She's been right here, all this time. Waiting for me...
The notion of curling up in bed seemed even more appealing now than it was after Pinkie Pie directed her back home. Realizing the showmare's usual spot was void (and after a small bout of internal-freaking, rationalizing, and pitiful accepting), Starlight was ready to turn in at the late hour of two in the afternoon. She was in the midst of rationalizing her crummy behavior once again before Pinkie cornered and subtly corralled her into Sugarcube Corner. Starlight didn't notice while they conversed, but in retrospect it was a real relief that Pinkie never shot her any horn-related looks or comments, just general questions like, 'What'dja do today?' and 'How're the kids, Starly?' to name a few. Of course, "general" meant anything but with Pinkie. But it was still a breath of fresh air compared to everyone treating Starlight with either pity, horror, or trotting-on-eggshells conversation; or some combination of the three, like Twilight had been. And somehow, through Pinkie's uncanny magic, talks of their favorite board games and books lulled Starlight into a state comfortable enough to ask about Trixie, what happened last night.
Though, it wasn't totally perfect, because nothing ever was. It took Starlight time to accept that, but did Pinkie really have to be vague now? Couldn't she give her more than a peppy, 'Just look behind the castle, silly!' and capping off their conversation with a promise for an enormous bash. Starlight didn't even get to take the breath needed to decline before Pinkie backflipped over the counter, practically flying into the kitchen.
Ever the strange one, but a good friend. Maybe she'd be up to party in a few days, and if not, Starlight could at least entertain Pinkie for a few hours and pretend she was having fun. Their normal talk actually left her feeling light enough to think solely on that, the lovely simplicity of the thing. With Pinkamena Diane Pie, no less! A lightness took root in Starlight, something eager that she hadn't felt since before... well, since she discovered Flutter Valley.
But it was only a three minute trot, or a five minute walk, to Friendship Castle, towering over all as if it actually ran the town.
The homey cottages of Ponyville blocked it from sight consistently enough, until it came time to actually facing the proverbial beast, the music, and, perhaps scariest of all, an upset Trixie Lulamoon.
Never had the shade of her wagon been considered a chilly local. Unexpected, though, obvious, being heaped upon by another, greater darkness from the looming citadel: Friendship Castle, clutched in what looked like the claw of some great, crystalline beast.
Starlight should really knock on her door. The curtains, drawn, concealed any hint that its proprietor was home. It wouldn't hurt to check. She'd no reason to hesitate right now. Tiresome excuses, a peculiar aversion of the truth, her fears, these had no place in her friendship with Trixie. They never had! And according to Twilight, Maud told her everything already. There was nothing to hide, no reason to even try. Maud's bluntness assured her that Trixie's wild assumptions about Twilight were her own making; a different hurdle to jump, and an awkward one at that.
Potentially, Starlight reminded herself, walking the path to those shiny front doors. Trixie's only angry, furious... foaming at the mouth, apparently, because of Twilight. Starlight was hardly ever honest with herself, if she was being honest with herself. But her heart always told the truth, and it screamed so, locked tight in place.
As it had been since seeing the painted wagon boasting her best friend's colors and icons.
Starlight couldn't bear the sight anymore. "I'm afraid." Gosh, she was pathetic; but Starlight was more than okay with that, because it's what she'd always been, and she's okay with herself. Flaws and all. I am. I am! "I'm afraid of making Trixie m-mad. At... me."
Trixie was well-aware of how Starlight acted, why she did this. And if Maud reacted so poorly to Starlight's motivations, then Trixie... She's still here anyway. Starlight lifted her foreleg. I should, no, I have to talk to her! For Twilight's sake, at the very least. Her hoof rested where it once was, a depression in the wiry field rolling north for unseen miles.
Oh, my conversation with Maud went SO well. As did Twilight's, but Starlight forcefully bucked it out of mind before she keeled over from regret (for real this time). Oh gosh, why is my heart now smashing against my chest? Why were Staright's hooves bringing her closer to the wagon, not listening to her brain?
