//------------------------------//
// Seeking Forgiveness? 
// Story: Unforgivable? 
// by SparklingTwilight 
//------------------------------//

"(Author's Note: Intentional open quotes, also related to the 'tense' situation)


"Par-dolomite!" Trixie laughs, aurally mangling the word 'pardon' into a bizarre rock-pun after she belches.

"Not gneiss. But it may be fine-grained enough for an apology."

"No schist!" Trixie spills some of her whiskey-infused tea, soaking doilies light, lying on the table.

Maud rolls her eyes in response. "Not as strong in terms of hardness and hilariousness. A weak pun, about random rocks; but, I grant it is an effort."

"Oh, ho ho," Trixie drunkenly chuckles. "You're the rock expert; but Trixie is shore-sure to dazzle you with Trixie's m-magic!"



Together, Trixie and Maud clash their teacups in a triumphant splashing gesture--most of its flair coming from showpony Trixie rather than from geologist Maud, but Maud smiles coyly as the third teacup in their triumvirate receives some of her strategically splashed tea. Beside that teacup sits Boulder, Maud's pet rock, motionless as always. Trixie... accepts the rock and acknowledges it with a nod. 

Then, Trixie and Maud consume their whiskey-infused tea and rest their cups beside teacake slices. Those delectables rest atop tea-towels (rather than plates) since Maud's clean dishes had smashed during the Great and Powerful Trixie's powerfully inebriated juggling demonstration, colliding mid-air with rock-hard corundum-constructed utensils that Trixie could not possibly have realized possessed such cutting power.

The drinks go down well. The whiskey bottle Trixie brought is emptied, while emotional spirits remain full.

But Trixie takes jubilation too far. Totally trashed, the Great and Powerful Trixie stands on her hind legs and gestures grand, plunging into performance spiel. "Now, my Maud, my merry Maud, lemme do somethin' else- it's cool." 

"That's... not... nece-" Maud raises a forehoof, signalling for Trixie to not do anything more. But Maud's reactions are slower than usual, even though there are two of her visible in Trixie's blurred vision--to be fair, though, Trixie notes a multiplicity of one does not increase one's speed. Alcohol has those effects. And alcohol also has the effect of making Trixie pay even less attention to somepony else's actions than Trixie usually does.

"Watchthis. Hold my cake."Ref Trixie presses her oh-so-delicious teacake slice and barrier tea-towel into Maud's hoof, then Trixie steps back, jumps onto the table, rearing up on her hind legs and making a grand gesture that reveals Maud's teacup ensconced within Trixie's hoof. "Didn't see it jump up, right?" Trixie steps gingerly around the table's edge, teetering, then falling face flat off the table onto the ground, teacup slipping from Trixie's hoof and striking another on the table, knocking it off--narrowly avoiding Maud's pet rock--and smashing both cups. 

Shaking her head and recovering, with a bold blue bruise forming across her forehead, Trixie blinks, alcohol blunting the full brunt of the pain--for now. "No mattah, I can make another. Just learned a goad-g-good spell. Even better than jug-jug-juggling or ig-lusion Just need s-something with sommat s-s-similar mass or scythes-size." 

Trixie hunts around on the table and locates a good target--Boulder's cake slice. Boulder wouldn't eat it anyway. So Trixie casts the spell. But to her eyes, Boulder is where the slice is and the slice is in Boulder's location. Boulder becomes a teacup.

"Trixie! Stop!" Maud shouts--late.

"Oh, schist!" Trixie blinks, noticing that the cake slice remains. "I'll try again."

"What. Did You. Do. To Boulder?" Maud demands, grabbing Trixie by her neck.

"Whaaaaa?" Trixie asks.

Maud twists Trixie's entire body to stare at the teacup.

"Heyyyy, gotta teacup. See?"

"That's Boulder," Maud declaims.

"Really?" Trixie squints.

"Turn him back." Maud releases Trixie.

"Uh," Trixie dissembles, and Trixie backs up and laughs. "Certainly." She concentrates. "Not teacup. Not teacup. Not teacup!" Sweat breaks out across her face.

"Uh," Trixie continues, changing tactics. "Rock. Rock. Rock."

"His name's Boulder," Maud says.

"Sure. Boulder. Moulder. Soldier." Nothing happens. Trixie swallows and stops.

"Turn him back now," Maud demands.

A pause.

"You don't know how--"

"Of gours-course the Great and Gowerfu-Powerful Trixie knows how to t-transfigure, to manipulate this rock--Boulder," Trixie amends.

"Then do it."

"Um," Trixie blinks. "He d-doesn't want to turn back. He l-likes being a teacup." 

Maud blinks.

"Look how fun he can be." Trixie picks up the Bouldercup gingerly by its handle and mimes drinking from it. "You can even taste bits of him as the lacquer eventually degrades."

"Take your hooves off my friend," Maud demands.

Trixie gently places Boulder back on the table.

"Uhm," Trixie dissembles, and not thinking straight, turns and gallops off crookedly zig-zagging this way and that to find a solution. She vomits once, twice, during her journey.

Maud stares after her. At least she probably does, Trixie hypothesizes that if Trixie looks back, she could probably see the stare.

