Trixie stared intently at the papers that had been given to her by Regal Tome. Regal Tome alternated between staring intently at the four-page translation – double-checked by Glitter Scrolls and triple-checked by Vast Volumes – and glancing at Lyra, who was standing her full towering height over him, forelegs once more crossed over her barrel, tapping out a rhythm of five quick beats.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for,” Regal Tome said after a moment. “It’s not like you can read Zebra to know whether or not I or…my…”
The glare that Trixie affixed Regal Tome with shut him up. Her horn glowed, and she levitated a quill, inkwell, and sheet of paper over to her, then began scribbling down some instructions before turning to Bon Bon, who was busy staring down Glitter Scrolls and Vast Volumes. The latter had made the mistake of threatening to bring legal action against the three of them for assaulting them.
Bon Bon had started laughing at that, though she had stopped fairly quickly and without trying to harm anypony, at least. To tell the truth, it disturbed Trixie to no end. Note to self, she thought, do not ever stress out Bon Bon, ever again. Also, get her help.
“Alright,” Trixie said, trotting over to Bon Bon with the translated spell. She also telekinetically grabbed a quill, inkwell, and sheet of paper, and started transcribing the ingredients. When she was finished, the handed them over to the earth pony. “Two flights down you’ll find a basement with a pony named Hex Node; he’s the Royal Apothecary and is in charge of the castle’s stock of magical reagents. Everything we need to cast the counter-spell should be there.”
Bon Bon nodded, taking the sheet of paper into her hooves and looking over the ingredients. “And he’ll just let me have them?”
“He’ll just be happy that a mare is in the same room as him.” Trixie grimaced. “Uh…don’t mention me. If he even asks, just say that one these idiots needed the reagents.” She waved a hoof at the three so-called translators.
Bon Bon nodded, though she couldn’t help but give Trixie a sidelong glance as she did. “Somepony else you brought an ice palace down on top of?”
“That was you?” Vast Volumes demanded.
Trixie ignored her. “No,” she told Bon Bon. “He…look, it doesn’t matter. Just get moving, sooner or later somepony might come in here and then see Lyra and then there’ll be more craziness.”
Bon Bon rolled up the paper, taking it into her mouth before setting off. Once she was gone, she turned back to Lyra. “Nearly there,” she promised. “Provided these idiots did everything right.”
“Princess Luna will be hearing of this assault,” Glitter Scrolls said, in no uncertain terms. “I don’t care if you’re her student. She won’t stand for assault happening within her own castle!”
“How about criminally negligent translating?” Trixie asked. “More than a few of those spells are curses, you know. What if I had cast one on Lyra and she had ended up seriously injured or dead because of you three?”
“Curses aren’t real,” Vast Volumes said, turning up her nose at the thought. “They’re just ignorant earth pony misconceptions about how magic works.”
Lyra looked like she was about to kick her, not the least of which due to Vast Volume's tone of voice conveying everything the pony thought about earth ponies - which Bon Bon happened to be. “Magical effects that cause lingering pain or discomfort or otherwise produce unwanted effects for the recipient,” Lyra stated, leaning forward. Vast Volumes shied away. “Those exist and might as well be curses.”
“But they’re not somehow different from other spells,” Regal Tome ventured, before looking back at Trixie. “And it doesn’t matter. Princess Luna will hear about this. You’ll be banished!”
Trixie was impressed by Regal Tome’s sense of self-importance. Clearly there was nothing wrong with his self-esteem. “Nah, I don’t think so,” she noted. “More like chewed out. I’ve been chewed out before. And what do you think she’ll do to you for turning Lyra into…that?” She leaned forward. “Because that’s not my fault. Right, Lyra?”
“Casting the wrong spell?” Lyra asked. “No.”
Trixie smiled a little at that, grateful for the reassurance, before looking back to Regal Tome, Vast Volumes, and Glitter Scrolls. The three were looking at Lyra, or rather looking through her, almost as though they could see how incensed Luna would be with them. “Perhaps,” Glitter Scrolls ventured, “maybe…we won’t say anything? And you won’t either? Call things even?”
Lyra blinked at that, looking to Trixie, who had a hoof to her mouth, before the unicorn trotted away, towards the window looking out over the city of Canterlot, motioning for Lyra to join her. She did, glaring at Trixie. “You can’t be seriously considering that,” she said in a low voice. “Those three shouldn’t be allowed to look at Zebra books, never mind translate them!”
Trixie snorted. “Oh no, I agree,” she whispered back, “Just let them think we agreed to it, though. Then when they try to bring up us attacking them, Luna will think they’re just exaggerating to try and cover their flanks, which will make them look worse. And will help get me off the hook, at least a little.”
Lyra considered. “That’s…that’s evil.”
