As a magician, Trixie was Great and Powerful. As a guidance counselor, Trixie was Great and Inspiring. (Her performance review said so. Verbatim, even!) As a paperwork fill-outer, Trixie was Lethargic and Toiling.
Paperwork was so simple she didn’t even need to physically move — levitation and a quill could do the trick — yet it was so exhausting. All she needed to do was simply glance at the paper and instantly she’d rather be somewhere, anywhere else, while attempting to actually do it was like dragging herself through mud while her attention was constantly diverted by far more interesting things, like that cute little spiral pattern in the wood of her desk or the fly buzzing around her head. Trixie wasn’t even sure how it was possible for quill movement to be so hard, yet it was.
And that was how she found herself slouching over her desk, glaring at the paper in front of her. A form for Gallus’s latest appointment, it taunted her like an unsolved trick, something she was so close to figuring out but simply couldn’t. Trixie wanted nothing more than to rip it to shreds, burn the pieces, and dance on the ashes, but Starlight insisted that Trixie (shudder) do actual work. Too much of Twilight had rubbed off on that mare.
Trixie stabbed the paper with a dry quill again. It did not scream in pain. It was soulless and couldn’t feel the tiniest bit of pain, much like hecklers.
It wasn’t even like she didn’t know what to say. Gallus had just wanted some help with sorting out electives. So why couldn’t she actually write that?! What was it about writing that drained her will so thoroughly? It was like writing itself was some kind of vampiric concept, sapping the life from her, which didn’t say good things about all the many, many ponies who could write just fine without apparently being drained.
Trixie blew the paper away with a snort and slouched back in her chair. With writing repelling her attention like a magnet, her attention instead found its way to illusions. She held out her hoof and concentrated. A passable image of a teacup ploofed into existence on her frog. She was getting better, but the not-quite-opaque figure before her was still most unbecoming a Great and Powerful Anyone.
She scowled and attempted to toss the teacup away, but the mechanics of illusions meant it stayed right where it was. Letting it vanish, Trixie glared at the paper before her. As if paperwork was devoted to taking up as much time as possible, the form was structured enough that dictation spells wouldn’t work on it. The date needed to go here, her name needed to go, a bunch of boring administrative stuff needed to go here, here, and here, and also over there, and here, and here, here, plus here, and… She couldn’t just ramble something off and have it go in the right spot. (And Starlight had turned down her appeals for that, as well. Not only was Twilight rubbing off, the rubbing off appeared to be permanent. Would she continue to beguile Trixie so into eternity? Curse her.)
What Trixie needed (most certainly did not just want, Trixie only wanted things she needed) was some way to analyze the forms and let her plug her own words in, which would then be dictated in the right places. But there were lots of different kinds of forms (which made Trixie’s skin crawl just thinking about them), and forms might change in the future, so this was a one-size-fits-absolutely-nothing situation. There were so many variables, she’d be all but fully developing her very own arcane intelligence. Not to fill out all her paperwork, of course; she wouldn’t inflict that torture on her second-worst enemy. The two of them alternating forms would be good enough. Maybe she should just go ahead and make a second Trixie. It’d be an easy start and there weren’t many better things for the world to have two of, after a-
An idea came to Trixie in a flash and she sat bolt upright. She held up her leg as her horn sparked. A teacup appeared on her hoof as a grin appeared on her face.
“You wanted to see me, Counselor?” asked Ocellus.
“Indeed,” Trixie said, nodding gravely. “This is of utmost importance. Why don’t you take a seat?”
Ocellus sat down across from Trixie, her eyes wide and her wings buzzing. Much to her chagrin, Trixie couldn’t tell whether that was anxiety or eager anticipation.
“So.” Trixie cleared her throat. “You know Princess Moondog.”
Ocellus blinked in surprise, then wiggled a hoof. “Not as much as I’d like, but she still comes around to chat from time to time.”
“An arcane creation of unparalleled brilliance,” continued Trixie. “Something beyond even Twilight’s grasp.”
