//------------------------------//
// Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon 
// Story: It's a Kind of Magic 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

Trixie groaned a bit as her eyelids fluttered open. The smell of disinfectant was strong in the air. She was confronted with a whitewashed ceiling and bright lights, and she gazed up for a moment. Her throat felt phlegmy and sticky, as though it had been left unused for far too long. A mask sat over her mouth, and she removed it with a free hoof. “Ow,” she observed.
“Ah, Miss Lulamoon.” A white mare with a pink mane smiled down at her. “We really must stop meeting like this.”
“Nurse Redheart,” Trixie said froggily. She coughed, loosening the fluids in her throat. “Trixie would like to avoid making a habit of that, yes.”
“Passing out, or meeting me?” the nurse teased.
“Urg. How long has Trixie been unconscious?”
Redheart’s smile faded. “Almost four days, now.”
“Four--” Trixie tried to sit up, but a system of tubes held her down.
Nurse Redheart made a slight adjustment to one of the machines, and a wave of relaxation washed over Trixie. “Lie down, please.”
Trixie gave her a goofy smile. “Only if you lie with Trixie,” she slurred.
Redheart laughed. “No, I can’t do that. I’ve got other patients to see.”
“Bet they aren’t as pretty as Trixie.”
“No, I suppose not. Lie down, and I’ll tuck you in.”
“Fiiine.” Trixie slumped back, overexerted. “Tell Trixie something nice before she goes to sleep.”
The nurse smiled. “Here. Ponies have been sending you a lot of presents these last few days.” She tucked a small plush rabbit into Trixie’s hooves. “This was from Fluttershy,” she began, but she stopped when she saw that Trixie was already sound asleep again. She smiled and slipped out of the room.


***

Twilight smiled at Daisy as she passed by the mare. The earth pony was busily pulling weeds out of Bonbon’s overgrown herb garden, part of her community service for helping to chase Trixie out of town. Snips and Snails’ account of Despair’s influence on the town had persuaded her to urge Lady Justice for a more lenient sentence on all parties, as their judgement had been magically impaired. The judge had agreed, and most of the rioters had been sentenced to fifty hours of community service apiece for destruction of property and disturbing the peace.
Ironically, the two ringleaders who had been served with harsher sentences had also been the ones permitted to delay the start of their labors. Carrot Top, having helped supply Ponyville General with a lot of new blood, couldn’t work for obvious medical reasons. Rarity had petitioned for a delay for different reasons, and the judge had kindly granted her request. She was due to return to town with Spike and Lieutenant Sentry later that afternoon, and would begin her hundred hours of community service the next day.
In her absence, Rarity had left Coco Pommel in charge of Carousel Boutique, and that was just who Twilight was on her way to visit. Reconstruction of the Boutique was coming along very nicely, Twilight observed. Its kitchen had been the one repair that hadn’t been covered by the crown’s Everfree Protection Charter. Rarity had accepted that censure with good grace and taken the opportunity to remodel. Twilight wasn’t sure if she disapproved of this levity in the face of her punishment or applauded her friend’s ability to make the best of a bad situation. In the end, she decided that Rarity was remorseful, and that if she wanted to spend a little extra money on renovations, that was none of Twilight’s concern. Particularly not when Rarity had invested so much effort into that apology project of hers…
She shook off her reverie as she walked through the main entrance of the store. “Oh! Hello, and welcome to Carousel Boutique, where everything is-- oh, good morning, your highness.”
“Coco, I’ve told you, you can just call me Twilight.”
“Yes, your-- Twilight.” Coco coughed. “Um, you’ve come to pick up the special order?”
Twilight nodded. “Right this way,” Coco said, then hesitated. “Um, normally I would never leave the register unattended…”
“I know, Coco.”
“But it’s not been a very busy day.”
“I expect that’s so.”
“It’s been a slow week, actually.”
“Yes.”
“It’s much busier in Manehattan.”
Twilight gestured out the window. “More ponies want haute couture in Manehattan.”
Coco scrutinized the many unclothed forms passing by. “I see what you mean. Um, anyway. The order.”
She led Twilight back to a door set in the back wall of the Boutique and showed her in. “So, what do you think?”
Twilight drank in the hat and cape combination. The jewel that clasped the cloak at the collar. The stars, the moons, the field of wisteria. “It’s perfect, Coco. She’ll love it.”


