“N-now, BonBon,” Trixie said as she backed away from the advancing earth pony, hooves scrabbling on the wooden floor of her kitchen, “calm down – ”
“Calm down?” BonBon demanded. “Calm down? What did you do to her?”
“Nothing!” Lyra said.
BonBon jumped, as though surprised that Lyra was still capable of speech, and turned to regard the former unicorn. On laying eyes on her, she unconsciously backed away several steps, then caught herself. “Lyra?” she asked in a small voice.
“It’s still me,” Lyra said, holding up her paws slowly. “I’m still me. I’m…” she let out a slight sigh. “Okay. Remember how Trixie made you think that I was invisible and stuck like that? That’s because we didn’t want you to worry. That’s also why we didn’t want you touching me. And I’m sorry we lied, and we shouldn’t have.”
BonBon stared, wide-eyed. “S…so this is what happened?” she asked, eyes darting over Lyra’s form, taking in the inverted hocks, the paws, the compressed face – the pointed teeth.
“It’s not my fault!” Trixie cried out. “The spell was mislabeled in the book! It was from Princess Luna, I thought everything was correct! I thought I was going to be turning Lyra into a zebra, not a…a…a whatever this thing is!”
“Bear,” Lyra supplied.
“You’re not a bear. You don’t look anything like a bear.”
“Well, I have to be something, and until we know what I might as well be a bear!” Lyra exclaimed, before looking back to BonBon. “We can fix this, BonBon. Trixie and me are going to fix this, no matter what.”
“Worst-case scenario, she’s stuck like this for a week,” Trixie said. “Princess Luna will – ”
“I don’t care about Princess Luna!” BonBon shouted, turning to face Trixie again, advancing slowly. “How could you do this to her?”
“I didn’t mean to!” Trixie exclaimed, backing away again.
“Her show is in three hours! What is she supposed to do, Trixie?” BonBon jabbed a hoof at Lyra for a moment, before she continued her advance. “She can’t go to Canterlot looking like that!”
“I know! I’m trying as – ”
“You’re supposed to be her friend!” BonBon exclaimed. By now, Trixie had run out of space to back away, and was pressed up against the wall as BonBon bore down on her. “What kind of a friend turns somepony into a…a…a bear! A bear, right before one of the defining moments of her – ”
Trixie, backed into a wall and with a seemingly equicidal pony bearing down on her, did the only thing she could think of: her horn glowed, and she shoved BonBon away from her telekinetically. She had intended it to only be a foot or two, and relatively gentle at that, but her panicked state saw to it that BonBon was instead pushed halfway across the room, hard enough to make the earth pony stumble. When she got her hooves under her again and looked to Trixie, there was no doubt as to her intention.
“C’est des conneries,” Trixie cursed.
“N-now, BonBon,” Lyra tried, starting forward. “Sweetie, wait a moment, Trixie didn’t mean to – we don’t have time to – ”
BonBon charged.
---
Against all odds, Trixie remembered to turn Lyra invisible again as both dashed out of the Residency. Trixie closed the door as soon as the both of them were out, horn glowing brightly as a cerulean aura surrounded the portal, holding it fast as BonBon slammed into it. She had probably intended to break it down, but Trixie managed to hold it in place, though the shock travelled straight down her horn. She grimaced against the pain as she heard a dazed thump from the other side of the door.
“That sounded like it hurt,” Trixie noted. She had managed to grab the zebra spellbook during her second pass through the kitchen, after having run out of it and into her living room, where she and Lyra had tried – and failed – to reason with BonBon.
“BonBon?” Lyra asked, leaning up against the door. “You okay, sweetie?”
“She’s fine. Earth pony,” Trixie said, frowning slightly as she noticed Lyra beginning to shiver in the cold winter afternoon. The sun was already halfway down the horizon, and the temperature, not very high to begin with, was dropping. She turned around, getting ready to make a beeline for the train station with Lyra – she had a plan that might work, if they couldn’t find some ritual in the book for the train ride – when she noticed that the two of them weren’t alone. Standing in the front yard of the Residency, looking at Trixie in confusion, was a small, gray unicorn filly, bundled up in a winter cloak and hat and carrying her school bag.