“Except for that series Twilight wrote about-”
“Beyond Twilight’s grasp!” (Ocellus twitched and gave a quiet squeak of surprise.) “Anyway, Princess Moondog was… a success, to put it mildly. Enough of one to replace Luna herself.”
Ocellus cocked her head. “I know. Why are you telling me this?”
Trixie took a deep breath and leaned forward. “How’d you like to take part in a special project?”
“I… What?”
“Trixie would like to learn just how Moondog ticks,” she enunciated. “It’s not very often that one experiences genuine paradigm shifts in magic, and now we have one going through our dreams every night!” (Plus, it could help fill out forms. But Ocellus didn’t need to know that.) “Don’t you want to study something like that? Someone like that?”
Ocellus kept cycling through expressions, like she couldn’t decide whether to be terrified, ecstatic, or confused. Eventually, she managed to swallow. In a voice higher-pitched than her usual, she said, “You just said it was beyond Twilight’s grasp!”
“It is!”
“So why’re you asking me for help?”
“Because you’re the smartest student in the school?”
“Yes, but that’s just in friendship studies! And, okay, magic theory electives. And some outside studies. And-” Ocellus quickly shut her mouth before the hole she was digging herself got any deeper. “That’s- not the sort of thing I know,” she finished. “…Much. I’m not as good at magic as Twilight. Not at all.”
“Yooou’ll get eeextra creeeeediiiiit!” singsonged Trixie, ignoring that last statement.
But Ocellus shook her head. “Headmare Starlight says I’m not allowed to do extra credit anymore. I already do so much I’m throwing off the grading curve.”
“…Trixie thought we didn’t grade on curves.”
“We don’t. That’s how bad it is.”
“Hmm.” Trixie sat back and stroked her chin. “Well. This is proving difficult.” Expected, but difficult. Why was it so hard to find someone who knew how to deal with a unique example of cutting-edge magic?
“Um.” Ocellus cleared her throat. “Haven’t you asked Headmare Starlight? She helped Twilight with that… treatise.”
“Well, I can’t blame you for wanting to cut down on your workload,” Starlight chuckled as she glanced at her overflowing outbox. (How was her inbox empty?!) “We should probably consider other avenues than creating life-”
“Trixie is open to other roads and paths and all forms of conveyance,” Trixie stated. “This was merely her first idea.”
Starlight snorted in amusement. “Anyway, I’m bored and I’ve got some free time-”
“Oh, thank you, Starlight!” Trixie leapt forward and immediately began vigorously shaking Starlight’s hoof. “Trixie is forever in your debt! And this shan’t only be for ourselves! Nay, together we shall accomplish something even Twilight Sparkle, even Celestia herself, has not!” (Maybe just because they hadn’t tried yet, true. But Trixie wasn’t one to let the facts stand in the way of a good performance.)
“-once you get me this week’s followup reports,” continued Starlight, yanking her hoof from Trixie’s grasp. “I just need to file them, and we can be on our way.”
Trixie’s effusive gushing immediately snap-froze into brittle silence.
Starlight facehooved. “Trixie…”
“Trixie will get to them eventually! At some point in the future! Possibly not the near future, admittedly! Probably not! But eventually! Why do you think she wants to do this?”
Far too much of Twilight had rubbed off on that mare. Including the capacity for steely glares.
“Her schedule proved untenable,” declared Trixie.
“Then what about Vice Principal Sunburst? He might even know the theory better than Headmare Starlight.”
“Oh, wow, really? With, with me? That’s incredible! I’d love to help! You know, I, I worked with Twilight and Starlight on this exact topic ages ago — I don’t think Moondog was even a year old yet!”
“That’s great, but-”
“I was blown away by the, by the spells in her, and since they’re, you know, they’re self-modifying, I can’t even imagine what they look like now. It could take ages to take apart! But that’s true of any intelligence if you, if you think about it. How many moons does it take for, for a pony to start talking? It’s possible Moondog only developed so quickly because she was a, a mental golem to begin with…”
“…That’s ve-”
“Anyway, did you have any, any place you wanted to start? Spells, I mean. A dictation spell, I guess. But, but which one? Not one of the basic ones. Not even one of the more advanced ones, technically, I suppose. I, I mean, the only way we can get dictation spells to work is by simplifying the flow of information going to them- You’ve heard of, of Oiler’s Information Modulation, right?”
