“...and thank you, fillies and gentlecolts of Las Pegasus, for being such a fantastic audience this evening!”
As the audience erupted into loud cheering and hoof-stomping, Trixie absentmindedly tapped her hooves together and stared at the stallion on stage who was using his magic to tip his hat to the crowd and wink at a few older mares while doing so. Finding him wasn’t necessarily hard; she lucked out that he was an entertainer and therefore adored being in the spotlight and being easily found. What was hard was procuring the backstage pass hanging from her neck she was unconsciously moving her hooves to and grasping. They were plentiful, sure, but expensive. She had thought borrowing money from a Princess of Equestria would be easier than it was, and that was to say nothing of borrowing from Starlight.
“Thank you all for attending Big Bucks and Jack Pot’s Show of Shows!” the mustached stallion, Big Bucks, proclaimed as he straightened his bow tie with his magic. “We love you Las Pegasus, we truly do!”
A smaller cascade of cheering went through the theater as ponies began getting up from their seats and exiting back into the FlimFlam Luxury Casino. Deep in thought, Trixie continued to remain in her seat, eyes simply staring off as spectators shuffled past her.
“Ma’am?” a voice called from the back of the theater, causing Trixie’s head to turn and see an usher standing next to a door being held open in his magic “The show is over, we politely ask that you leave so we may come through and clean up before the next show.”
“Oh, okay,” she mumbled before grabbing in her magic her program and folded-up photograph from where she had wedged it between the seat and the armrest with her magic. Instead of keeping them in her magic as she moved along the aisles, however, she grabbed them from out of the air and clutched them close to her chest.
Upon exiting the auditorium, she noticed a single sign pointing around the back of the theater to a small side hallway. Two large earth ponies were standing in front of a partially-opened door, both of them seeming to be nearly double the size of Trixie in muscle mass alone.
“The backstage area is restricted,” the one on the right spoke. “Only ponies with a valid backstage pass are allowed back here.”
Almost hesitantly, Trixie levitated the pass up to eye level and took a few slow steps towards the bodyguards. After inspecting it for a few seconds, the two stallions nodded and stepped aside to open the passageway into backstage.
As she walked inside, she looked around. It was a rather typical backstage area, with props and costumes strewn about almost haphazardly. Big Bucks was talking to a small group of mares old enough to be Trixie’s great-grandmother, all of whom seemed to be a few choice words from swooning and landing on the wooden floor. His partner, Jack Pot, was closer to the far wall, head buried into an ornately-decorated trunk covered with what appeared to almost be golden glitter.
“Jack Pot?” Trixie barely managed to squeak out as she walked up to the older stallion, who pulled his head out of the trunk and put on a flashy smile.
He bowed, his horn lighting up and pulling the program out of Trixie’s hooves before materializing a marker out of nowhere. “You’ve come to the right stallion, madame. Now, who should I be making this out to?”
“My name’s Trixie, but—”
“Did you enjoy the show, Trixie?” he asked while uncapping the marker and beginning to sign her program.
“Well, I did. I actually—”
“What was your favorite trick? It was the water escape, wasn’t it? That one always gets ponies excited.”
“I actually liked the vanishing mirror the most,” she admitted, putting a hoof on the back of her neck. “It was one of the first ones I learned how to do when I was younger.”
“Oh! So you’re a magician too, then?” His face lit up, his teeth somehow becoming even whiter and shinier than they previously had been. “Come to Las Pegasus to try and make it big, have you? Even if we do compete for shows, us magicians here like to believe we are above petty squabbles and work to further the art form as a medium of entertainment. So long as ponies are excited in magic and not whatever minor celebrity is half-flanking a comedy routine on stage that night, we all benefit.”
She slowly shook her head. “I’m not trying to get on stage here, no.”
“A pilgrimage, perhaps?” he guessed, lifting his chin and resting a hoof on it. “Traveling to the holy land of stage magic, to meet and take in some of the greatest names our craft has ever seen?”
“Well, if I’m being honest. I just came here to talk to you.”
“A fan for life,” he smiled as he levitated her program back to her. “I appreciate your support, I really do. I would not have a name known all across Equestria if not for fans such as yourself!”
As the program flew back into her front hoof, she looked down at the large, looped writing that was now upon it: To Trixie, my #1 fan!, followed by an almost incomprehensible mass of squiggles that she was not able to discern how it could form his name.
“I have kind of been following you for a while,” she admitted, face flushing with warmth. “My mother gave me your magic kit for my sixth birthday because I had been begging her for it for so long. It was after I learned some of those tricks that I got my Cutie Mark.”
“A magician, yet not trying to get on stage in Las Pegasus,” he mused. “I suppose we all have our own aspirations. Are you simply happy performing where it is you are?”
“Trixie—I don’t perform much anymore. For...well, reasons.”
“Well, with any luck, I hope that our performance here tonight inspires you to take your show back on stage and reach even further than you ever have.” When he smiled at Trixie, she studied his face. It felt warm and welcoming, but she saw the subtle cues in his face: everything was insincere. His eyes were wrong, the smile a little too large, and his face remained static. As false as his performance.
“I came here for somepony else,” she muttered after seconds of heavy silence between the two of them.