“Oh! Dinky!” Trixie exclaimed, then after a moment adding "Hi!" as she tried to figure out why the daughter of Ditzy Doo could be coming to see her. She was fairly certain that she hadn’t made any arrangements to see Dinky today, so this was likely just a social call, or perhaps Dinky coming by to see if Trixie could help her with her telekinesis more. Normally unicorn foals could count on parents or older siblings to help them master that skill, but all Dinky had was her mother, a pegasus. Ditzy Doo was a wonderful mother in all other regards, but she simply couldn’t help Dinky out in that case, so Trixie had stepped in.
Plus, Dinky was a really adorable kid. Trixie sometimes wondered if being adorable was going to end up being Dinky’s special talent.
“Hi, Dinky,” Lyra’s disembodied voice added, from next to Trixie. That broke Trixie from her reverie, as she shot a glare at Lyra, who had the good sense to look embarrassed again, as she put her hands to her mouth in embarrassment.
Dinky stared. “Hi,” she responded, slowly creeping forward and looking to where Lyra was, though it was fairly obvious that the filly couldn’t penetrate Trixie’s invisibility spell. “Miss Heartstrings?”
“You can just call me Lyra,” Lyra said.
Dinky jumped in surprise at the sound of a voice from, as far as she could tell, nowhere. “That’s…it’s really weird talking to nothing…”
Trixie’s brow furrowed at that, and her horn glowed as she waved a hoof. In front of Dinky, a facsimile of Lyra seemed to materialize from nothing, a bright grin on her features. “My horn is not that short,” Lyra objected, as Dinky looked to Trixie in confusion. The illusion of Lyra, meanwhile, hadn’t moved its mouth.
“Illusion,” Trixie explained to the filly, before glancing at Lyra – the real Lyra. “And yes it is. And we don’t have time to argue right now.”
“Did…did you turn Lyra invisible and now can’t make her not invisible, and only you can see her?” Dinky asked, as she mulled over the information in front of her. “And make her giant, since you keep looking up to talk to her?”
There was a pause, as Trixie and Lyra looked to each other. “Sure,” Trixie said after a moment. “That’s what happened.”
Dinky eyed Trixie. “No it isn’t,” she objected to the obviously transparent lie.
“No it isn’t,” Trixie echoed, as she and Lyra began walking towards the front gate, Dinky following and the illusion of Lyra keeping pace, trotting along normally, though her bright grin didn’t move and her movements were exaggerated, more like a puppet moving than a pony. Still, Trixie thought it was a pretty good figment for something she’d thrown up on a whim.
Trixie opened the book in front of her, looking it over. “Look, we've narrowed it down to just these three, all we need to do is – ”
“The last ritual took half an hour to set up and it didn’t even do anything!” Lyra exclaimed. “The train leaves in fifteen minutes!” There was a pause, and Trixie glanced to Lyra. The former unicorn was using her forelegs to hug her barrel tightly, while she hopped from one foot to another against the cold ground. “And my hooves are freezing! Or whatever these things are called!”
Trixie opened her mouth to say something unkind, but then paused. “I feel I’m forgetting something – ”
Crash.
Dinky and Trixie both turned around at the sound of glass and wood breaking, and saw a cream-colored, blue-and-pink maned earth pony rising from the garden in front of the Residency. Without thinking, Trixie’s horn flashed blue, and she covered herself in the same invisibility glamor that she had wrapped around Lyra. After a moment, she remembered Dinky, and made to coat her in the same spell, but by then BonBon had leapt over the iron fence that surrounded the Residency and landed almost on top of Dinky Doo, a look of pure rage on her face – but a look which was, fortunately, not directed at the filly, instead focused first to her left, then her right, as though she was a predator looking around for prey.
“Where’d she go?” BonBon demanded. She looked down to Dinky, her gaze softening a little. “Dinky Doo? Sugar? Where did Trixie go? I’ll give you free candy for a month if you tell me.”