She should leave. She'll only mess it up with Trixie, too. "I can't do this." Starlight didn't even feel her lips move, but her cowardly voice was unmistakable. "I should do this," she gulped, "but, I can't. I can't lose her, too. The risk..." The words choked her, swearing she saw a curtain of the double doors twitch.
A draft, that's all it was.
...Inside a wagon. Yeah.
No.
Maybe? Maybe Starlight should just...
Her hoof's landing would remain a mystery forever, as Trixie busted out the front doors with a hard, wooden clap. "You walk away," a wild, sleepy glare settled into a look of cockiness, with a familiar smirk to match, "then Trixie will make you regret it for the rest of your life."
How much did you hear? Starlight shut her big mouth. So nothing would fly in, of course. "I guess that means I'm cursed with you, huh?" And she walked away.
She didn't get very far before the hum of magic and slamming doors cut through the song of summer cicadas, and then a galloping rumbled toward her.
A rising sense of relief exploded into a heart attack; warmth, weight, the touch of a pony Starlight hadn't felt since she'd hugged Twilight after waking up; the cheesy, cabbage-like odor didn't matter, it was hardly real. The force of it all knocked Starlight aside, forelegs locked around her neck. Tight. "Ach! Trix!" she gasped, the warmth of the grass seeping through her right side.
Just as darkness edged her sight, sweet, life-giving air filled Starlight's breast, only to be strangled out more in surprise than pain as a foal, or something just as light and ridiculous, struck her in the barrel.
"You absolute, stupid, idiot!" Trixie cried, punctuating every word with another pathetic smack. "You dummy! You complete and utter stupid, dumb, dummy!"
Starlight wheezed, chuckling. "Tell me how you really feel." A joke, but every word hit harder than their respective punch. "And make it something I don't know already, why don'cha?"
Soft panting answered; Trixie rolled off. "Okay," she sat up, "I'll say something that'll knock your socks off: I'm sorry, first of all." It was easy, here and now, to restrain from making an insensitive joke about Trixie and apologies. Noting this, she laid back on Starlight's belly like a pillow. "But you never came by anypony yesterday, not even the great Trixie! And then, when Maud came by..."
Trixie crossed her forelegs, a show of aloofness concealing uncomfortable ideas that'd undoubtedly been encircling her brain for... a week now.
Sweet Celestia. "I am so sorry you heard about this from somepony else... Trixie? I mean that." Starlight lifted her head, exchanging briefly with Trixie's glance back. "You don't have to believe me. I wouldn't blame you, especially with how I'd... been... acting," every word had come quieter than the last, her tone remaining anchored to that volume as she added, "and... what you've, might've heard from Maud."
"That you didn't think of how your friends would feel before running off to kill yourself?"
"I wasn't planning on doing that."
"Trixie hears uncertainty in your tone."
"Because I... just didn't care about myself! Not always, just at the time... At the time, there was only Twilight. That's why I've been such a crummy friend in everypony's eyes, okay? I was ready to give it all for her, because I was just that desperate to save my friend. I'd do the same for you, or Maud, or anypony! So why does it even matter? Why is everypony giving me so much crap for it?!"
An arrowhead of at least twenty glided down Starlight's field of vision. Then Trixie said, "I'm not." Starlight found her gazing into the deep blue above. "And neither are your friends! At least not Maud, I don't converse with your friends on the regular. No offense, Starlight, but they are way too emotional for Trixie's liking."
"That's not a bad thing, you know."
"Not for you, but emotions make Trixie uncomfortable." Starlight snorted, and from the corner of her eye Trixie was smirking, gazing across endless plains. "But we all care about you. And if this behavior scared Trixie, it's not unreasonable to understand why everypony's overthinking your motivations."
"My what?" She nearly stood up, had Trixie not been there warming her barrel. "What, like I'm done being alive or some nonsense?"