“Oiler’s What?”
“Well, of course you have, you couldn’t be doing this if you hadn’t. But, see, a fill-out-forms spell would actually need to take information from, from two distinct sources, your voice and the, the actual paper. Oh, and the sources are of two different kinds, so we’re also running afoul of informational unit unlikeness pressure… Oh, but I bet we can adapt them with Pearlescent’s Mana Knitting, Mambo’s Multitasking Magic — we might need some prisms for thought fracturing — a few clumps of rosemary, and some clarity potion from Zecora. That’ll cost us at least two hundred and fifty bits, but that’s a small price to, to pay for efficiency, right? And that was just the easy part! You said you wanted to adapt it for, for other forms, right? Well, that’s a whole ’nother ball game! Where does that metaphor come from? I never, never really thought about it. Anyway, we’ll also need- H-hey, where’re, where’re you going?”
“He was less than helpful,” Trixie said.
“Then what about Moondog herself?”
Fortunately, thanks to years as a performer, Trixie was excellent at hiding spontaneous embarrassment.
With Ocellus pointing her at the right books, it didn’t take Trixie (too) long to find some halfway-decent looking dream spells. In fact, they were pleasant-surprisingly similar to her own non-arcane magic tricks; it was just that reality was the one looking in the wrong direction rather than ponies. And getting the audience to look in the wrong direction was the hardest part of a magic trick, but it was the default state of being in dreams, so that was a win, there. Easy. Lucid dreaming itself was a bit trickier, but she was able to finagle some help from Starlight (who wasn’t very pleased about being woken up at one in the morning for some reason) and get a somewhat slapdash charm put together. It wasn’t great, but it’d work for a week or so.
When she went to bed that hour after midnight, Trixie did her best to slip into the performer state of mind. She was the center of everything. She had the audience’s attention. All of this, the dream’s very existence, was all about her. (Granted, that was true much of the time. This was just moreso.) With a little bit of luck, that would help lucidity kick in once she was actually asleep.
And so it was. One slip out of consciousness later, Trixie found herself in her cart — a much larger version of her cart, where the interior was the size of a shack. (Although the only reason that wasn’t reality was because spatial-expansion spells kept eluding her.) Now, to call on Moondog.
Dreams being thoughtspace, messenger spells worked a bit differently than in matterspace. If you thought hard enough about the subject (yes, really) while weaving the right magic, it would create a disturbance in the fabric of the collective unconsciousness that would draw its target to you. It had some catches; namely, your target needed to have as little physical presence as possible and you yourself needed a strong will. But Moondog only ever existed in dreams and Trixie’s will was nothing if not mighty, so no problems there. As she worked the spell, Trixie gave herself a little bit of a mental kick using an ancient technique known across the ages: voicing her thoughts aloud.
“Um. Hellooooo?” she called out into the air. “Princess Moondog? Are you there? I’m… doing the thing. Creating a… psychic magnetic core or whatever claptrap it was called. How come those terms sound old? I didn’t even know any dream magic before tonight and they sound old! Anyway, I’d… like to speak with you. Sooooo… if you could stop by… that’d be great.” She remembered to add, “Thanks.” The spell felt right. And just about every book on dream magic she’d read (both of them) said that the spell feeling right was the most importa-
“I should probably stop doing this,” a voice said. Trixie twitched and spun around. Moondog was lounging in the air behind her with her mane as a hammock, looking for all the world like she belonged there (which, technically, she did). “People’re gonna get it into their heads that they can just ring a bell whenever and I’ll come right over. And, sure, that’s true now, but I might be busier in a few years or decades. Or get a lot of people ding-a-linging at the same time.” She shrugged. “Ah, well.”
“Greetings, Princess,” Trixie said, bowing. She had no problem with giving the proper heir some respect, at least.
“Yo, peasant,” said Moondog, giving Trixie a wave. Suddenly, she was standing up straight on the floor without actually moving at all. “So!” she said, drawing herself up to her full height (which hadn’t changed from their encounter at the Gala). “Nice to see you again, but you called me here for a reason, so what do you need?”