Trixie held her breath, not daring to exhale. Dinky was a smart filly, she’d know that Trixie had turned herself invisible, and Trixie wouldn’t blame her at all if she told BonBon that in the face of such unbridled fury from the earth pony mare.
“That way,” Dinky Doo told BonBon, pointing down a street. In a flash, BonBon was off. Trixie felt her heart flutter at that, surprised at the filly’s choice – not that she was complaining.
As soon as BonBon was out of sight, Trixie let herself bleed back into reality, the invisibility glamor she’d woven over herself falling off of her in a blue mist that quickly dissipated into nothingness. She didn’t re-create the Lyra figment, nor make Lyra visible, instead looking to Dinky. “Thanks,” she said, her gratitude entirely genuine. “I owe you, kiddo.”
“She is going to be so mad at me…” Lyra’s voice mourned, as her teeth chattered. Being a naked bear outside in winter was not looking like it was working out for her.
Dinky looked to Trixie. “I…I actually came needing a favor,” she said. “See, there’s this new jewelry store, and I need to get something there today for my momma but my momma can’t know or else – ”
“We don’t have time,” Lyra’s interrupted.
The blue unicorn looked to the invisible-to-everypony-else Lyra, then back to Dinky. The filly seemed distraught – but Lyra was right. Whatever was troubling Dinky could not have compared to the situation that she and Lyra were currently in – she was only a filly, after all, and Trixie had to prioritize. “We don’t,” Trixie said, unable to keep the pained tone from her voice. “I’m sorry, kiddo, I really am, but me and Lyra need to hoof it…leg it…whatever…to the train station. She has a show in Canterlot she can’t miss.”
Dinky stared, wide-eyed. “But…” she objected. “But, I need – ”
“I’m sorry, I'm so sorry,” Trixie said, as she turned. If she let Dinky get any further than that, she knew for a fact that the filly would be able to convince her to stay, and that wouldn’t be fair to Lyra. She did look behind at the foal as she ran, though, calling “I’ll make it up to you, I promise!”
---
“T-Trixie!” Lyra called as the unicorn ran. “S-slow down-n!”
Trixie glanced behind her. She wasn’t running particularly fast, but Lyra had fallen significantly behind, and she was stumbling, teeth chattering. Trixie stopped, and Lyra did as well, bending over, hands on her knees as she breathed and shivered. “I c-can’t run as fast…” the former unicorn stated. “And I-I-I’m f-freezing…”
Trixie grimaced at that, regretting that she had taken off her cape back at the Residency, which had, among other enchantments, magic woven into it that allowed the wearer to retain all body heat, making it excellent proof against cold weather despite being made of very thin material. Lyra could have used it right now…she tapped a hoof on the ground a few moments, thinking. “Okay, hang on,” she said, closing her eyes and thinking back to the spell that Lyra had shown her earlier today, the one that had summoned Lyra’s lyre.
First, she cast that same spell, refreshing it in her mind. She caught the lyre as it fell, then passed it to Lyra, who stared in confusion, wondering how a musical instrument was going to help against the cold.
Trixie had her eyes closed again, as she thought about the spell in her mind, the way it moved. In her mind’s eye, she saw it as a string of raw magical energy, one end tied around her horn, the other end tied around the lyre. With a slight twitch of her head, she mentally untied the end wrapped around the lyre.
Next, she cast out her magical senses, reaching towards her home. The Residency would have been too far away under normal circumstances, but what she was looking for in it – her cape – was intimately familiar to her, something she wore every day and had owned for years. The fact that the cape was magical as well helped her find it, sitting in the kitchen where she’d left it.
Ha, Trixie mentally proclaimed as she wrapped the business end of the calling spell around her cape, and tugged. In front of her, a cerulean sphere appeared, and after a moment it popped, and Trixie’s cape fluttered to the ground. She picked it up with telekinesis and held it out. “Here,” she said.
