Âme Câline

by The Cloptimist


Epilogue: Trixie

Trixie half-opens her eyes, drowsy and confused. The room is dark. The shadows are all wrong, and it takes her a moment to realise she's not in her wagon, that she's looking at Starlight's bedroom ceiling. Their bedroom ceiling.

Trixie thinks about how she got here. About the series of unlikely events that led her to this bedroom, this bed; to this embrace. She cuddles herself closer to the gently snoring mare beside her, buries her face in her mane, thinks about everything they've been through together.

Trixie is still half-asleep, but the memories of a thousand cold, lonely, sleepless nights on the road in an empty bed are gathering around her, like so many uninvited ghosts.

There was a time, Trixie knows, when she would have spent the rest of the night thinking about how she got to here from there. Worrying that she wasn't good enough, and that this was surely the last night she'd ever spend cuddled up with this wonderful, infuriating pony. Worrying that tomorrow morning, Starlight would finally realise she could do so much better, finally put into words what Trixie knew she had been thinking after every malfunctioning spell, every crazy idea gone awry, every badly chosen word, every broken teacup.

That time is gone. It's gone, and it's never coming back.

Trixie smiles as she closes her eyes again, and those ghosts evaporate from around the bed. All of them. Every last one. Gone.

"The Great and Powerful Trixie," she murmurs to nopony in particular, "is happy."

Trixie drifts back to sleep.