“It’s not much-” began Trixie.
“Yes it is, or you wouldn’t be asking for help,” Moondog said, very very fast.
Trixie scowled, then continued, “Do you, by any chance, know how you…” She gestured vaguely at Moondog. “…work?”
Moondog frowned and flicked an ear. “Well… It’s… I mean, that’s a really big area. What do you mean, ‘work’? Language processing? Pattern recognition? Energy management? Inter-dream transport? Vivacity? Half-baked attempts at wit?”
“All of the above,” Trixie declared confidently.
What did it take to flabbergast someone who lived in dreams? Because whatever it was, Trixie had clearly just passed it (an accomplishment she might’ve been proud of if not for the lack of progress on what actually mattered to her). Moondog’s flabber had been thoroughly gasted. One of her ears was drooping so much it was actually losing coherence, while her tail seemed like it was ready to just flicker out of existence. “…Pardon?” she forced out, somehow making it sound like a curse.
“All of the above,” repeated Trixie. “Trixie knows she didn’t stutter, because Trixie never stutters.”
Moondog blinked at Trixie. Then she grabbed Trixie’s head and jerked it to one side so she could look up Trixie’s ear. “Wow!” Moondog declared, her voice echoing. “It’s so empty!” Before Trixie could protest, Moondog had dissolved, flowed into her ear, come right out the other, and reformed, covered in dust. “See?”
“Trixie is serious,” Trixie pouted, scratching at her ear. Who knew having a golem leak out of it could be so itchy? “She has a… complex task she wishes to automate. You were created to automate a complex task. Trixie wishes to have a similar… person to you to help her with her work.”
Moondog snorted. “You know it took Mom, like, moons to make me, right? And she wasn’t even starting from scratch. And the whole self-awareness thing was an accident. Meaning whatever you’re making it for, it’ll probably take half a year, at the minimum, and it might not even work when you’re done. Are you really going to save that much time working on this?”
Did the time she spent trying to force herself to do paperwork count? Trixie thought it did. And, you know what, it deserved a multiplier. For… mental stress. Yeah. That was it. Run the numbers, and… “Absolutely!”
“Ay yai yai…” Moondog flexed her wings. “Look, there’s… a lot, I mean, a lot of stuff going on in here.” She pointed at her temple. “It’s not like I can just give it to you in one night.”
“Trixie has time!”
“Yeah, but I don’t. Maybe I could’ve done this last year, but…” Moondog blocked herself with her wings. When she pulled them back, she was as tall and graceful as Celestia. “Princess. I have duties,” she said in a heavenly voice. “What, did you expect me to drop them at a moment’s notice just because you asked nicely? Don’tanswerthat,” she added quickly.
It was only by a little, but Trixie’s confidence was waning. Still, maybe she could recover it. “But you’re the greatest example of this sort of magic in the world,” she wheedled. Appealing to her ego always helped (she forced herself to admit). “Surely you can help me, even a little?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Moondog shrank back down to her usual size. “I don’t have the time for it. Equestria’s a big place and you’re a small part of it, much as you’d like to think otherwise.” (Trixie fought her reflexes and managed to not say something uncouth.) “Look, out west, the terrashots are getting all explodey out of season and Fawkes is on edge. It’s not super urgent, but if this is all you’ve got, I really oughta get over there and soothe some detonational phobias.”
Trixie’s conscience twinged slightly. Her issue was important, of course it was, but… could she really pull Moondog from even more important issues? …Okay, yes. Yes, she could. But she’d actually feel guilty about it in the morning. “Very well,” she said. “Trixie will… think about what you’ve said.” (Thinking about it for two seconds qualified as thinking about it!) “Go to your work.” She gestured vaguely off behind Moondog and wished she knew the best way to gesture in an upper-dimensional direction.
Moondog shrugged as she began fading out of existence. “Yeah, sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.” Her silhouette threw up a salute in the last half-second before she vanished completely. “Adios, amiga.”