***


Rarity herself was on a train from Neigh Orleans, staring out the window. She saw the outskirts of the Everfree flying by, an endless expanse of green. Her heart was still heavy with the guilt of what she had done and what she had almost done. But this trip had served to alleviate that, to some degree. The last few days had been harrowing, to say the least, and she was so tired, she could just pass out there and then.
That would have to wait, though. Miles to go before I sleep, she thought.
Sitting opposite her was Spike, apparently absorbed in the Power Ponies Classic Omnibus, vol. 3. But every now and again, he peered over the top of the book and watched Rarity staring out of the window.
The morning after it had all happened, he had knocked on the door of the Boutique. There had been no reply, so he let himself in and sat in the kitchen. All the night before, he’d sat up, thinking about what he wanted to say, what he needed to hear in order to make things right. When Rarity had arrived some ten minutes later, disheveled, he’d got no farther than “Rarity--” when she cut him off and told him that she couldn’t talk. She was busy trying to make reparations for how she’d treated Trixie.
And so, they had gone to Neigh Orleans to see the neighborhood where Trixie had grown up. They had spent hours tracking down anypony who had known her as a filly and just-- talking. Rarity had been as a force of nature, refusing to sleep until Spike had to forcibly drag her to bed and snuggle with her. It had been a fruitful trip.
Flash Sentry, who had been assigned to keep an eye on both of them, snoozed in the corner of the cabin and tried not to dream about swamps anymore. 
The train rolled along, taking them back to Ponyville.


***


In Manehattan, a solitary ice-white unicorn sat in his penthouse office, almost catatonically still, staring at a folder. Every now and again, his horn would light, and he would flip to a different page, but that was the only sign he was awake at all.
The alarm on his desk buzzed. “Janice,” he said.
“It’s Janet, sir.”
“I can fire you anytime, Janine.”
“...Yes, sir.”
“What is it, Jenny?”
“A mare here to see you, sir.”
“Does she have an appointment?”
“Well, no, sir.”
“Send her away.”
“She’s been sent from Canterlot.”
For the first time, the stallion’s eyes sparked with interest. Canterlot. The greatest city in Equestria. He’d been there before, and the client paid much better than any mud horse in this dump of a city. “Very well, I can spare ten minutes.”
There was a murmured conversation. “She says she’ll only need two.”
A shark’s smile spread over the stallion’s face. “Efficient. A mare after my own heart.”
Before he clicked off the intercom, he was sure he heard her mutter, “If you had one.” 
Well, that would wrap it up for Jeanie. A few seconds later, there was a rap at the door. “Enter.”
The mare who came in had a tan coat with a blonde mane. She wore a pink scarf, a purple blazer, and an expression of seemingly infinite distaste. If she wasn’t a dirt pony, she’d be perfect. He gestured to a chair. “Won’t you have a seat?”
“I prefer to stand,” the mare said shortly. “You are, I take it, Mr. Evening Glow?”
“Correct,” said the unicorn, re-evaluating his opinion of the mare.
“My name is Harshwhinny. I’ve been sent by the Equestrian government to give you this.”
She passed over a very official-looking manilla envelope. Evening opened it. Inside was a date and a location. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he said.
“You’ve been served,” Harshwhinny said simply. “An affray in Ponyville which nearly caused the destruction of the town has been connected with your business. Hadn’t you heard?”
“I do a lot of business,” Evening returned, tone growing colder. “I can’t be expected to keep track of every podunk earth pony village.”
“And yet you remembered it was an earth pony village.” If Evening was cold, Harshwhinny was arctic. “At any rate, you and your company will be under scrutiny for negligence, corruption, and possibly property damage. Report at eight in the morning-- sharp-- on the appointed date.
Evening had begun to sweat. Clearly his plans had taken a sour turn; he had been found out, and Beatrix had yet to report for duty. But perhaps he could mitigate the consequences. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Eight in the morning? I don’t know if I can attend. As I said, I do business all over Equestria, and I make quite a lot of money…”
He slid over a blank check. Harshwhinny stared at it for a moment. She took the manilla envelope back, and Evening smiled in triumph.
That smile faded when Harshwhinny wrote something in the margins of the letter and gave it back to him. “I’ll see you in court, Mr. Glow,” she said, leaving. It had been only one and a half minutes.
Evening stared at the paper. She had written in small, neat cursive beneath the other charges, “Attempting to bribe a government official.”
“One other thing,” Harshwhinny said, stopping at the door. “Princess Twilight Sparkle asked me to give you something special from her.”
Evening looked up. The mare was smirking at him. She took a breath and blew the longest, loudest raspberry he had ever heard. “Have a nice afternoon, Mr. Glow.”
And then, two minutes exactly after her arrival, she was gone again, leaving the stallion to pick through the shambles his life had just become.


