Mmm. So warm... The sun beat its loving embrace upon her window, heating her poor abused form to a comfortable, muscle-relaxing temperature. So many hours of spell practice and theory had made her whole body ache and feel as stiff as stone.
Wait.
Trixie bolted upright in her bed, looking around at her surroundings in a watchful guard. Everything seemed hauntingly familiar, but it all taunted her with how it was so subtly wrong. Her room looked like some campus dorm, and a particularly high-end one at that. Almost palatial. The showmare looked down at herself, seeing her former raw and gangly teenaged form once more.
Her room looked like a bookworm lived in it, with none of the touches she would have put in. None of the curtains that she liked which should be shimmering like the night skies, not a black carpet in sight, her bed was some soft and frumpy thing, and there wasn't a sign of a board holding any admirer's letters to her. Why, only a few pieces of her inheritance were visible. Not her hat, or her cape, nor her mother's keepsakes, not even a- there was her picture!
Trixie snatched up the framed image with the ferocity of a drowning mare, staring into one of the few pictures she had of her mother. Her dear, sweet, beloved mother, who busily was making bunny motions with both her hooves behind Trixie's head as they posed for the picture in the Manehatten Grand Theatre. It was a nearly perfect duplicate, save for the frame. Instead of the minimalist black frame, it was blue and studded with glittering stars. Trixie jerked her head back up from her musing, finding that her 'room' had twisted to fit her tastes while she had looked away.
"A dream. Has to be a dream, but Trixie hasn't been able to have once since-... why?"
The showmare's door slammed open in an adorable flurry of purple pony power. The interloper launched herself like a ballista at Trixie, tackling her in an instant and pinning her to the lusciously soft bed in an all-consuming glomp. A filly! Wait, not just any filly, but-
"Trixie-Trixie-TRIXIE-TRIXIE!" The pint-sized reproduction of Twilight chanted the showmare's name over and over, scaling up and down the musical scale as she did. And she hopped on Trixie's chest like a little purple locust would hop from plant to plant. Trixie knew it had to be a dream; nopony could be that inaccurate in depicting Twilight.
Finally, Trixie formed a barrier between her chest and the dream-Twilight so she could irritatedly question her. "Yes!?"
The dream rendition of Twilight stopped suddenly, her posture wilting as if she had been scolded by her mother. Though she still jittered with energy, Twilight more politely danced from hoof to hoof instead of hopping up and down on Trixie. Then she noticed what Trixie had been holding before she had so rudely interrupted. With a further flurry of motion, Twilight slid over the edge of Trixie's shield, glomping her around the neck with all of her pint-sized might as she realized what Trixie might be feeling. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to-"
"Interrupt my musing on my mother's life and death? It's fine." Best to amuse whoever was playing with her dream. Without a fleshy body for her to end it with, she was stuck until they were done.
"D-did it hurt her?"
"Other than dying? No, I think not. She seemed more frantic for my sake than her own." Trixie set the fake photo down so she could take the time to remember how... sad her mother had been. She had tried so hard to say something, or do something as she had dissolved into that damnable blue mist to be blown away. Trying to give her one last lesson?
"Well, I guess so. She did somehow teleport you through the campus shield spells somehow. I guess she really wanted you to attend." Twilight clung to Trixie, breathing softly into the powder blue fur of the showmare's neck. Even when Trixie sat up in confusion.
That wasn't how it had happened. Her mother had spent all of her energy trying to tell her something, trying to speak one last time. Why change what had happened to teleporting her into the castle? What purpose would that have served?
"It could have been worse for her and you, Trixie. If she hadn't, you would have never have made it through the door. You're just as promising as little Twilight here. Perhaps moreso, with your talents for other race's magics." The graceful and majestic form of Princess Celestia glided into the room, alighting on the balcony as she was injected into the dream.
Trixie grumbled, squeezing Twilight's bear-hug off of herself with an oddly reflexive motion of her hooves between them. Clearing her throat, she tried to adopt a more poised pose for the illusion of the Equestrian monarch. "Yes, well, Trixie is quite well aware of how that would go. She finds being able to relax and the betterment of her knowledge to be a more comfortable life than that of a traveling showmare."
Twilight scuttled back from Trixie at the thought, looking on in abject horror. "But-but! That's horrible! You'd only be able to carry a few books with you!"
"Yes, yes it would be." Trixie pursed her lips in memory of her lonely travels.
Twilight hid her face behind her warding hooves, trying to hide from the possibility. The horror... the horror. All that work, all that lack of studying. No! "Wait! Wait! I almost forgot! You promised to show me how to cloud walk!" Twilight immediately perked up almost as if she had been given a Triple Pony Joe Espresso and began hopping around Trixie in anticipation.
"Trixie... did?" "Yes! Yes-Yes-Yes-Yes!"
"Trixie doesn't remember that." The showmare tapped her hoof against her chin in thought, wondering if she should or not. "Well, Trixie has nothing better to do."
"Yeeaaaaah!" Twilight's horn sparked with an involuntary magic release in her excitement, loving the prospects of learning a cool new magic.
