//------------------------------// // The Last Magician (EqG -- Trixie & Twilight & Spike) // Story: Stories for Good Little Fillies and Colts Who Love Their Lives and Do Not Wish to Die // by Fiddlebottoms //------------------------------// The Last Magician's tattered blue cape flutters in the air behind her as she scurries down toward the shore. Sand pushes in through the hole-ridden soles of her shoes, rubbing her blistered feet as she catches up with the crowd walking toward the shore. She runs in circles among them performing small, stupid tricks and calling for their attention. No one is much amazed, but they might have admired her persistence as she guessed the contents of their pockets and breathlessly thrust her fanned out cards into their weathered faces. It is impossible to tell if she is accurately guessing the cards they hold in their hands, as the bleeding, hollow sockets of her audience can perceive nothing but the need for cooling ocean waters, and the cards slip--uncared for--out of their stiff fingers and litter the ground. Undeterred by their lack of enthusiasm, she continues to run about whining and shouting and flinging fireworks that contest vainly against the writhing lightning of the dying sky until at last they reach the water. The Last Magician's ragged hair, streaked with grease and blood and riddled with the small bones of the last hat-broken rabbit, flaps against her spine and ribs jutting wickedly from her starving back and her sunken chest with indifference. It has been neither groomed nor cut since this began. She stands before them one last time, her arms thrust to either side in a manner symptomatic of a crippling crucifixation, and announces to one and every deaf ear that she is the GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE. A wave from behind knocks her to her knees, steals her hat and shoves her face into the moist sand. As she struggles against the water around her, around her the last audience passes without pausing, and before she rises to her feet sputtering and rubbing furiously at her eyes, they will have vanished into the waters leaving only a pink foam to rise in their wake. The GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE returns, slowly to her hideout by the dunes. Searching her hair for scraps of rabbit, she discovers instead a stranded mollusk. Sucking out its meat, she finds it good. The Last Magician, the GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE and Queen Novo's Last Hierophant lay in the sand, licking at the bounty of the sea. The sea is greedy in these days, and her feeble offering shouldn't have been enough for three, but by the truly trinitarian miracle of all three being the same person, they were able to briefly silence their stomach with canned tuna. It was at least as much a miracle that the can bore a picture of the Queen of the Sea Ponies upon its side, the GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE could have found himself worshiping a fucking talking fish. How's that for a look, Snails, she thought. Not good, your Great and Powerfulness, she thought back for herself. Where had they all gone, anyway? Into the ocean or into the fire? The can had washed up on the shore that morning, perhaps as repayment by Queen Novo for swallowing all of her audiences. The GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE will never be sure if the trade was a good one or not: she couldn't amaze the chopped fish, but she couldn't eat the staggering masses. Her reverent licking is interrupted by a sharp pain in her mouth and the feel of blood running down her chin. In a sudden panic she moves her fingers around within her mouth. Her voice is nowhere to be found. Not even back toward the depths of her tonsils. She thrusts her fingers as far back as she can without losing the fish that had cost her so dear in trade. Nothing. Nothing at all. Her voice is utterly gone. Prodding through the sand and blood mingling at her feet doesn't bring anything up either. She does find a rather accidental corpse, his bloated stupid face reminds her of something she is already forgetting. Scrambling through his pockets, she produces a pen and begins scribbling her name across a piece of paper. Engrossed in creating a name for herself, she doesn't notice the arrival of her two guests until he--the corpse--hears a voice from her feet and alerts her to it. Abandoning her banner (THE GRAT AND POWERFULL TRIKSEE didn't really know how to spell anyway) she turns downward to see a purple dog writhing along the ground like a worm. Its stumps twist uselessly in the air like the arms of a feeble swimmer as its belly performs the work of four. “I said Hello there,” the dog repeats. The GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE panics, but is amazed to discover her stage voice, hidden deep in her chest, is still present. The stage voice doesn't contain many words, but it can at least announce the most great and powerful name on Earth. “My name is Spike,” says the dog, “and hers is Twilight Sparkle. How long have you been here?” The Last Magician draws a pocket watch from her sleeve and sweeps her finger around the circumference as if clearing the dust. “Even before?” the dog and girl both looked up at the sky, jet black streaked with browns resembling rust and slightly different browns resembling shit. Periodically lightning lit the sky, but so far in the distance that the sound could not be heard. Or perhaps the sound of the lightning was the dull background howl. The ever present howling of the fears. The GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE nods and repeats the sweeping gesture before the pocket watch vanishes. Her hands soon follow suit, and the Last Magician drops to her knees before looking at the dog in curiosity. “We were hungry,” the dog explains, “so I ate her arms. In return, I allowed her to eat my legs.” This seems inefficient to the GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE, an opinion which she expresses by taking three balls from her pocket and rolling them in her palm until only one remains. This argument would have given the dog pause, if it still had legs on which to receive them, but he continued, “A full stomach is a difficult thing to come by.” The GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE can think of one final comment, but first she holds out one hand, indicating no desire to give offense. she reaches into her mouth and pulls a string of rags forth, layering them onto the dog. “My girl used to be a ventriloquist among her many talents and pursuits before I ate her arms.” Spike replies. “It was my prideful duty to retrieve her voice for her after she had thrown it and bring it back safely that she may retrieve it, but that was before I ate her arms. With no limbs to retrieve her voice from my mouth, I am left to carry it for her and speak for both of us.” The GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE pointed at the girls' bare feet, and the dog laughed, “Whoever heard of a woman talking with her feet, simply absurd.” Thumping on the ground, thumping in her chest, a rush of hot air on the back of her neck, smelling like a compost heap, sweet and vile and rotten. The scent of massacred salads and slaughtered gardens. Beneath crazed, bloodshot eyes snap teeth as long as her sleeves (which have nothing in them) and sharp as the saw she once used to cut foolish assistants in half. One ton of rage driven by two fur covered pistons, each the size of tree trunks. Gnawed electrical cables dangle from its jaws like drool, unclipped claws shred the ground like scythes, shotgun pellet saliva fires with each panting breath, ripping the Last Magician's legs out from under her. Helpless, she turns to face the Revenge of Rabbits. Oresteius cuniculus. With a shout the Last Magician surges to her feet. In the distance, a bitter red light makes a brief appearance. Dawn's rosy finger sweeping through the coin slot between the black overhang of human apocalypse and the horizon soon to leave again, disheartened and disappointed. The day would come when the sun didn't bother to make the attempt at all, and on that day there would be nothing to stop the dream before the Revenge of Rabbits got to her. The Last Magician shudders in the cold morning. Except that, rabbits had been vegetarians hadn't they? If anything was still vegetarian. Or if everything had not become a vegetable. The Last Magician sweeps her toes through the sand at her feet, seeking life or water. Finding only slightly damp sand, she sticks a handful in her mouth and sucks as much of the moisture out as possible. She has lost her name now somehow, although she can't recall. She stands, her pale silhouette brief and blue and hopeless for just a moment against the crack and fire of the celestial rage let loose upon the world and then, an instant later, the sun is completely gone again and she is lost in darkness. Perhaps this time forever. The Last Magician waits for nothing. No one is coming. No more shows. No more crowds. No more competition. No more fear. Peace and security at last, of a sort, and in the distance, an island of dead bodies swirls, caught up with plastics and dead fish. Spitting into her hand, the Last Magician returns to her campsite to turn tricks for herself, if she can still remember the cups and balls and wands. And if she can forget the rabbits.