“Yes.”
“I like it.”
Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Really?” she asked. “I thought you’d have some kind of problem with it.”
“Not really. Not after the day I’ve had.”
The two turned back to the unicorn ‘scholars.’ “Okay,” Trixie acquiesced. “Once Lyra’s a pony again, we’ll be even. A unicorn pony,” she quickly added, as she trotted back over to the table where she’d left the spell, and started memorizing its magic words the old-fashioned way, being too tired to even consider casting her photographic memory spell. She idly wondered, as she did, what this spell had been mislabeled as in the original spellbook.
Which reminded her. “Oh, and one more thing,” she said, looking up from her work. “I also want a translated copy of a spell called the truth is a scourge…and one that will turn a rooster into a hen.”
The three ‘scholars’ stared at her.
“Don’t ask, just do,” she insisted.
---
Bon Bon stared at Trixie as she returned an hour later, having acquired a small saddlebag and all the ingredients that her list had specified. She didn’t look equicidal, she didn’t look angry, she looked…bemused. Kind of the same look she had affixed Trixie with earlier in the day, back when Lyra had found out that Trixie was –
“Oh no,” Trixie intoned.
“I,” Bon Bon said as she removed her saddlebag, looking at, “had a chat with Hex Node. He’s a pleasant little stallion, isn’t he?”
“No,” Trixie stated firmly.
“Now I didn’t say that you were in the castle,” Bon Bon pressed on, “but I did mention Ponyville, and wouldn’t you know it, he asked after you, Trixie!”
“No,” Trixie said again.
Lyra, on the other hoof, leaned forward, one brow raised. “Really?” she asked. “That sounds…that sounds downright friendly of him, Trixie.”
Bon Bon pressed on, tapping her front hooves together as she looked back to Trixie. “And you will never guess how he knows Trixie! Did you know that Trixie’s been to the Grand Galloping Gala? Five times?”
“No, no, no, no – ”
“Yeah, she mentioned it,” Lyra stated, before her eyes widened. “Oh, I think I see where this is going.”
Bon Bon nodded enthusiastically. “And the first time she was convinced that she couldn’t go alone, that she had to have a date, and at the time Hex Node was the apprentice apothecary and even though he knew that it was only because she couldn’t ask somepony named Edle Hjerte because he wasn’t around – who is Edle Hjerte, by the way? He sound quite foreign – ”
“No no no no no shut up shut up – ”
“So Trixie asked Hex Node!” Bon Bon finished, before looking to Trixie. “He seemed quite enamored of you, Trixie.”
Trixie was bright red, though whether form embarrassment or anger, neither Lyra nor Bon Bon could tell. “And,” she added through gritted teeth, “he smelled bad, his suit was tacky beyond all belief, and he…he clearly wanted to…expected to…with me…gah! I ditched him as fast as I could and just hid out in the royal garden the rest of the night.”
Bon Bon put a hoof to her mouth, hiding her chortle. “Oh, come on, now,” Bon Bon said. “He doesn’t seem so bad! And I’m sure the smell is just from all the regents he has to deal with every day.” She wrinkled her nose. “Though…I admit it was distinctive.”
Trixie shuddered. “It was a mistake, I’ve gone alone to the Gala every year since then.” She looked between Lyra and Bon Bon as she walked up to the shucked saddleback and opened it, pulling out the various regents and ingredients that Bon Bon had acquired. “Can we please not discuss it and instead turn Lyra back into a pony now? Maybe?”
“If we have to…” Lyra said with a false sigh, joining Trixie as the two of them removed and inspected over each ingredient. Lyra paused a moment as she did, looking at her paws and flexing the claws on them a few times. “You know,” she said, picking up the list of ingredients and comparing it to what was on-hoof, double checking it, “I…I think I’m actually almost used to these things now that I’ve figured them out. I think I was actually better with my lyre than I was with my hooves once I got the hang of – ow!”
Lyra dropped the paper from her paw, staring at one finger, the longest one on the right hand. There was a thin line on it now, seeping a tiny amount of red blood. It was nothing major, but… “ow, ow, ow, why does this hurt so much?” She stuck her finger in her mouth, sucking on the wound.
Trixie raised a brow, looking at the dropped list. “Did…did you cut yourself…with paper?”
“Yes! And it hurts like a…ow! Okay, forget it. I. Hate. Hands!”
---
Once more, Lyra was covered, head to toe but for her mane, in paint, this time white rather than black. She stood in the center of a magic seal, a triangle of salt inside a square of coal dust inside a pentagon of sand inside a circle of earth. Surrounding the circle at ten points were ten tall candles made from beeswax, each of them lit. Quartz stones sat at the foot of each candle, while Trixie used a bowl filled with purified water to splash Lyra as she circled her three times.