Sigh. Trixie pouted at the space where Moondog had been. She’d just wanted some help with constructing an artificial intelligence from scratch. Was that too much to ask? And now here she was, left with nothing to show for it, lucid, and the entire night still before her. Phooey.
It wasn’t long before curiosity overtook Trixie and she found herself rummaging around her not-cart. All of the stuff she remembered was there, plus some stuff she didn’t remember, and even stuff that she wasn’t sure was stuff at all, making it almost definitely dreamstuff. Being surrounded by all that stuff sent her mind whirring, and she soon found herself tinkering. Maybe she could plan some tricks for the school talent show. (As the host! The Great and Powerful Trixie wouldn’t dream, hardy har, of showing up the students.)
Perhaps the night before hadn’t yielded any fruit, but Trixie was nothing if not… well, Great and Powerful, to be honest. After that, self-assured. After that, driven. But! If you ignored all of those, Trixie was nothing if not- Wait, nothing if not extravagant, right between self-assured and driven. But after that, persistent. Trixie was quite a persistent mare. So what was one refusal from a princess? She could ask again and again and again and… until Moondog agreed to help.
So as much as Trixie enjoyed reclining on Twilight’s old throne in front of the Cutie Map (both in dreamland and realityland), eventually she started weaving the summoning spell again. “Hello, Princess,” she said to the air. “Sorry to bother you again, but I’m hoping you have the time tonight. Thanks.” As last night’s practice had given Trixie some experience, tonight’s version came more easily. The spell quickly coalesced and she sent it off.
After several moments, the images on the Map flickered, turned purple, and suddenly gathered themselves together to become Moondog. She was looking down at Trixie disapprovingly, and was she a bit taller than usual? No matter. Trixie smiled, opened her mouth-
“Still no time to help you with the automaton.”
-and closed it.
“What were you expecting?” That nightmares suddenly wouldn’t exist anymore?” Moondog asked, slouching on the air and propping her head up with a hoof.
“It could be a calm night!” Trixie protested.
“Maybe. Nooooot likely. Equestria’s a big place.” Moondog tapped the Map beneath her with her tail; it flickered back to life again, this time with a floating scale marker. “There’s always gonna be nightmares somewhere. And the terrashots are still exploding.” Out west in the Soneighran Desert, a few tiny little explosions poofed up, followed by an image of Moondog’s head appearing and orbiting around them.
Moondog decohered and flowed onto the top of Trixie’s throne. “Besides, making an automaton for a certain task is probably wildly different from recreating me, since I was made to make dreams, and you want to… What do you even want to use it for?”
“To help with paperwork.”
“…Y’know, I sympathize,” Moondog said as her tail twitched. “I really, really, really do. Like, really really, I can’t emphasize that enough. But ‘sympathy’ and ‘ability’ are not synonyms. It’s kind of a big deal to create life. Besides, I…” A snort. “Mom, I really should’ve led with this,” she muttered. “I don’t fully know how I work.”
Trixie sat up straight on the throne, which was awkward when Moondog was above and behind her. “Excuse me?” she asked, twisting around.
“I dunno how I work,” Moondog repeated. “I’d be just as clueless as you. Sorry.” Shrug.
“But you- are you!” Trixie protested. “How can you not know how you work?”
“Same way you’re not…” Moondog put on a pair of thin glasses and started reading from a slowly-unrolling scroll “…a brain surgeon. Or an anatomist. Or an orthopedist. Or a dietician. Or an occupational therapist. Or-”
“Trixie gets it.”
“-a hematologist. Or a pediatrician. Or a-”
“Trixie gets it.”
“-a podiatrist or an opthamologist or aphysiatristora-”Moondog’s voice sped up until it blurred into incomprehensibility. After a few moments, she glanced at Trixie and grinned. “And I’m not even halfway down the list!” She dropped the scroll; it slithered beneath the Map and curled up like a dog.
“Trixie just… thought…” Trixie’s voice trailed off. Ocellus had suggested it. Because she’d been put on the spot by the school counselor, hadn’t she? She was probably looking for a way out. (Granted, most people were intimidated by Trixie, but she’d hoped it wouldn’t be like that.) And she had the excuse of still being young — she was in school, after all. Yet Trixie had simply taken her response and run with it. Straight into a wall, and now she was feeling like quite the goober. Maybe even looking like it, too, shudder.