***


The next morning, while Trixie was finishing up what the hospital had the audacity to call breakfast, a newspaper all but flew into her face. “Gah! What the--” She shoved the thing away. “What gives, Sparkle?”
Twilight grinned at her. “Read the headline,” she said, bouncing in place.
Trixie frowned, but did as she was told. After a moment, a wicked grin blossomed over her face. “Hah! Excellent!” she crowed. The paper fell back on the blanket, with the headline “Summoner Receives Summons!” emblazoned boldly on the front. Directly underneath was a photograph of Evening Glow shoving through a throng of cameras, his eyes blazing with the fury of one who has never been brought to account for anything he’d ever done to anypony.
After a moment, Trixie’s smile faded from blinding to merely brilliant. “Thank you,” she said. “From the bottom of Trixie’s heart.”
Twilight shrugged. “Well, I did a little digging. This isn’t the first time one of Evening’s jobs led to some catastrophe that usually ended especially badly for somepony he’d fallen out with. The courts just needed a few solid witnesses, and a body who wasn’t afraid to sue one of the most powerful stallions in Manehattan. The crown happened to suit that particular requirement rather well.”
“If Trixie could sit up, she would kiss you,” Trixie said.
“Funny you should say that,” Twilight said, igniting her aura. A wheelchair rolled into the room. “You’re being released from the hospital today.”
Trixie blinked. “Really? Um.”
“Obviously, you aren’t well enough to get up and walk around just yet,” Twilight continued. “But you can leave the hospital now.” 
She leaned in. “You can have some real food,” she whispered. “Just saying.”
“That sounds… nice,” Trixie admitted. “But Trixie has nowhere to go, really. Where can she stay that hasn’t been blown up?”
Twilight frowned. “First of all, the town’s been repaired. You’ve been out for just shy of a week, everything’s pretty much back to normal.”
Trixie’s mouth dropped open. “Eh?”
“Ponyville needs to be fixed basically every week. We’ve got a sort of routine,” Twilight explained. “Second, I thought you were still staying with me? Remember, I asked you if you wanted a job as my assistant? That was serious.”
Silence. Twilight slumped. “Okay. Well, it was just a thought, I guess. You’re still welcome to stay at the castle, of course--”
“Trixie will consider it.”
Immediately, the princess brightened. “Great! I mean, like I said, you don’t have to but, um… Great!”
Trixie smirked. “You’re a dork.”
“And you’re filling Spike’s shoes admirably,” Twilight said cheerfully. “Now, c’mon, let’s get you checked out of here.”