Lyra took the cape and tied it around her neck, then picked up and held her lyre close, though she looked disappointed as she did. “I’m g-gonna need m-more than j-just this,” she said.
“It’s magic. It’ll take a few minutes to kick in, but trust me, you’ll be fine in no time,” Trixie said, casting a second invisibility glamor over her cape, and a third over Lyra’s lyre – it wouldn’t do to have it look like she was being stalked by a floating musician-cape, after all. She then turned around and resumed running, Lyra following as best she could.
As Trixie galloped, she shook her head a little. The zebra spells had drawn magic from the very air, and so hadn’t been taxing in the slightest – but between a modified shield spell to hold her front door in place, several invisibility spells in quick succession, the figment of Lyra conjured for Dinky, Lyra’s lyre-summoning spell, and now her modified version for her own cape, Trixie was beginning to feel slightly lightheaded. Despite magic being her special talent, Trixie didn’t have any deeper a reservoir of magic to draw upon than anypony else – in fact she suspected that, though she’d never tell the other unicorn, Lyra had more raw magic inside of her.
Further, casting her new summon cape spell had cost valuable time – a minute or two at most, but now any delusions she had harbored about gathering ingredients for a final ritual on the train were dashed. That meant that Trixie’s only option, as long as Lyra was so insistent on not missing her show, was one she was certain was going to end up landing her in a hospital.
“I th-think the cape’s starting to w-work,” Lyra chattered, as they neared the train station. Her eyes widened. “Trixie, how are you going to p-pay for tickets?”
“Ticket,” Trixie corrected, as she grimaced again, knowing exactly how she was going to. “Also? Shut up! You’re invisible! Don’t talk! That defeats the entire purpose!”
Lyra pressed her lips together as Trixie stopped just inside the train station with five minutes to spare. The five o’clock train was, thankfully, looking like it was going to be only sparsely occupied. There were maybe a half-dozen ponies waiting near the track, and no line leading up to the single teller, who was too busy reading a newspaper to notice Trixie’s entrance. Even as Trixie and Lyra entered, they heard the hoot of a train’s whistle nearby, and five o’clock train to Canterlot began to pull into the station.
Trixie’s horn glowed beneath her hat, and she cast an illusion of saddlebags over her back. Having created them, she pulled her hat down lower over her head, obscuring her horn entirely, and trotting forward, to the teller, Lyra following close by. “Excuse me,” Trixie said as she came up to the counter, and the teller looked up from his newspaper, revealing a yellow-coated earth pony who regarded Trixie with a board look. “One ticket to Canterlot, please. Private cabin.”
The teller glanced at the clock that hung on the train station’s wall, then back to Trixie as he went to work making up the ticket. “That was close,” he noted.
“You have no idea,” Trixie breathed.
The teller also didn’t look like he cared much, but didn’t say so as he finished using a hole-puncher to stamp out Trixie’s ticket, marking her destination and number of passengers. “That’ll be thirty bits, ma’am.”
Trixie nodded, looking to her illusory saddlebags, the glow of her horn comfortably obscured beneath her hat. This was the easy part: open the ‘bag,’ ‘levitate’ out thirty ‘bits,’ and set the ‘bits’ down on the counter. The ‘bits’ she set down looked old and worn, but the face of Luna was still visible on one side, the Equestrian coat of arms on the other, and the sides were ridged, as normal. Nopony could have told, at a glance, that they were fake.
But the teller wasn’t going to just glance at that them, and that was the hard part. As he reached out a hoof for them, to scoop them into the open, waiting drawer, Trixie focused on the bits, and at the same time, on her memory of every time she had held bits in her hooves: the feel of the silver face, the raised image of Luna, the ridges on the side. She focused on her memories of the sound of them clinking against each other, the sound they made on a wooden countertop as they were dragged along it by a hoof, the sound of them falling comfortably into a cash drawer. As she focused on the memories, she pushed them forward, and down, and into the coins themselves.