“What even put you onto this in the first place?” asked Moondog, sliding through the air to land back on the Map. “What in Mom’s name made you decide to develop a sapient automaton to help with paperwork?”
“It was just Trixie’s first idea!”
“Funny thing about ideas: your first idea is probably your worst idea, because it’s by definition the one that takes the least amount of thought. Please get another idea, if you are so able.”
“Well, it’s not- Hey!”
“Seriously, this isn’t going to work, I’m sorry. Badgering me about it won’t change a thing.” Moondog plopped onto her rump and fixed Trixie with an intense stare.
Eventually, Trixie conceded. “Fine,” she grumbled. She slouched into the throne. “Trixie will… consider other avenues.”
“Would help if I could help,” said Moondog. “Can’t. Sorry.” Although her words were terse, her voice did sound sympathetic. “Be seeing you.” She flicked a small salute and vanished into the Map’s hologram.
Thrones made for excellent brooding. So Trixie alternated between brooding and considering other avenues.
It was during the following day that the next avenue revealed itself and so that during that night’s dream, once the pirate ship had managed a somewhat even keel, Trixie cast the summoning spell again. It came far more easily this time; she didn’t even need to say anything to focus her mind. Smiling to herself, Trixie leaned against the gunwale and waited for Moondog to appear.
Except that, half a minute later, Moondog hadn’t shown up.
Another minute passed. Moondog continued to not show up. Trixie huffed and cast the spell again.
Several minutes went by, during which Moondog obstinately persisted in her absence.
Trixie frowned. She turned the spell over in her head. Was she doing it right? Absolutely. Maybe it was just a fluke? She cast it once again-
Lightning cracked and Moondog was standing on the deck. “You know,” she scowled, “I try to be patient, but I wasn’t built for it, so sometimes it’s hard. I am fighting against my very nature by being this patient with you.”
“And Trixie is fighting against her very nature by asking for help, but you don’t see her complaining!”
“You’re coming pretty darn close.”
“But Trixie has another idea,” Trixie plowed on. “If you could lend Trixie some of your energy to study-”
“So you want me to flense myself?”
It was amazing how much Trixie’s stomach could turn over when it technically didn’t exist.
“And were you planning on studying it in here-” Moondog tapped the air, producing ripples of distortion and a sound like ringing glass. “-where it would vanish the second you woke up, or out in the physical world, where it wouldn’t even fit with the same laws of physics?”
Trixie’s ears twitched up and down as she bobbed her head around. “Wwweeellllll…”
“Trixie, I’m sorry, but this isn’t happening. I’m not what you want. Have- Have you even read the study Twilight did on me?”
“Of course not. It’s far too bulky. Trixie refuses to read anything she cannot fit into her cart. Which is most things, she’ll have you know!”
“And maybe there’s a reason for that thing being so bulky!” snapped Moondog. “It’s- Read that, one book at a time. You can fit one book in your cart, right? It’ll set you on the right path. Just- I know that self-restraint scares you, but quit trying to contact me, or I’ll… I don’t know what I’ll do. Something. Bye.” And she was gone, just as a suspiciously well-timed wave smashed into Trixie.
With a sigh, Trixie wiped some of the water from her face. So a princess had advised her to quit it. Pshaw. Like Trixie would let something as meager as that halt her progress.
Moondog didn’t even bother with pageantry the next night, simply instantaneously appearing from nothing half a second after Trixie released the spell. “I told you to quit it,” she growled, her ears back.
“You did, but Trixie has one more-”
“Princess gonna bite you now.”
“What?”
Chomp.
“GAA-”
Trixie didn’t actually remember any pain upon waking up, but that didn’t make her any less greatly and powerfully peeved.
Another day, another sixteen-ish hours of waiting for it to be night so Trixie could sleep and talk to Moondog. (Starlight didn’t approve of worktime naps, not even to contact princesses. Curse that Twilight.) For once, the day was made worse by Trixie’s workload being light; if she had a lot to do, at least she’d have a distraction during work hours. But she only had one thing to do.