Lyra, having recovered from her paper-cut, had the two longest fingers on each of her hands crossed – she didn’t know why – as she shifted and shivered uncomfortably in the circle, hoping against hope that this nightmare would soon be over. She glanced at Bon Bon, who was standing well away from Trixie, her marefriend’s eyes focused on her own. She offered a thin-lipped, hopeful smile, as did Bon Bon. The ‘scholars’ were also watching, apparently eager to see zebra magic at work.
At length, Trixie finished her circling of Lyra. She had dispelled the enchantment in her cape and hat, and now wore both again. She glanced at Lyra, grimaced for a moment, then offered a weak smile of her own. “Okay,” she said, closing her eyes and rearing up onto her hind legs, while she waved her forelegs around in front of her as the spell instructed her to do.
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Sio ulimwengu wa eneo la ajabu;
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Kila mahali kwenda, uso kenyuliwa;
“Kukimbia na kuruka; kwa furaha kuanguka
“Kuangalia asubuhi kufunua –
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Hatma ya baadaye inasemaje!”
The candles flared, the flames on them shooting up to be several feet tall, though they let out no additional heat, as the rest of the room outside of the magic circle that Lyra was in seemed to visibly darken. The once-and-future unicorn hunkered down onto one knee at the sight, looking worriedly to Trixie. She, for her part, had her eyes closed as she wove the spell. Behind her, however, Lyra and the three scholars looked around in surprise – the darkening room, it seemed, wasn’t simply something that she was perceiving solely because she was at the epicenter of this zebra spell.
“Hakuna ishara ya matatizo mbele
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo;
“Ili wote siku yako kuwa mkali!
“Ili wote siku yako kuwa mkali!”
Inside the magic seal, the coal dust began to pick itself up off of the ground and swirl around Lyra. She grimaced as it did, feeling sweat on her body as it drifted dangerously close to the now much larger candle flames, though after a moment it began contracting, pressing itself to her body, covering her in black spots. The salt was next, wrapping around her body in spirals and complex patterns. Lastly, the simple earth crept along the floor, crawling up her body in another round of complex patterning.
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Je, ni wakati sisi ilianza nyumbani!
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Mwenye ndoto jinsi mbali tunatarajia kwenda!
“Ndege ni wito; jioni ni kuanguka
“Zaidi ya meadow na shamba
“Farasi zangu wadogo, farasi zangu wadogo
“Wakati mimi kuona tena!”
The flames of the candles suddenly died, and the normal light returned to the room. Lyra opened her eyes, and saw…that she still had a ridiculously small nose. She still had paws. She still had those ridiculously tiny fingers – toes – on her hoof-less feet.
“Oh come on – ” she began, when the quartz crystals suddenly all began to flash bright, painful light – and then pick themselves up and collide with her from all sides. She was certain the speed should have been enough to shatter bone, or she would have been certain, anyway, had one of the quartz crystals not collided with the center of her forehead and plunged her into unconsciousness.
---
Trixie opened her eyes just in time to watch, just like she had the first time at the start of this mess. Lyra’s limp form was lifted up off of the ground, surrounded by eldritch, sickeningly green light. Bon Bon came rushing forward, but Trixie held out a hoof to stop her. “You might not want to look,” she said softly. Bon Bon glanced at her for a moment, before locking her eyes firmly onto Lyra. After a moment, Trixie did likewise.
Lyra convulsed. Wet, sickening snaps came from throughout her body as her bones shifted and twisted. It started at her hind legs – her toes curling in on themselves and fusing together even as the nails on them grew and shifted together as well, blackening as they did so and became proper hooves once more. The knuckles on the toes shifted and moved as well, becoming her pasterns and fetlocks, while the tiny ankles of her feet lengthened, becoming proper hocks. Her knees shifted and twisted, travelling further up her leg, even as her hip’s edges seemed to snap and fold, collapsing and becoming not nearly as comparatively wide as her body shifted to accommodate what would, once more, be a quadrupedal rather than a bipedal form.
The transformation continued up her barrel and back. From the base of her spine, a tiny tail emerged, which was swiftly covered in sprouting white and seafoam-green hair. The fleshy lumps on her barrel were re-absorbed back into her abdomen – her teats presumably appearing back in their proper place, though neither Trixie nor Bon Bon checked at the moment, having other things on their minds – while her shoulders did the same twist as her hips had, collapsing forward and shifting. The ripples of the alteration continued down her forelegs, in many ways duplicating the twisting and lengthening of her hind legs. Her hands disappeared last, becoming normal feet and hooves once again.