***

Trixie sat in that wheelchair like a queen, raising a hoof to give the royal wave to ponis on the street. Most of them waved back, smiled. A few came over to ask how she was recovering, or apologize for ostracizing her. A few, some very few, turned away. They looked more embarrassed than anything else. Twilight made a mental note to talk with them later on. Or perhaps to have Trixie talk with them.
But that would wait until later. Right now, Twilight was much more concerned about what was waiting back at the castle. Suddenly, she realized that she was no longer pushing the wheelchair. Trixie had taken control and pushed her way over to the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who were attempting to calm down a crying Button Mash.
Twilight watched as Button spilled his tragic tale of dropping his lunch in the lake. Trixie stroked an imaginary beard throughout the story, looking thoughtful. Then, she held up a hoof, reached behind her back, and pulled out a bouquet of flowers. Button was so surprised, he immediately stopped crying. The other Crusaders applauded, and Trixie bowed as best she could before wheeling away.
Where had that bouquet come from? Twilight wondered. She glanced around, and her eyes fell on the flower stall, where Daisy hadn’t yet noticed a large empty space near the front of her display. Twilight sighed and levitated over a few bits before hurrying after the wheelchair-bound unicorn. At least Trixie seemed to be back to her old self after the trauma she’d undergone.

***
Pinkie bounced all around the foyer of the castle, making last-minute adjustments to banners and balloons and other party paraphernalia. Rarity and Spike set up their display in the corner of the room, sorting photographs and letters and pinning them to corkboard. Applejack squabbled with Rainbow Dash about the ethics of diving into the bottled cider before the guest of honor arrived. Fluttershy stood off to the side, awkwardly holding a glass of milk. In the center of the maelstrom, Big Macintosh stood by the centerpiece of the party. He wiped a little mud off the side with a foreleg.
Suddenly, Pinkie froze in mid-jump and plummeted like a stone. “Shh!” she hissed, waving a hoof frantically. “I think I can hear them!”
Silence fell, and everypony hid as best they could. There was indeed the faint sound of wheels squeaking along and growing ever-closer. “Trixie did not remember seeing a wheelchair ramp by the front steps…”
“It’s better not to question anything about the castle’s architecture,” Twilight replied. “One time, a journalist tried to write a report on its design. The doctors say she’s making a remarkable recovery, but she hasn’t said a word since she left.”
The main doors swung open. Moments later, Trixie’s wheelchair squeaked in. “What the--”
“SURPRISE!”
Everypony jumped out of their hiding spots, smiling broadly. 
Trixie being Trixie, she screamed and pushed back against the door, sending herself and her wheelchair rolling, uncontrolled down the ramp.
Twilight sighed. She lit her horn, and gently slowed Trixie’s rapid descent before rolling her back up the ramp. “Trixie, it’s okay. This party is for you. We’re all friends here.”
“Oh.” Trixie shot a dubious look at Rarity, but said nothing more.
Then, her eyes fell on the centerpiece of the whole event. “Trixie’s wagon! You got it unstuck!”
She rolled herself over to her home of over a decade and rubbed the wooden wall with something approaching reverence. “Thank you,” she said at last.
Mac smiled. “Eeyup.”
“No problem!” Pinkie said. She paused. “Well, there were some problems. But it’s alright now!”
“That’s not all, either,” Spike continued, pulling out a coat hanger.
“Trixie’s cloak! Trixie’s hat!” Trixie gasped. “How did you-- What--”
“We know a mare from Manehattan who specializes in millinery,” Fluttershy said quietly. “Um, I helped with some of the repairs on the cloak.”
Trixie snatched the clothes away, jamming the hat on her head. The cloak took a little more effort, but she eventually settled for leaving the tail end hanging over the back of the seat. “Yes, yes, yes…” she chanted, then paused. “Erm, that is…”
“It was my pleasure,” Fluttershy said with a small smile. “Coco’s, too.”
“There’s one last thing,” Rarity said, and Trixie tightened her grip on her hat.
“What would that be?” she asked, eyeing the other unicorn warily.
Rarity gave her a wan smile. “Twilight told us all a little of your history while we were in the hospital waiting room,” she said. “I asked for a few more details, and travelled to Neigh Orleans.”
