With a tick, the clock struck two, and from grinding mechanisms within the call of a whippoorwill echoed through the library. The clock was of such artisanal fabrication that the bird’s call was almost perfectly replicated by the totally mundane machinery, which was housed by a case lovingly carved and painted to resemble an entrance to the enchanted forest that obscured the foothills surrounding Canterlot. Such objets d’art were a common sight in unicorn homes two hundred years or so in the past, when the movement that inspired them was flourishing.
In the present, mechanical clocks were seen as antiques or, at worst, curios by the modern unicorn, who saw nothing accomplished by the machinery that magic couldn’t achieve more efficiently. Twilight felt disheartened whenever she realized this. She devoted a great deal of free time away from the study of magic to that of material physics and its applications, which she considered to be practically analogous in many ways to magic. Whether you cast a spell of flight, or build a flying machine like an aeroplane, you will achieve the same end, only by different means. That was Twilight’s thinking, anyway.
Trixie, though he also was ultimately against material science, at least understood Twilight’s convictions about its ontological juxtaposition to magic, and even shared them. Trixie’s objection arose when he interpolated his own theory, that magic which altered materia (or the magician’s interpretation of materia) was only residual of a higher magic which altered the magician’s interpretation of himself, not as an agent but as the crux of all agency (and non-agency). A notion he undoubtedly received from his obsession with the High Unicorns’ ancient religion. From there, he argued that, while material magic may be analogous to material science, magic at least offered a path to liberation of the consciousness, beyond the simple transformations of it offered by either discipline, whereas physical science did not; or, if it did, it was not one he could see clearly or follow in good faith.
While Twilight reserved judgement on Trixie’s idiomatic and phenomenological rejection of physical science and its application, she recognized that it was a conscious rejection rooted in introspective philosophy, so she could both comprehend and respect such a decision. The average unicorn, however, preferred magic over science as a result of the worst kind of ignorance (and flippantly so).
The mechanized call of the whippoorwill ended abruptly, replaced by the soft ticking it had been drowning out.
“Can’t we get a clock that doesn’t make that noise every hour?” Spike’s scaled frame emerged from the kitchen, broom and dustpan in claw.
“That ‘noise’ is the call of the Equestrian Nightjar, or whippoorwill, as it’s known colloquially, Spike,” Twilight began to her half-listening assistant. “In Equestrian unicorn folklore, the bird supposedly ushers the soul of the deceased into the next world, and during the Thistlean artistic movement these clocks were made to sound its call on the hour as a reminder of the owner’s mortality. Most ponies think it’s a very pretty song.”
“I thought it was pretty, too, the first couple hundred times,” Spike interjected, beginning to sweep the floors of the foyer, and a little late-in-the-day for Twilight’s taste. “Can’t we just get one of those clocks that just let you know what time it is, with magic? What are they called, uh…”
“Intuitional timepieces, and no,” answered Twilight, continuing before Spike could object. “Those only work for unicorns, and in case you’ve forgotten, you’re a dragon.”
“Okay, but why can’t we just get a regular clock that doesn’t make noise?” asked Spike, with a fleeting hint of indignation.
“‘Regular clocks’ are more complex than mechanical clocks, and use magical energies that would interfere with my experiments, and Trixie’s too,” Twilight explained, trying her best to avoid an air of condescension. She could have suggested any number of solutions, like hypnotizing Spike into not hearing the ticking or calls; but she knew this wasn’t really about the clock or the noise it made.
Though infrequent, these little arguments with Spike were becoming a fixture of life in the Golden Oak. Maybe it was the quiet, subconscious resentment a dragon has to feel over being raised by ponies, or perhaps he really disliked being Twilight’s assistant, despite his apparent contentedness with the situation. Maybe he was just at that age.
Then something occurred to Twilight.
“How about this: tonight, during dinner, you, Trixie and I will discuss the possibility of getting a new clock. We’ll make it a family decision,” said Twilight. This way, at least, Spike could feel like he had some say.
“He’ll just agree with you like he always does,” Spike stooped down to brush dust and detritus into the dustpan.
Twilight gingerly placed a bookmark in the novel she had been reading and closed the book. “Trixie does not always agree with me,” she stood, strolling toward the vestibule for reasons she couldn’t articulate.
“Yes, I do,” Trixie emerged from the door to the basement. Even Spike made the stairs creak when he waddled down them, so how Trixie (a stallion of prodigious proportion) was always able to sneak up and down the staircase confounded Twilight.
“Up from your nap, already?” smirked Twilight, taking a seat by the front door.
“I’ve never taken a nap in my life,” Trixie sauntered listlessly toward the table in the center of the library, casting a glance at the book Twilight had been reading. He never cared for novels.
“So this is Trixie the absurd contrarian, as opposed to the ‘laziest pony in three continents’ that he’s professed himself to be, previously,” Twilight’s intuition told her to stay by the door, but she couldn’t help but to join Trixie at the table. Wrapping a foreleg around his withers, she began nuzzling him.
Spike set his broom against a knot in the wood and turned to face the two unicorns. “Hey, Trixie, let me ask you someth-”
“Somepony’s at the door,” Trixie interrupted, deadpan, and a gentle rapping came from the other side of the painted oak of the front door.