And what a thing it was.
Paperwork.
Trixie glared at the Reason for Visit section. Nothing she was putting together sounded right. It needed to be clear, concise, and not interminably dull. That last one remained the bane of her existence, or at least her progress. It was always that one, even as other fields became easier or harder. That one, that one, that one, the central idea, the one you’d always read, the one you had to get creative with to not die of boredom, the one you couldn’t get too creative with to avoid muddying the issue, the one where-
The air before Trixie cracked, causing her to jerk her head up in surprise. No-Longer-Princess Luna had appeared in front of the desk, her mane still flickering with sparks from her teleportation. Even devoid of her regalia, she was… well, regal. It was as if reality itself had gotten into the habit of having her be regal and was having trouble getting out of it.
Immediately, almost out of reflex, Trixie threw on a winning smile. “Ah! Luna. Do you have titles anymore? Or should I just call you ‘Ms.’? Ah, well. Why have you decided to grace yourself with my presence? I’m not complaining at all, of course! This is just so… unexpect… ed…”
Then Trixie’s grin slipped a little, for she saw how stony Luna’s face was.
“Ms. Lulamoon,” rumbled Luna. “You are incurring yourself upon my daughter, disrupting her duties in spite of her repeated entreaties that you desist. Not only are you harming the health of Equestria’s sleepers, however mildly and indirectly, you are annoying her. If you do not cease your vexations immediately…”
Trixie immediately felt Luna’s magic seize her mane and yank her forwards. At the same time, Luna leaned across the desk so they were muzzle-to-muzzle. It was funny how you never noticed just how heart-poundingly big the (former) princesses were until you were up close and personal with them.
“I will burn your heart in a fire,” the retired Mistress of the Night intoned.
“Duly noted,” Trixie squeaked, nodding like a bobblehead in a blender.
Luna glared mana hurricanes at Trixie for a few seconds more, then roughly shoved her back into her chair. She wasn’t even still before Luna had teleported out.
Trixie took a deep breath and reached up to put her mane back in position. Her hoof wasn’t shaking. No. Nuh-uh. Absolutely not. And even if it was, it wouldn’t be shaking that much. Certainly not. Nope. Just a little. Not enough to make her mane worse before she took another few breaths to steady herself. She was fine. She was fine. Not scared. At all. Definitely not eating some perspective pie. It wasn’t like a (totally justified!) desire to avoid some paperwork had escalated into-
…Oh, who was she kidding? She couldn’t even convince herself. She was trying to stare down Princess Luna. Wait, Not Princess Anymore Luna. But still an alicorn! And a big one! The second-biggest one! Basically a princess! The only princess Trixie had ever faced down was Twilight. Who… hadn’t been a princess at the time. Or even an alicorn yet. But still one of the greatest magical minds of her time. Did that count? Trixie said it counted!
…To… fail at facing down. In a magic duel where she hadn’t even used the magic of her oh-so-clever mind.
And since she was forgetting that, Trixie was obviously a counselor who needed some counsel.
…
…This was not Trixie’s day.
As if to punctuate that thought, the door opened up without anyone knocking and a unicorn who looked like she was learning how to be official strode in. Grinning, she dramatically yanked a scroll from her saddlebags, only to recoil when she saw Trixie’s shaken, thoroughly beaten state. “Hey, um. M-ma’am? Are y-”
“Trixie is not a ‘ma’am’!” Trixie reflexively shrieked. “Trixie is- Deep breaths, deep breaths,” she muttered, taking said breaths. “Trixie supposes she is a ‘ma’am’,” she admitted. “But she does not like it and… is having quite a bad day.”
“Erm.” The pony glanced at the scroll in her magic, then back at Trixie. “Sorry. What should I call you, then?”
“Your Great and Powerfulness,” Trixie replied. If she was going to be given an inch, she was going to take a mile. It was that sort of day.
“Then I’ll call you that, Your Great and Powerfulness.”
