“MEOW!”
Twilight winced. “Ah!”
Her blood shone bright red under the sun.
It was the second day after the defeat of the Rat King, and the roofs were finished. Now it was time to clean the walls and the windows. Cue Twilight flying outside the castle, spray bottle of soap at the ready, scrubbing like her life was on the line.
Here’s the thing about cleaning windows: don’t mind the scrubbing. Focus on the drying. Once there’s soap and water all over the place, once the grime has been cleaned up, you need to grab a ball of crumpled-up newspaper, and then dry everything off. You don’t have to use newspaper, but newspaper is what works best.
Until the very last moment, you’ll think you’re messing it up. The newspaper doesn’t absorb the water, it smudges it, see? You’ll think you’re making it worse, you’re ruining a perfectly good thing, you have no idea what you’re doing—and then, suddenly, so fast you can’t see when it happens? Everything looks nice, and perfect, and wonderful.
Cleaning a window is exactly like raising a child, that way.
“Ouch.” Twilight waved her hoof in the air, wincing at the pain. Three red lines across her forearm, one of them deep enough to drip blood. She blew on it, and then frowned at the cat in front of her. “Don’t do that! Look, it was getting dark and we weren’t making any progress, okay? If I hadn’t charmed the brooms we would’ve never finished the roof. I didn’t like it either! I’m not the one to blame!”
“Hisssss!”
The cat tried to scratch her a second time, and Twilight flapped her wings and flew some feet away from the window she’d been scrubbing. “Okay. That’s it.” Twilight said, frowning, flashing her horn and pointing at the cat with the soap. “I have a bottle of soap and I am not scared to use it. Don’t try me.”
The cat squinted. “Hisssss.” Arched its back. Rose a paw in the air.
Twilight squinted back. “Wrong choice.”
And she squirted soap at the cat’s face.
The ensuing fight involved a lot of screaming, some lost feathers, and the cat doing a brave leap out of the window so it could get at Twilight’s eyes—but ultimately, Twilight won, and the cat went away.
It just cost Twilight three more scratches, a bit of hair, and most of her dignity.
“Wow.” From around the corner came Spike, looking at the cat as it ran back into the Castle, tail between its legs. Spike was also flying, and also carrying a bottle of soap, and some newspaper under his arm. “They can really hold a grudge, can’t they?”
“Yes. Isn’t it convenient?” Twilight went back to the window, and a second cat, bigger and browner, came out of nowhere to hiss at her. She squirted it with soap without looking, and the cat ran away. “They just happen to attack me on sight now. Lovely.”
Spike saw Twilight’s eyes, he heard the tone of her voice, and frowned. “Right,” he said. “So… Is this about Trixie being a—”
“It’s absolutely about Trixie being a witch.”
Spike sighed. “Figured.”
“I saw this coming a mile away. Did cats ever like me?” Twilight went back at the window, scrubbing more furiously than ever. “I have no idea! Is this Trixie’s fault? No way to know!” She glared at the scratches on her forearms. “But either way, I’m the one bleeding.”
Spike frowned, and then got a page of old newspaper and crumpled it up in a ball. “That looks bad,” he said. “We should disinfect it. Want me to go get the kit?”
“Yes, please.”
“Sure.” Spike looked at the window, then at the ball of newspaper in his hand, and then he offered it to Twilight. “Mind drying this one for me?”
Twilight didn’t, and so, Spike left.
For the next five seconds, Twilight just focused on the windows. Silent, frowning, trying not to think about the pain on her forearm. At least there was catharsis to be found in cleaning windows. There’s something hypnotic about the repetition, something relaxing about—
Trixie’s voice, behind her: “You missed a spot there!”
And out of the corner of her eye, Twilight saw that—indeed, over there, in the upper right corner. A little brown stain. She hadn’t seen it before, though. Had it appeared when Trixie had pointed it out, or was it there from the start?
Twilight grit her teeth so hard, for a moment, she feared one of them might break. She rubbed at the stain until it disappeared, and then she turned around. “Trixie,” she said.
Trixie came down flying.
She was still riding the broom, sitting upright, tail swishing in the wind. She was wearing her signature hat with a bit more pride than usual, and her cape fluttered in the wind every time the broom moved around.
She looked good, actually.
“You know, you’re doing a terrible job at this.” Trixie looked at the windows behind Twilight. “This looks worse than when you started.”