“Somepony else, you say?” he echoed. “Is there perhaps somepony backstage you are waiting for?”
“I’m here to see you,” she clarified. “I’m just here on behalf of somepony else.”
“Are they ill, or otherwise incapable of making it to one of my shows?”
“Well, not really. I just don’t think they’d want to.”
“Wouldn’t want to come?” he gasped. “Why, bring them to one of our shows, and we’ll turn that frown right upside down! We’ve yet to have a pony both enter and leave one of our shows without a love for magic!”
Trixie pulled out her old, yellowing photograph and levitated it over to Jack Pot. “That’s my mother, who I’m here for. She’s been to your shows before a long time—”
“And this dashing stallion next to her?” he asked as he turned the picture around and pointed at a much younger version of himself. Unlike before, his smile felt genuine this time.
“That’s you,” she replied, trying to muster up a smile. “She said she used to know you.”
He turned the photo back to himself, then rested a hoof on his chin before speaking up a few moments later. “Unfortunately for your mother, I can’t say my memory is being jogged simply by looking at this.”
“Her name is Spectacle,” Trixie spoke, her voice beginning to quiver ever so slightly. “She used to sing here in Las Pegasus, but moved to Manehattan before I was born.”
After tapping his chin a few times, he used his magic to put the marker onto the photograph. “Come to think of it, that name does ring a bell. I may have attended one of her shows once, I can’t remember.”
A small glint entered Trixie’s eyes as he spoke. “Do you remember anything else about her? Anything at all?”
“Ah yes, I do!” he proclaimed, setting his hoof back down on the ground. “One day, she up and left Las Pegasus and informed nopony about why she did so or where she was going! A few rumors were whispered around for a few days, but you can imagine that such gossip is commonplace amongst the entertainers in this city. Something more risqué and scandalous likely took their place.”
“Nothing more?” she asked. He placed the photograph back in her hoof before staring off into the distance again. While he was thinking, Trixie looked down at what he had wrote:
To Spectacle
Silently, she clenched her teeth together. That was all he wrote? Did he truly not remember her?
“So...you can’t remember anything else about her, right?”
“I’m afraid not,” he shook his head. “Did we perform together, perhaps?”
Not able to be indirect anymore, she stiffened her upper lip and looked him straight in the eye. “She says you two used to date.”
“Date?” he repeated. “Well, I suppose it’s a possibility. I’m an old and unmarried stallion who performs for some of the most famous ponies in Equestria in the entertainment capital of the world, there are many I have courted and many who have courted me. Nothing against your mother for I’m sure she is a wonderful mare, but the number of relationships I’ve had over the course of my life makes it difficult to remember each and every one of them. You understand, do you not?”
“She says you called her your gemstone,” Trixie just barely managed to choke out. “Because the sparkle in her eyes reminded you of only the finest gems in the world that money could buy.”
“A modicum of waxing poetic,” he admitted slowly. “My younger self was quite the mares’ stallion, always trying to find the next pony to spend a few weeks with before falling head over hooves for the next mare he saw. Loathe I am to say it, but that was one of my more common lines, and one I found to be quite successful. I took some strange pride in that fact then, as you can imagine from a young stallion still reveling in the novelty of his fame.”
“Perhaps,” she lied. “She did say she used to speak very highly of you, though. Said you were very charming, and that she was madly in love with you when you left her for somepony else, leaving her with that burden to bear.”
“Perhaps I can understand why she might not want to come here,” he said before grabbing the photo in his magic and turning it over. “I’ll tell you what, perhaps I can write my contact information on the back of this old photograph, and who knows? Should she decide to take advantage of this information, we may be able to see if there’s not something still there after all these years. That is, of course, should your father not mind.”
Trixie felt her face grow warm, then damp. “Well, given the circumstances, I doubt he’d mind at all.”
“Is your father not around anymore?” he asked, his voice softening from the grandiose tone it had been taking.
“Pretty much,” she mumbled.
“Always a sad day to see a little filly without her father,” he thought out loud. “My deepest condolences to your mother. I simply hope that it was a long time coming, and that she was able to prepare for that heartbreak.”
As she shook her head, heavy tears fell onto the dusty wood of backstage. “It happened suddenly. She never saw it coming.”
“A horrible situation,” he responded. “If you would like some time to yourself, you may go find a quiet place. Security should still let you in, provided you keep the backstage pass.”
Without a word, Trixie nodded slowly before turning around and walking towards the exit. The two muscular earth ponies stepped aside as she walked by them before returning to their original positions and blocking the doorway.
As she wiped a tear from her eye with her magic, she pulled the photograph back out and studied it. Jack Pot looked about the same as he did now, even if a few hairs in his mane were graying and his skin beginning to sag. But her mother looked young and full of life, something she had only seen in old pictures. No thinning silver mane, no sagging face, no tired eyes like a flickering candle ready to be snuffed out in the slightest breeze.
A single teardrop rolling its way down her cheek, Trixie grasped the photograph in her magic and crumpled it in one quick stroke before throwing it into a nearby trash can. Her shot was true, for it went straight in and fell right to the bottom, hitting the metal wall with a satisfying sound.
She didn’t need that old photograph, and neither did her mother.
Besides. She grew up without a father, she saw little reason to try and have one as an adult.