Soon enough, Trixie barges into the castle where Starlight resides, races to Starlight's room and sidles toward its fainting couch, where Starlight snoozes. Trixie watches, catches vomit in Trixie's powerfully itching throat, then clears it. Starlight snores. . . . There's no time to wait for Trixie's great and powerful friend to naturally awaken, so Trixie kicks one of the couch's legs.

Starlight, eyes fluttering ajar, stops mid-snore: "Wha?"

Trixie starts to explain herself. "I-I don't think I gan-can be f-friends with Maud anymore."

Starlight blinks. "What happened?"

Trixie gives a Great and Emotionally Powerful explanation of the situation.

"Okay..." Starlight narrows her eyes, then nods. "I can fix this." Trixie leads Starlight back to Maud's cave where Maud is staring, sadly, at Boulder.

Trixie enters with a laugh. "Hi-ho-cheerio M-Maud!"

No response.

Trixie continues, "I was j-just you know, walking around while you get used to the new living arrangements situation with Bouldercup and I hap-happened to find Starlight Glimmer--look--your other friend!"

Maud blinks at Starlight, stares at Bouldercup, the teacup, then back at Trixie.

"Heh-heh," Trixie chuckles, proud of herself.

Starlight looks at Maud and scratches her mane. "So, Maud. I've heard Boulder's been trying out... life... as a teacup."

"Fix it." Maud points at the teacup. "He's in pain."

"Pain?"

"Boulder has no mouth, and yet he must scream."

"Okay..." Starlight concentrates.

"I can feel his suffering--his emotions. This change of state is terrifying."

Starlight, without too much trouble, manages to zap the pet rock back to its-his normal, round-ish boulder form.

"Thank you." Maud nods at Starlight. Then she stares, penetratingly, at Trixie, who blushes effusively.

"All is well, of course," Trixie chuckles.

Maud stares at Trixie. "Do you want to say something?"

"How are you feeling?"

Maud shakes her head.

"Annoyed?" Trixie guesses.

Maud nods her head affirmatively.

"But why? Everything is fine now."

"Creatures, especially friends, usually have something quite specific to say when a situation like this has occurred."

Trixie thinks for a moment, then she smiles, ridiculously wide, and claps large thudding claps in Starlight's direction: "Of course! Great work, Starlight! Good job!"

Starlight frowns and places a hoof to her forehead, then walks over and whispers in Trixie's right ear: "She's looking for an apology."

Trixie recoils in horror. "B-ut why?"

Maud looks over at Boulder, then back at Trixie. "Boulder suffered."

"But it was an accident."

"I know," Maud nods.

Trixie tries to say something, but she can't. The words are so foreign, so wrong. It's not like when she apologized to Starlight for ignoring Starlight's feelings--that was experienced and said during everyday life; this was experienced during a show! A showpony rarely admits defeat during a display, even when something goes wrong--she makes it right. And that's that; everypony's entertained. To admit error is to--to fail.

Maud waits a long time. 

"I've got a dinner with Twilight." Starlight Glimmer eventually says, clipped, uncomfortable, fast, breaking the silence. She pats Trixie on the great and powerful mare's shoulder. 

Maud and Trixie stare at each other for quite a while, even after Starlight's hoofsteps recede.

Trixie swallows hard, but her throat is parched and her battered face-planted face is starting to sting now that the alcohol has begun wearing off and she can't say the words. Dry-mouth. She closes her eyes, hangs her head. Some time later, her eyes peek open. Now that she's slightly more sober, she really, really, really wants to say she's sorry, but Maud is gone.

Maud doesn't speak to Trixie after that.



"




After having narrated and acted out the scenes with well-upholstered puppets demonstrating what happened in the present tense, a stratagem perhaps intended to affect Trixie's listeners to more readily accept that she admonished herself for her terrible behavior, Trixie concluded her performance. Huffing and puffing, she stood before several ponies: Maud, Starlight Glimmer, and Maud's sister Pinkie Pie, whose mouth hung wide open.

"And thus by hubris was a friendship shattered." Trixie's eyes teared up.

"Trixie--thinks, I know I could say those words"--the ones she couldn't say before. "--But it has become too late for merely that gesture at this point. Trixie realizes something more is required. ..." Trixie looked around at the gathered audience.  "Here is what you deserve. At least for a start."

Trixie set off fireworks which went streaking high into the sky where they exploded, spelling: "I'm sorry, Maud, for you know what, from Trixie." Ponies across the countryside who looked to the sky could see the grandiose words, for kilometers around. And Trixie hung her head, concluding her morality tale performance and collapsing to her knees in obeisance.

There was a long silence. Maud looked up at the brilliantly blossoming fireworks, then back at Trixie, then back at the fireworks.

"Fine." Maud blinked her eyes. "Now, apologize that same way to Boulder." She indicated her pet rock with a nod. "He was also physically harmed." Boulder, just as jagged as he'd been weeks before, sat, expressionless.

Trixie blinked. And bit her lower lip. Materials for those fireworks had been expensive. The manufacture had taken time. And, Boulder was a rock--a non-sentient near-figment-of-Maud's imagination because Maud didn't have many friends so she had hallucinated herself into thinking she could feel the emotions of a rock--perhaps filling a void in her heart and--Trixie took a deep breath. Trixie, although she was Great and Powerful, also did not have many friends. She counted Maud among them.

"Of course," Trixie curved the bite up into a smile. 

Then, she and Maud embraced.