Twilight took a deep breath, and went back to smudge the windows with the newspaper. “Why are you here, Trixie? Need another book? I gave Starlight a list, so…”
“Nah, not really.” Trixie inched closer, and leaned forward on her broom. “I wanted to talk to you, Princess.”
The newspaper balls squeaked against the windows. Twilight looked at Trixie. “Funny. I wanted to talk to you too.” She rose a forearm in the air, little drops of blood dripping from the deeper scratch still. “Would you please stop doing this?”
“Doing what.”
“Mostly just being yourself, but if I have to be specific, not throwing the cats at me would be nice.” Twilight sighed. “Listen, you’re not going to stop fooling with witchcraft no matter what I say, but the least you could do is—”
“Yes, yes.” Trixie spoke slightly louder, and then flew to the side, leaning against the Castle wall, still looking at Twilight. “See, that’s what I wanted to talk about, Princess. We both know that this,” and Trixie pointed at her hat, at the broom, at her entire persona, “is a bad idea. But you have to stop pointing it out.”
There was a moment of silence. The only thing you could hear was the squeak of the newspaper balls drying off the windows.
Then Twilight blinked, and looked at Trixie again. “I’m sorry?”
“Oh, please, Princess.” Trixie rolled her eyes, and did a little twirl on her broom. “Me? A witch? I’ve no idea what I’m doing, something terrible might happen, and if it does it’ll be my fault. Again.” The next words, she said a little harder than usual. and while looking down, at her hooves. Frown on her face. “To the surprise of absolutely no one.”
Pause.
Twilight squinted. “Trixie? You okay?”
“Please.” Trixie looked up again, smug delight in her eyes. “I’m never just ‘okay’. I’m great. And powerful, you know? It’s kind of a thing.”
“Uh-huh. That is absolutely not what I was asking, you’re aware.”
“And that is so sad, isn’t it. So.” Trixie nodded at Twilight’s scratches. “What happened to you anyway.”
Twilight frowned, looked at her forearm, back at Trixie. “The cats keep attacking me.”
“Because of me?”
“…I think?”
Trixie clicked her tongue, annoyed. In moments like these, she looked just like Starlight, Twilight noticed. Same expression. Maybe a bit sharper around the edges.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” Trixie said.
Twilight perked up her ears. She kept on drying the windows. “You didn’t?”
“No.” And then Trixie tipped up her hat. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, any other day I would absolutely go out of my way to make your life difficult.”
“Right.”
“I really can’t stand you.”
“I’m aware.”
“But I didn’t know the cats were… I’ll ask them to stop. Or try to. They’ll probably listen, right? They love me.” Trixie shook her head, and suddenly she was talking louder, and her back was straight. “Anyway! Whatever! Can you shut up or not?”
Twilight arched an eyebrow, still working on the windows. “You mean, about the fact that this is all a terrible idea,” she said. “The witchcraft thing.”
“Yes.”
“Even though you agree?”
“Yes.”
Twilight took a deep breath. Many things went through her head, but mostly, she thought she finally understood what Trixie was hiding, what she was lying about—and so, Twilight tried really hard not to grin. “Why’s that, then?”
And Trixie replied, simply:
“It makes Starlight happy!”
Twilight was done with the windows now. They looked amazing—all the water had dried out, the smudges were gone, they looked crystal clear. Better than the day the Castle had been built.
Twilight smiled. It was enough to make one proud.
And then she looked at Trixie. “Really?” she asked, making sure to come off as antagonistic as possible—Trixie was a contrarian; you couldn’t show sympathy, or else she’d go out of her way to annoy you. “You’re doing this for Starlight. That’s your whole motivation?”
“She’s so excited about it! Have you listened to her talking about it?” Trixie looked away from Twilight, stared into the distance, and in that moment she looked sweet. “She literally looked me in the eye and said, ‘yes, Trixie, we just discovered an obscure source of ancient power, and I want you to play with it instead’. Come on.” Smile on her face.
Twilight put the balls of newspaper down. “Right,” she said. “I guess that sounds somewhat familiar.”
“Yes. I don’t care for scientific discovery, and I got this hat,” Trixie pointed at her hat, “at a discount Nightmare Night costume shop. But the moment Starlight read that book and saw the witch looked like me, she was elated. I’d never seen her like that. What did you want me to do? Just tell her I don’t care?”
Twilight made a point to cross her arms and arch an eyebrow. “So that’s it? You’re turning into a witch because you want to be nice to Starlight. You know you can just buy her flowers, right?”