The pony’s voice was so completely devoid of sarcasm that it actually helped a little. Trixie picked herself up a little and smiled. “Thank you.” She pulled herself into the bearing more befitting a school counselor. “So what are you here for?”
“Well, uh…” The pony batted at the edges of the scroll. “I work for Princess Moondog, and after the last few nights-”
Trixie’s mood immediately curdled. “Oh, so Luna wasn’t enough?” she muttered, her ears back.
But the pony just blinked cluelessly. “Luna was here? And she… told you to stop?”
“Of course she was and of course she did! Why do you think I look like this?”
“Lady, I don’t even know you, maybe you’re always like that! I just know that Moondog never said a thing about Luna!”
“Then how did she know to come here?”
“Maybe she heard about it from Moondog and decided to take matters into her own hooves! I mean, it’s not my fault if Moondog happens to complain to her mom and that mom happens to get in the smiting mood of princesshood again to protect her daughter. It’s a good feeling, the smiting mood.”
Most unfortunately, the pony’s words were relatable and made some semblance of sense. Trixie quickly changed the subject. “Who are you, again?”
The pony blinked, then cleared her throat. “Like I said, I work for Moondog, and…” She waved her scroll. “I was going to smack this on your desk and dramatically say something like ‘you got served’, but now it feels like I’d be kicking a puppy. One of the even-cuter-than-usual ones, too. Either a husky or a corgi.”
Rather than point out that the cutest puppies were obviously labradors (Celestia, she needed to cuddle some right now), Trixie asked, “What is it?”
“An injunction. Her Nibs really wants you to quit it, Your Great and Powerfulness.”
“Let Trixie see.” Trixie snatched the scroll away and ripped it open. She skimmed through the legalese. Short version: don’t summon Moondog again for two moons or you’ll have to pay… “That’s a very big fine,” Trixie said quietly.
“Her Nibs really wants you to quit it, Your Great and Powerfulness,” repeated the pony.
“She doesn’t even use money! Where would it go?”
“My paycheck. The royal treasury. Maybe a few charities.”
Trixie snorted and pushed the scroll away. Not like she was going to contact Moondog after Luna’s visit, anyway.
“Anyway, yeah. Um.” The pony picked up the scroll again and put it back on Trixie’s desk. “Injunction served, and… I… guess I’ll be going now. I don’t know, I’m new at this.” She took a few steps back and tentatively waved. “Have a nice day, except for the restraining order, Your Great and Powerfulness.” And she was gone.
Not that that helped much. Now Trixie was alone, with the threat of an alicorn looming above her and a sunblasted court order sitting on the desk before her. It was simple to avoid the consequences — just not summon Moondog — but yeesh, it was so… impactful, getting both of those dropped on your head in the course of two minutes. Trixie tried taking a few deep breaths and doing her usual pre-show nerve-cooling exercises, but she kept seeing images of Luna in a powdered wig with a gavel labelled Skullcrusher.
Which, ironically, probably meant she would be seeing Moondog again tonight. To get rid of her nightmares. Super.
She couldn’t stay like this. She needed something to occupy her mind. Something that would take up absolutely all of her attention. Something that would force her to think of nothing else while she was engaged with it.
…Horror of horrors, that was her paperwork.
The idea was so terrifying that Trixie immediately knew it would work. Reluctantly, yet hastily, she pulled her current form to her and began filling it out. Words piled up in her mind, pushing out thoughts of mortal terror, and she forced them onto the paper through her quill. The constant cycle of information churned her mind until, by the time she’d reached the end, having an alicorn threaten her very life didn’t seem quite so bad. Or at least so near.
By the time she’d reached the end.
Trixie blinked. She’d completely filled out the form, just like that. Easy. Half in surprise, she read through her work again. Was it good? Yes, it was. Acceptable, at the very least.
Well. Almost like she didn’t believe it, Trixie slowly moved the form to her outbox and took the one from the top of her inbox. Wargavel-wielding Luna appeared in her head again, only for Trixie to muscle them as she recalled Patty Peppermint’s visit less than an hour before. And then another form was completed.
Existential terror might’ve been traumatizing, but at least it was a great paperwork motivator. For the moment.
…Hmm…