“Come in, Fluttershy,” called Twilight, recognizing the soft knock.
A long sliver of light appeared and slowly grew between the door and wall, the outside obscured by Fluttershy’s timid countenance peeking inward. Seeing no unfamiliar faces, she gingerly trotted in, with Twilight’s pet owl, Owloysius, astride her back.
“I’d forgotten all about Owloysius’ stay with you ending today,” said Twilight, trotting to greet her friend, and Owloysius hooted dejectedly in response. “Not that I’m unhappy to have him back!” she answered, and the bird cooed, hopping from Fluttershy’s back onto hers.
“It sounds like he’s happy to be back, too,” Fluttershy smiled. “We had fun though, and I took care of that blood feather that was bothering him.”
“Oh, good—thank you, so much,” Twilight nuzzled Fluttershy lightly, a friendly gesture, and Owloysius leapt away to perch on the wooden bust in the center of the table, whence he gazed down inquisitively at Trixie reading the book Twilight left.
“Mhm, then we preened his feathers, and I trimmed those big nails of his,” Fluttershy said, walking with Twilight to take a seat at the table.
“Thank you, again. I always feel too nervous to try trimming his talons. I get afraid that I may hurt him,” Twilight reclaimed her position next to Trixie, nuzzling him lightly as a signal to stop reading and join the conversation.
“Oh, I know how you feel, but it’s easy once you learn. The next time his nails get too long I’ll show you how,” Fluttershy said, to Twilight’s nodding approval, and continued, “I... c-could teach you, too, t-... Trixie.” Fluttershy always seemed especially bashful toward Twilight’s special somepony.
“Hm? Oh, no, I don’t think so. Owloysius and I don’t see eye-to-eye,” Trixie said, with a trace of humor. “He’s always looking down on me.”
Owloysius drew a wing over his chest like a cape and hooted haughtily in response, as if playing a character, and the mares giggled.
“See? I told you so. Landfowl, those are the true birds. To have the ability to fly, and then to choose not to; that’s how you can tell a bird has honor,” Trixie continued, and Owloysius chattered as if to laugh.
“You know Trixie, if you really do like ground birds, I know a lot of pheasants and other birds who I’m sure would… love you,” spoke Fluttershy, ever eager to pair a pony with a pet.
“Be that as it may, I’m not interested in taking care of any animal, avian or otherwise. I had a pet bird once, and it didn’t end well for either of us,” Trixie said, a little dismissively.
“Oh?” Fluttershy’s entire mood seemed affected by the statement, for the worse.
“You’ve never told me you had a pet,” Twilight nuzzled him, with more tenderness and understanding than Trixie needed at the time.
“Yes, his name was Koot Hoomi, and he was a peacock I found as a chick. That is to say, when he was a chick. I raised him in the garden of my, um,” he glanced at Fluttershy, “in a place I used to live.”
“What happened to Koot Hoomi?” Fluttershy trotted around to sit at Trixie’s other side, so Twilight wouldn’t be between them.
“Well, uh, in certain, far-flung corners of the world, there exist what magicians call ‘entropic fields,’ which, in the magical sense, are the essence of all death and decay, and this place I used to live in was surrounded by one,” he paused to see Fluttershy nodding, and felt Twilight still nuzzling him. “The only thing that kept it at bay was an ‘ectropic’ field. Where these don’t exist naturally, only powerful unicorns can create them. When the unicorn who generated the ectropic field that protected my garden died, entropy started setting in. I wasn’t strong enough to project my own ectropy (and I’m probably still not,) so everything in the garden, the garden itself, started to corrupt and die.”
“And Koot Hoomi, the peacock?” Fluttershy, saddened, had also started to nuzzle the stallion.
“W-well, I, uh, I had to-... He was already in pain, the peacock, so I had to put the creature out of its misery,” Trixie stammered, senses overwhelmed by the mares’ simultaneous attempts to comfort him over an incident for which, in him, no strong feelings lingered. “Where did Spike get off to? I believe he had a question for me,” he said, stumbling back and absconding down the stairs to the basement, where Spike would assuredly not be.
“Huh?” was the most Twilight could think to utter. Once Trixie vanished it occurred to her that both Spike and Owloysius had also disappeared from the room, leaving only herself and Fluttershy to smirk awkwardly at one another. Trixie, even as a colt, had the uncanny, almost mesmeric ability to command the attention of everypony in a room, even with a blasé anecdote about his dead pet peacock. In the beginning, she assumed it was her romantic attraction to Trixie that enthralled her in these moments, but recalled soon thereafter that he made his living as a stage magician and hypnotist.
Besides, the first notion would do little to explain Fluttershy becoming so enamored with the stallion during his story.
“Well, I should head home, soon. Angel gets upset if I’m not back by a certain time,” Fluttershy lightly nuzzled Twilight, as though she were embarrassed.
“Of course; well, thank you again for helping Owloysius!” Twilight grinned, and the two mares exchanged a few more polite but inconsequential words before Fluttershy departed and Twilight returned to her novel, the clock behind ticking steadily.