To Trixie, it felt like she was trying to lift a mountain. Fooling sight or hearing by themselves, or even both together, was relatively easy, since in neither case did the victim ever actually interact with the illusion or ghost sound directly. Fooling the sense of touch was a whole different proposition, and would have been trying if all she had been figmenting was a single coin, nevermind thirty of them – but it was a challenge she met as the teller slid the bits into his cash drawer and closed it. Trixie immediately dispelled them once they were out of sight, suppressing a gasp of relief as the earth pony passed her ticket to her. She took it in her mouth, giving her horn a break for a few minutes as she set off for the train finished pulling into the station and the conductor stepped out to announce the train’s destination.
To her relief, she saw that the train’s private cabins were built in the modern style, each one opening out onto the platform itself rather than requiring her – and Lyra – to walk through the train car to their destination. She quickly handed off her ticket to the conductor and stepped into the cabin he directed her to, Lyra following silently the whole time, clutching her lyre close. She had stopped shivering, at least, but was looking around furtively, as though worried that Trixie’s spell would collapse at any moment.
As soon as the conductor closed the door to her cabin, and Lyra had squeezed her giant form into the cabin’s back, Trixie drew the curtains to the cabin’s window closed and dispelled all her maintained illusions – first her false saddlebags, then the three invisibility glamors over Lyra, her cape, and Lyra’s instrument. She breathed out a sigh of relief as she did, swooning a little before quickly settling down into one of the private cabin’s benches.
“Can I talk now?” Lyra asked.
“Probably,” Trixie replied. “Keep your voice down, though, in case the conductor walks by.”
Lyra nodded. Even though they had succeeded in boarding the train – even though they were on their way to Canterlot – Lyra looked anything but happy, a fact that was obvious even despite her changed face. She looked to her lyre, then to Trixie. “So…so this is it, then,” she said. “I’m going to Canterlot like this. I’m going to play…like this. Assuming everypony doesn’t run away from me in horror, anyway…and then afterwards, BonBon will…” she trailed off as she thought of her marefriend, and the consequences of running away from her.
Trixie eyed Lyra, specifically her hands. “I have a question,” she said, as the train began to move, “but you’re not going to like it.”
“What?”
“Can you play?”
Lyra snorted slightly at the question, before pausing and looking at her hands. Her eyes slowly began to widen. “Oh, stars above, I didn’t think about that,” she said, grasping her lyre. She held her hand in a slightly cupped position, trying to imitate the shape of a hoof, and attempted to strum out a few notes. What resulted was certainly sound, and not even unpleasant sound – but it was not music. “Oh no,” Lyra breathed. “Oh no, oh no no no no no…”
“Calm down,” Trixie said quickly. “You’ve got two hours to practice, music is your special talent – ”
“Is it?” Lyra asked, somehow managing to keep her voice down despite her panic. She looked to her hips, her flank, which was bare. “My…I don’t have my cutie mark anymore. I don’t have my cutie mark anymore! Do I have a special talent?”
“Everypony has one,” Trixie stated firmly.
“But I’m not a pony! I’m a two-legged, naked, hoof-less freak!”
“No, you’re not,” Trixie counted, jabbing a hoof at Lyra. “You are a pony, you just don’t look like one right now. But music is still your special talent. You are still Lyra Heartstrings.” She waved her hoof. “You just need to practice and figure things out, but we are not going to Canterlot just for you to give up.”
Lyra stared at Trixie, before gritting her teeth – somewhat scary given the presence of incisors – and nodding at Trixie’s words. “Right,” she said. “Right. This can’t be for nothing.”
“It won’t be,” Trixie said, as she looked to the zebra spellbook, then sighed. “We don’t have the time, the stuff, or the room for another ritual. So I’ve got a plan for getting you onstage without anypony knowing that you’re…this,” she waved a hoof up and down to indicate Lyra’s changed body.
Lyra nodded, though she didn’t look up. She was staring at her hands, moving them around as she tried to figure out how to make them work for her lyre. “What is it?”
Trixie considered. “First,” she said, “I need you to describe to me exactly what you were planning on wearing…”