She paused for a moment, struggling to find the right words. “I was a boor to you, Trixie. I suspect that any relationship we ever have will be tainted by my actions for some time to come. But I hope that this goes some way towards enhancing your recovery.”
She gestured toward a board in the corner, covered with papers and photographs. Trixie squinted. Some of those photos seemed familiar. Then she saw it. A little brick restaurant, all overgrown with red and violet flowers. “Flora and Fauna’s…”
“A delightful pair,” Rarity said. “They made the most buttery croissants, and insisted I bring back a box of beignets…”
But Trixie wasn’t listening anymore. She had rolled right up to the board, and was studying it with fervor. She saw Dr. Comfort, much older now, and apparently in a wheelchair himself. There was Old Jack with his wife and kids and even a couple of grandkids, now. And there he was again, standing next to a stuffed swordfish half again as big as he was. Flora and Fauna peered out through the glass of their storefront. There, the old theatre, apparently renovated and turned into a cinema. There, the old swamp witch’s house where the neighbor foals would always dare each other to ring the bell. More, and more besides that swam before Trixie’s eyes.
And then there were the letters. Letters from old friends, mentors, schoolmates, new admirers, journalists, theatre managers… all of them expressing their pride in her. All of them singing the praises of their hometown hero, Trixie; truly, a great and powerful mare. Rarity frowned. “It is alright, isn’t it?” she asked anxiously.
“...It’s wonderful,” Trixie whispered. “Thank you.”
The party was excellent. The food was good, the company was lively-- though Rarity had to leave rather quickly to get to her court-appointed community service-- and the conversation sparkling. There was even a cake, though everypony swore black and blue that nopony knew who the mare was that jumped out of it was, how she had gotten in there, or where she had gone afterwards. Magnificent as the affair must have been, Trixie’s eyes kept drifting back to the board. Back home. She could never again be Beatrix. Somewhere, deep in her heart of hearts, she knew that. But she and Trixie had shared an upbringing, to some degree. She thought about that a great deal.
And then it was over. The food was packed away, the guests bid Trixie and Twilight good night, and all was silence once more.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” Twilight asked.
Trixie nodded. “Good party. Pinkie knows her business.”
“You should come to more of her parties.” The unspoken question hung in the air like a thick fog.
“Trixie will be heading off once her injuries are healed,” Trixie said.
“Oh,” said Twilight. “I see.”
“But not, she thinks, for long.”
“Oh?”
Trixie shook her head. “No. Trixie gracefully accepts your request for a new secretary, but she has business to take care of elsewhere. Family business.” She nodded meaningfully at the board.
Twilight’s eyes widened, and she nodded. “Of course,” she said. “I understand.”
She didn’t, obviously. Trixie wasn’t sure if she ever could understand what she had gone through. What she was still going through. What she might always be going through. But she understood enough to give Trixie the space and resources to care for herself, and that was enough for now.
She would go back to Neigh Orleans and mourn. She would mourn all the years she had spent away from her family, her real family. She would mourn the time she had wasted in petty revenge and spite. But most of all, she would mourn Beatrix, who had been braver than she’d ever known, and more like Trixie than she’d ever believed.
And on that note…
“If you read about the Lulamoon estate blowing up in the next few days, cover for Trixie.”
“You realize that even my influence can only go so far if you’re caught.”
Trixie grinned. “If.”
“Yeah, I’m just going to go to bed now to try and maintain some plausible deniability,” Twilight said, struggling to keep a straight face. “C’mon, I’ll take you to your room.”
And she wheeled Trixie away, out of the main hall, away from the black rose in her caravan that Trixie wouldn’t discover for days. The black rose that had been slipped in while everypony had been distracted by the mare in the cake. The black rose that had a note attached to it, that read, “Well done,” and was signed, “the Grand MacGuffin.”