Celestia put a hoof on Twilight's shoulder, calming the filly and keeping her from bouncing the softness out of Trixie's bed in her jubilation. "Well that is rather generous of you, Trixie. I'm curious to see how well you manage at teaching others."
Yes. The circumstances were coming back under Trixie's control. Just a little more manipulation and she could take her dream back and do a little questioning of her own. The showmare took a mock bow to Celestia, blowing an errant lock of mane back over her ear with a puff of breath as she did. "The Great and Powerful Trixie shall happily teach the Stupendous and Sensational Sparkle. That is, of course, if she could run along to the courtyard ahead of Trixie. Trixie has something to get ready before the lesson."
Twilight nodded her head hard enough to rattle her eyes before she shakily ran out the door to happily squeal in delight all the way to the ground floor.
Trixie exploded into action the second she thought that the Twilight simulacrum was out of hearing, weaving her dream magic to forcefully rip control away from the interloper. Chains of thought and will erupted from the walls and floors, wrapping the fake Celestia round and round until she was wrapped from hooves to neck. "Now that we're... alone, who are you and what are you trying to do in Trixie's dreams?"
"Somepony who cares very deeply, but whom can only do a few frightfully small things for you." The fake Celestia didn't resist, she didn't fight or struggle. She just sat there, head held low, with... tears? Why? "Somepony who is trying so very hard to help you, to let you dream. That is the real Twilight down there, branched into your dream."
"Why? Why would you torment Trixie?"
"Not torment. We give you this peace to strengthen the bond between you and the elements. You deserve these moments of happiness. It is the least... the least we can do to grant reparations for the misery we have caused thee. Our mistake cost thee most dearly." The form of the fake Celestia waivered as Trixie tried to force reality upon her and see through her veil. The impostor was NOT going to claim her mother's death and get away with it.
"Trixie's mother died by the fault of her own hoof, none other's!" Trixie scowled in fury, her horn arcing with energy as she brandished it at the false Celestia's throat intending to banish her.
"No, Trixie. Thy mother yet lives. Thou shalt know the truth, and soon. But for now, please rest and accept this gift for what it-"
Trixie flopped to the ground as she reemerged from the teleportation matrix. Twilight gleefully danced in victory all about her in the tiled courtyard, full of a child's happiness over her success. The drattable other mare had somehow teleported her through the dream, and had likely cost her her only chance to wring the truth from the interloper's neck.
"Trixie, Trixie, TRIXIE-TRIXIE! I did it! I'm amazing!" Twilight yammered all around Trixie, moving fast enough to seem like she was teleporting as she hopped up time and time again. A little cloud sat to one side where the filly had pulled it from high above, shadowing a rather beautiful patch of flowers.
Well, if it really was Twilight, then Trixie figured she might as well enjoy being the mature and responsible one for once. Somepony had to. Putting on a neutral face for Twilight, she played up to the part she had been assigned in the dream. "So you did. But the Stupendous and Sensational Sparkle should remember not to teleport others without warning or permission. It is very rude to do."
Twilight's eager face drooped into a frown and sorrowful pout as Trixie delivered her admonishment. "I'm sorry."
"It's no matter. Just don't ever do it again." Trixie hopped up onto the ground-bound cloud, letting it sink to the level of the walkway from her weight. It wasn't really to regulation size, if she remembered the primers on pegasus magic her mother had gotten her. But as she laid down on it, it still felt as good as ever. "Now then, let's see how hard this shall be. When I say 'go', you jump on w-"
Twilight sprinted up for a running leap, sailing up and over the edge spread eagle with her first attempt as she glittered with the energy from the spell she had already cast. POOMPHT! Cloud met filly, then ate filly, then introduced wet filly to pavement in a bone-jarring belly flop against the marble tiles. Trixie tried not to twitch at the sound, hoping Twilight wasn't too badly hurt.
Dejectedly, Twilight achingly emerged from the base of the cloud, earning a belly-busting chuckle-fest from Trixie with her appearance. When the little filly turned all the way around, Trixie couldn't help herself any longer and nearly fell off of her cloud laughing at the sight of Twilight's new facial features. Wiping tears of mirth from her eyes as she clutched her aching sides, Trixie did her best to not sound condescending and mocking as she spoke. "At least one part of the spell went right!"
"What?" Twilight rubbed at herself, discovering flecks of cloud sticking to her fur. Then Trixie conjured a mirror of water for Twilight to inspect herself with. The massive white beard of clinging fluff hung down to around Twilight's hooves, turning her into Old Mare Twilight much to their amusement.
"Good on the 'make the cloud stick to you' part, but unfortunately for now Trixie must fail you in the subjects of altering cloud density and structure." Trixie began to pull tuffs of Twilight's cloud-beard free, throwing them into the air where they hung suspended mid-flight around them.
"Wait, I could have sworn I copied the spell you used to sit on that exactly!"
"Trixie is using actual pegasus magic."
"You big rotten cheater."