Lyra’s neck, meanwhile, had lengthened, along with her face, her eyes growing in size, her ears travelling up her skull and lengthening. Her nose became her muzzle, her prominent chin melded more cleanly into her lower jaw, and bursting from her forehead came her horn. Her mane didn’t change as much, but it did sprout additional growth down the back of her neck, nearly to her withers. Even as this occurred, her coat began to re-appear, mint green and short, but hiding her paling flesh; and she shrank, twisting in place as she did, until she had once more resumed her normal size. The last thing to appear was her cutie mark, appearing much like it did on a foal who had just discovered their special talent – in a flash of light and a glowing shape that swiftly realized itself as a golden lyre.
The eldritch glow surrounding Lyra disappeared, and she collapsed to the floor on her side, curled up into a ball. Bon Bon was at her side in and instant, Trixie nearly as fast. “It took her a few minutes to wake up last – ” Trixie began.
Bon Bon didn’t hear her, as she cradled her marefriend’s head, her proper, pony head at last, in her hooves, leaning down and nuzzling her. “Lyra?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Lyra? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
“She’s breathing fine,” Trixie said, looking Lyra over, cautiously running her own hoof across Lyra’s back. “Coat feels right, cutie mark’s good, tail is…tail-y…hooves look right, horn…” she used two hooves to measure Lyra’s horn, then compare it to her own. “Short.”
“Mmph,” Lyra mumbled, eyes fluttering open. “Not short…not…taller than you anyway…”
“Lyra!” Bon Bon exclaimed, pulling her marefiend up into a tight hug. Lyra returned it eagerly, forelegs hooked around Bon Bon’s shoulders and withers, head laid across each other’s necks – a proper hug, unlike what she’d been able to manage on the train earlier. It didn’t last long, of course, as the two pulled back from each other, but only so that Lyra’s lips could find and sink into Bon Bon’s own.
Eventually, their kiss ended, and Lyra pulled away, waving her hooves in front of her face. “Ha,” she stated. “Ha! Hahaha! Hooves! Let’s see paper cut these! And – and – ” she looked up, at her horn, and squinted slightly. It glowed gold, and she lifted Bon Bon into the air with a yelp. “Ha! And my magic’s back on! No more fumbling with honey jars, I don’t know how you do it, sweetie, but me, I could not live without this!”
She levitated Bon Bon in front of her and drew her marefriend into another kiss, setting her down slowly as she did so. Bon Bon returned it eagerly, breaking it off only when she noticed Trixie was sitting behind Lyra, looking dejected. “Come here,” she said, trotting up to Trixie.
Trixie’s eyes widened as her horn glowed defensively, though weakly given how magically exhausted she still was. “N-no, wait, what did I do now, she’s back to normal and – !” Trixie was cut off when Bon Bon embraced Trixie, tightly, but not so tight as to suggest malevolent intent. After a few moments, Trixie let out a long sigh of relief, returning the hug, as well as Lyra’s when the other mare joined in.
“I’m sorry, Trixie,” she said. “I…I was just so worried for Lyra, seeing her like…like that…I don’t know what came over me.” She looked Trixie in the eye. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
Trixie grimaced. “Not all of it,” she admitted.
Bon Bon’s eyes widened. “Who are you, and what have you done with Trixie Lulamoon?”
Trixie just shook her mane, then turned to Lyra. “I got you into this mess. I shouldn’t of asked you to do the spell today. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Lyra said, though after a moment she considered the day she’d just had. “Well…do be, but not too sorry…I mean, I agreed to the spell in the first place. So be a little sorry.” Trixie nodded. Lyra hugged her again, and she returned it fully. “Besides,” Lyra considered. “You may have…sort of…gotten me into this mess, but you’re also the pony who got me out of it.”
“We helped!” Vast Volumes exclaimed.
Lyra blinked, remembering at last that the 'scholars' were there, as she looked to them. The three were standing awkwardly off to the side, Glitter Scrolls looking quite pleased that he’d gotten to see two mares making out, while Regal Tome looked a bit green in the face, probably from the transformation that he’d witnessed. Vast Volumes, meanwhile, seemed to be thinking ahead, to the possible tongue-lashing that they could receive from Luna later if they weren’t careful.
Well, that they would be receiving anyway, but neither of them had to know that at the moment. “Whatever,” Lyra declared, standing on her own four hooves again – stars above it felt good to be a quadruped again – and turning around, to the library’s exit. “Come on, Trixie, you said something about us probably being able to stay in your old room for the night…”
Trixie nodded, as the three mares made their way from the library. “You two can even have my bed,” she promised, though she froze after she did. “Um! But there are terms and conditions, I know you two are probably eager to, er, break in Lyra’s restored body, b-but I’d really rather…er…that is, maybe I’ll look into getting you two your own room.”
Lyra and Bon Bon laughed at that, even as Trixie shuffled around a little before following them. “With soundproofing,” she added.