Trixie clicked her tongue. When she spoke next, there was an edge of steel to her voice. “Listen, Princess.” She made the word sound insulting. “We don’t get along. I get it. I’m Starlight’s cool new marefriend, and you’re her overbearing, strict, boring mother. You hate me, and I can’t stand you, and that’s our current relationship. I get it.”
Twilight’s eye twitched. “I mean,” she said. “If you’re just going to say it, sure.”
“But the least you can do is let Starlight have fun, for once, without feeling guilty. Is it really that hard?” Trixie stared. “You have one redeeming feature, Princess Twilight, and that’s that you care for Starlight. That’s it. That’s the one thing I respect about you.”
Twilight’s straightened her back, met Trixie’s glare one for one. Edge of steel in her voice, too. “Funny,” she said. “I could say the same about you.”
“Good. So just. Don’t be terrible, for once? Show some support?” Trixie squinted. “Starlight wants this more than anything right now. And I don’t—she said she trusted me, okay? I think it’s a bad idea, I fear I might hurt somepony. But she said she trusted me.”
Twilight nodded. “Starlight does trust you. She always has.”
“And I’m not going to let her down. It doesn’t matter what I think, because she believes in me, and I trust her better than I trust myself. Is it that hard to get? Is it such a difficult thing to believe?”
Twilight gave Trixie a look. “I don’t think you could let her down if you tried,” she said. “But we’re playing with forces we don’t understand, dark forces we don’t understand. What if something happens anyway, and you can’t control it? Starlight will be crushed. This was her idea, she’ll blame herself.”
“Then do your job! Save the day, and…” Trixie waved a hoof in the air. “I don’t know, don’t tell her ‘I told you so’. Say we learned a lot about witchcraft, come up with whatever. Blame it all on me! I don’t care. Just don’t make her feel bad.”
“So. Lying,” Twilight said. “You mean I should lie. For Starlight’s sake.”
“Oh, for the love of—yes! Yes, I’m asking for a little white lie! So Starlight stops thinking that she’s a burden to the whole world! Did you know she still blames herself for that stupid time traveling nonsense?” Trixie grind her teeth. “She’s my best friend, and I love her, and you should shut up about witchcraft being terrible already.”
“Sure.”
“But I guess you’re too much of a goody-two-shoes to—what. What?” Trixie blinked, and inched away from Twilight, frowning. “What did you just say.”
“I said sure.” Twilight shrugged. “I don’t like lying, but I care for Starlight, too. As much as you do, just in a different way.”
“…What.”
“Sometimes a pony is worth following a crazy plan.” Twilight looked at Trixie, and this time she was smiling at her, but she made it look like a smirk. Because Trixie was a contrarian. You had to play the game with her. “That’s a lesson I learned a while ago. If Starlight says you’ll try your best, I believe it.”
“I. I mean. Well.” Trixie looked around, fidgeted, inched away from Twilight again. “Whatever!” she said. “You’ll shut up about witchcraft being a bad idea, then?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll stop criticising Starlight for it.”
Twilight nodded, rose both hooves in the air. “I’ll watch from the sidelines, but that’s it. I’ll stop nagging you two. And if things go down, I’ll do my best to save the day, and I’ll make it look like none of you are at fault. I agree with you that Starlight deserves that, at least.” Then she offered Trixie a hoof. “Deal?”
Trixie fidgeted some more, looked at Twilight’s hoof, at Twilight’s face. Squinted. “Well,” she said, eventually. “Sure. Just—don’t mess it up.”
And then Trixie flew away, never shaking Twilight’s hoof, and once she was completely out of sight, Twilight allowed herself a very hearty chuckle.
Five minutes later, Spike came back with the first aid kit, disinfectant and bandages in hand—and was met by a humming Twilight, grin as wide as the horizon in her face.
So he reeled back a little. “…Someone’s in a good mood,” he said.
“Hmm. Well, you know.” Twilight smiled at him, and showed him her forearm with the scratches. “Cleaning relaxes me, I suppose.”
“Good!” Spike poured some disinfectant on the cotton, grabbed it with the pliers, and started applying it to Twilight’s wound. “Sorry if it stings.”
“Don’t worry. Oh, and we don’t have to worry about the cats attacking me anymore. I think they’ll forget about the brooms pretty soon.”
Spike blinked. “Huh. Well. That was quick.” And then he pointed at the side. “Also, you did a really good job over here. I’d never seen these windows look this clean.”
“Well, what can I say. Sometimes we both forget I’m actually really good at my job.”