time, but there’s many problems with that: overly complicated logistics, not enough magical energy—especially in your world—and even then, at five minutes per person, that means only twelve Twilight fans out of the hundreds in New York get to see her that day, and only twelve Twilight fans in Chicago, and so on and so on.”
“Yeah, true,” Reggie said. “Do you have a cloning spell?”
“Yes. Sort of,” Starlight said. “No. We have a mirror pool—it’s like this magic pool that you can clone yourself with, but it’s a little… catastrophic. A cloning spell, however, could be an option if we could figure out one that’s not quite as catastrophic, but no progress on that yet.
“So then I thought, I’ve combined Similo Duplexis and Accelero—they make a spell that lets you be in two places at once—so we could do that, but the café locations are so far apart that the distance between them is much too far to be practical. I mean, even moving at a hundred miles a second, it still takes you ten seconds to travel halfway across the country, and besides that, that advanced of a spell is something easily muffled here in the human world. So then, Twilight had the idea of—”
“Why don’t you just use changelings?” Trixie asked.
Starlight blinked. “Huh?”
Trixie rolled her eyes. “The changelings, you know. The walking kaleidoscopes that eat love. Ask them to be Twilight or Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie for the day. Better yet, have them take requests.”
“Oh,” Starlight said, her head bobbing side to side to bounce the idea around. “Huh. Yeah, that’s a pretty good idea, actually.”
“Sure, they probably won’t have Twilight’s personality, or at least the lucky ones won’t, but hey, humans might be happy to at least pet a carbon copy instead of waiting a few weeks.” Trixie swung her cape around and fastened it around her neck. “Anyway. I’ve got a show to do.” She theatrically offered her hoof to Starlight. “Now, would you like to come with me, put all that namby-pamby Summero Duplexy stuff aside, and help Trixie perform some ‘flashy magic tricks’?”
Starlight smirked. “Of course.” She turned to Reggie. “Sorry, duty calls, though I guess your five minutes was up anyway. We’re doing a magic show right now if you want to watch.”
“Sure,” Reggie said. “I could watch real magic all day.”