“Do you think Mrs. Cake has started making her gingerbread cakes, yet?” asked Spike, sat on Twilight’s back while the mare sauntered along the way to Sugarcube Corner.
“I don’t know, but there’s one way to find out,” answered Twilight. After breakfast, Rarity decided to walk her little sister back to their parent’s abode further up town, and Trixie went to see if Blue Amberol’s record shop had a couple new albums he had been waiting on; so Twilight thought it would be nice to treat her number-one-assistant to dessert at the Cakes’ bakery. “You know, it technically isn’t real gingerbread; she makes it from oatmeal and treacle.”
“Yeah, uh huh,” Spike wasn’t listening.
Twilight rolled her eyes and continued down the road to the commercial district. They were headed to the bakery because she wanted to treat Spike (whom Twilight feared she had been neglecting, as of late), but also to pick up a treat for Trixie, who seemed perturbed after breakfast, even if he tried to hide it.
Trixie, though he desperately tried to believe himself as enlightened and spiritually liberated as his magic act portrayed him to be, was a tangled ball of frayed emotions and shame; and few things made him unravel as quickly as hearing about his father and brothers. While Twilight did her best to help him work through these feelings, Trixie had spent over six years, essentially, living alone, and accordingly wasn’t well-versed in emotional introspection (beyond the purely philosophical). But, Twilight loved Trixie, and considered it her sacred duty as his ‘special somepony’ to pick up the pieces his ‘master’ had left him in and fashion those into a functioning pony.
“Isn’t that Applejack’s cart?” Spike pointed down the thoroughfare at the rustic wagon parked afront Sugarcube Corner, as if Twilight couldn’t have seen it otherwise.
“Yes, I believe it is,” Twilight answered, having already spotted the cart and deducing its ownership, long before the dragon spoke up.
The duo continued to the bakery’s entrance, Spike hopping down to scurry up before the display case (next to Applebloom) as soon as they crossed the threshold.
“Nah, I don’t think Granny would go in for somethin’ as hifalutin as that. Ain’t it somethin’ unicorns make?” Applejack was speaking to Mrs. Cake over the counter, trying as politely as she could to decline some seasonal kindness the older mare was offering.
“Well, maybe you, Applebloom and Big Mac could have the apple tartes and we could make something separate for Granny Smith,” Mrs. Cake was having none of it.
“Oh, no, that’d be going through way too much trouble.”
“Please, Applejack, you and your family have always treated us very fairly; let us do this one, small thing for you.”
Thousands of years of bucolic, agrarian living had bred this neighborly kindness into Earth Ponies, and Twilight couldn’t help but to smirk at their exchange. It seemed so alien to a mare who had grown up in Canterlot.
“Well, I suppose… It wouldn’t hurt anythin’ if I, uh,” Applejack was casually swivelling her head, looking to make sure no patrons would overhear what she was sure was a scandalous conversation. In doing so, she caught sight of Twilight.
“Hey, sugarcube!” Applejack smiled and trotted over for a friendly nuzzle, realizing Twilight’s arrival may serve as an excuse to decline the Cakes’ gift. “What’cha up to?”
“Oh, I was just going to get something for Spike,” Twilight said nonchalantly, stepping over to the display case nearest to Mrs. Cake’s counter while Spike surveilled sweets further down the line.
“Just for Spike?” asked Mrs. Cake, chiming in, as the bakery wasn’t particularly busy that day, and she enjoyed conversing with Twilight.
“And some sweets for Trixie, too,” Twilight felt the mood change around the other two mares, and she realized only seconds too late that the correct answer was, ‘and something for myself.’
“Mhm, what’s wrong with him now?” AJ asked, and perhaps a little more harshly than she intended.
“Applejack, please,” Twilight chided. Ever since that first year at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, Twilight felt a need to protect Trixie, even if it was from one of her best friends. “Trixie’s upset because he saw the Express has run an article on his family, today.”
“The article didn’t say anything bad about the Lulamoons; I read it,” said Mrs. Cake, not quite ‘clued in’.
“That’s not it, Missus Cake, Trixie just doesn’t get on with his kin,” Applejack replied, dismissively.
“Applejack!” said Twilight, not realizing she had raised her voice until it was done. She glanced over to see Spike and Applebloom still obliviously scanning the sweets. She continued, in a slightly more sedate tone, “That isn’t for you to say.”
“Aw, everypony knows, Twi,” Applejack shrugged under her ratty denim jacket.
“I didn’t,” retorted the older mare. Turning to Twilight, she asked, “Why doesn’t Trixie get along with his family?”
Only now did Twilight realize she’d tripped into a session of small town gossip, for which earth ponies were infamous (though Twilight would never admit this, even to herself), with her own special somepony as the first case on the docket. Thinking quickly, Twilight decided the more discrete option to extricate both herself and Trixie from the conversation was to appease Mrs. Cake’s curiosity.
“Well, Trixie’s father just wasn’t very nice to him, even at the beginning,” Twilight said, every nerve aching with guilt, but she saw no safer option than to continue. “Trixie thinks it’s because his father doubted Trixie was actually his son.”
“But they all look so much alike; he, his father and his brother,” Mrs. Cake had probably seen their picture in the paper. “I mean, I’m sorry to hear that, about their relationship.”
Trixie did inherit the azure coat and silvery mane all Lulamoons sported (and for thousands of years), but that was where his similarity to his father and brothers ended. Trixie, in addition to being exponentially more intelligent than his family, possessed an epicene beauty beyond anything the latest generation of Lulamoons (and many other families) could boast, and was also taller and generally more well proportioned than his immediate family. It occurred to Twilight that Trixie inherited all of the traits ascribed to the ancient Lulamoons, long before their pristine gene pool stagnated and resulted in his very average father and brothers.
(From the age twelve onward, when Trixie had blossomed [thanks to an early puberty], he spent his last two years in Canterlot using his superior size and intelligence to emotionally terrorize and physically abuse his brothers and father, whom both nature and experience had failed to furnish with any defenses against a strapping, hormonal young genius with vengeance in his heart. Trixie and Twilight both, though, had a habit of conveniently forgetting this.)
“Could I get some of the salted toffees, please?” Spike asked either Twilight or Mrs. Cake; it was hard to tell. He had waddled over to the mares, Applebloom following, and the prior conversation was immediately, unceremoniously dropped.
“Sure thing, Spike,” Mrs. Cake set to work packing the confections, while Twilight levitated a few bits from her saddlebag. “Anything else, dear?”
Spike was beginning to say ‘no’ when Twilight answered, “Half a batch of butterscotch cookies, and half a batch of peppernut cookies, if that’s possible, please.”