"No! It's like you're... Oh," Trixie shut her eyes, biting her lip, "how do I put this gently? ...Don't tell Maud about this, or anypony else for that matter, but... Trixie... didn't handle things the best."
When did she ever? "Yeah, ya flew off the handle and made Twilight think I'd told everypony that I sacrificed my horn at her request."
"UGH! First of all, tell Twilight I'm sorry for yelling at her yesterday."
"No," Starlight interrupted. "Own up to your mistakes and do it yourself, Trix. I'm serious."
"Noted," she muttered. "Anyway, second: for being so smart, that pony isn't exactly clever. I'd said she 'basically' did that, not literally!"
"Oh, that makes it so much better," drawled Starlight. "Well, whatever you're assuming here, Trix, Twilight had absolutely nothing to do with it. At all."
Trixie rolled her hoof. "Except, of course, being the 'friend' who started all this."
"Irregardless of the fact, it was me. And I'd greatly appreciate it if my best friend, at the very least, accepted that I'm my own pony who can make her own decisions. Even if she doesn't like them." Starlight blinked, everything suddenly snapping into clarity. "Huh, I'd been wanting to put those thoughts to words for days, and now suddenly I can!"
"Trixie has that effect on making ponies as great as they can be."
"Incidentally."
"Irregardless," Trixie sneered. The two shared a laugh a single passing cloud was pushed overhead, a tail of gold and silver flowing behind it. "Looks like rain is coming."
"Mm." Unless they had some during her little coma, Starlight hadn't seen rainfall since before Twilight fell ill.
Cicadas hummed, distant birds tweeted. A gentle breeze stirred Starlight's tangly, gross mane. Had she been wandering in public with such disregard for her appearance? Seriously? What a sight she must have been.
"Rarity and I crossed paths before I got here."
"Oh, boy." Trixie's tone implied exactly what Starlight felt hearing that initial, 'Darling!'
Starlight's humor died, remembering what she'd said. "I was unreasonably nasty to her. Even if I was right about her intentions, her reasoning wasn't unfounded."
"And these elusive 'intentions' might have been...?"
"That I was having trouble taking care of myself without my magic. Which is half-true." Starlight's gut just sank lower. "Terrible, right? Rarity wanted to help a girl out and I threw it in her face."
There was a prodding from Trixie's shoulders as she shrugged. "I wouldn't beat yourself up over it. Just say sorry and she'll forgive you. Those ponies are weird like that."
'Weird,' which, in Trixie's vocabulary, meant 'unreasonably kind.'
Picking up her head, Trixie's eyes were shut, her breathing steady; mouth a neutral line. "Trix?" She hummed in answer without so much as a twitch. "Are we... good?" Starlight fretted
For no reason, of course, as is tradition by this point: Trixie sat up, smiling over her shoulder. "We're always good, buddy." Then that smirk adapted a bit of a snarl as her brows furrowed. "But I'm still mad at you! Just, not as much as before." Starlight's nose gave underneath her azure hoof, brown-crusted, clearly in need of a hooficure, too.
"D'at's vair." Starlight bat her foreleg away. "Howsabout we stop rolling in grass and dirt, and hit the spa?" Trixie's mane was notably glossy in the sun, upon scrutiny. "And quietly ignore the fact that you and I have terrible hygiene while spiraling into sadness?"
Trixie was on her hooves in the blink of an eye, and a flash of pink. "I'm always up to something other than this feels-y talk."
"A-greed!" When she took Trixie's hoof, and found herself standing beside her best friend inside Ponyville Spa, Starlight was reminded of her now-hornless existence, and felt nothing react toward it; no clench of the chest, or a blow to the gut.
Even as Bulk, Aloe, Lotus, and the three patrons they were attending looked to them, surprised, she didn't care. "V'one moment!" Aloe called, beating the stallion splayed beneath her like pizza dough.
They didn't seem to care, either.