A lone unicorn walked along the long, crooked dirt road that ran through Whitetail Wood as the sun peeked over the treetops. She was unable to enjoy the serenity and stillness of the morning forest due to the perpetual clunking and rattling of the wagon behind her. The walls shook subtly with each turn of the wheels, producing a low clatter. Coupled with the faint squeak of the front axel, it made quite a racket when traveling alone in a quiet wood.
Though the noise became incredibly annoying at such times, the unicorn couldn’t complain. It had been built exactly to her design, right down to the placement of each nail and screw. She hadn’t built it herself of course, but had commissioned a carpenter in Hoofington to complete the project. Though he had concerns about several flaws in her plans, she refused to change a single thing. In the end she had gotten her way, as she always did.
Of course, because she had gotten her way, the cart was far more complex than it needed to be. The mechanisms that allowed it to unfold into a stage had a habit of springing back into place during shows, and reduced maneuverability of the front axel to the point where the unicorn could barely make a turn. Also, at her insistence, the walls, floor, and roof were constructed entirely out of solid oak. The resulting weight often caused the cart to sink into the muddy roads when it rained, making travel nearly impossible.
But she had still gotten her way, so despite having to lug around an expensive, faulty, and ludicrously heavy wagon, the Great and Powerful Trixie was satisfied.
However, there were other aspects of her life that she found unsatisfactory. She pondered them as she continued through the wood, searching for an answer that she was certain her brilliant intellect would eventually conjure. Her livelihood as a magician was the most pressing of these concerns. Trixie was still certain she was the greatest magician in all of Equestria, but for some reason her act wasn’t drawing quite so much attention as it used to. It was baffling to her. Even though the unicorn acknowledged she put a blemish on her reputation due to the Alicorn Amulet incident, Trixie thought that such a small misstep would have been forgotten by now.
The wagon suddenly gave a sharp shudder as it came to a halt. Trixie stood right before it, frozen in her harness. Her ears were thrust straight up as they caught the sound of the ruckus that lay only a short distance ahead. The mare’s eyes grew wide, her face donning a look of something halfway between curiosity and fear. The noise she heard was a mixture of several sounds--One being a deep, coarse voice that let out strained grunts and groans. There was a scuffling sound as well, as if the owner of the voice as struggling. Whatever it was fighting against smacked and sucked grotesquely.
It took only moments for Trixie to piece together what she was hearing, as it had happened to her cart several times. Someone was stuck in the mud.
******
Tarpan once again kicked his way to the overhanging roots, making a futile grab with his mud-caked hoof. It missed and fell back into the cold, black muck with a splat, sending gobs of soil into his face. The Neighanderthal gritted his muddied teeth and glared at the network of twisting tendrils. His frustration still burned strong, but was slowly giving way to fearful defeat. Tarpan knew and dreaded what would happen if he failed to escape. The muck around him suddenly seemed much colder as he remembered a pit of hot, sticky black stuff that lay at the foot of his tribe’s mountain. The bones of all sorts of creatures poked out of the sinister goop, pony skeletons among them.
The stallion impulsively tensed up for another attempt. He looked up to the roots and kicked, sending his body upwards. He felt the muck pull at his sides and drag him back down before he could even get a hold of the lowest one. With a suckering squelch the Neighanderthal fell forwards. Tarpan grimaced as he sunk up to his torso, shuddering as his hooves were sucked deep into the chilly earth.
“Hello?…”
Tarpan would have reared up in surprise if he had been able to. Instead he only managed to throw his head back, looking wildly around for the source of the voice. Even if he hadn’t known what it had said, the sound of another pony would have brought joy to him. It was close, he could tell, almost near the edge of the pit. The Neighanderthal began to cry out wildly. In his excitement he had forgotten the language of the Southlanders, and shouted in his own tongue.
Though in a dialect that hadn’t been heard in thousands of years, Tarpan’s words were enough to bring the pony running. A euphoric grin spread out across his muzzle as he heard hoof beats rushing over the ground to the pit. In another moment he saw an azure head poke out from the edge of the hole. It was the head of a horned mare, who stared down at him with a pair of wide magenta eyes.
******
Trixie blankly peered at the mud-covered pony at the bottom of the pit. The magician slowly cocked her head to one side as she saw him smile at her, her face scrunching up into a hesitant frown. There was something a little…off, about this pony but she wasn’t quite sure what it was.
“Um…Hello,” the mare said at last. The stallion below let out a sigh of relief, and then spouted off some of the unusual gibberish Trixie had heard moments before. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was a language, as to her it sounded like a series of rough grunts and whinnies. She came to the quick conclusion that it was not, because if it was she was certain that a pony as clever as she would at least be able to understand of the stallion’s garbling.
“Can you understand me?” she asked, slowly and carefully. The answer came surprisingly fast, with the stallion nodding vigorously. Trixie raised an eyebrow. The stallion, while apparently unable to speak Equestrian, could understand it. This seemed very unusual to Trixie, and for a few moments she just stared at the filthy pony. In those few moments, the unicorn reached another conclusion. She came upon it when she noticed the unusual features of the stallion; his wild, unkempt mane, his thick, shaggy coat, his inability to speak, and the fact that he was wallowing in a mud pit in a desolate forest…
Trixie realized that she had found a wild-stallion.
In her career as a traveling magician, Trixie had occasionally come across sideshows featuring wild-stallions, many of them from Borneigho. Their origins varied; some were abandoned as foals and raised by Timberwolves, others were once-normal ponies gone feral. They tended to attract a lot of attention, sometimes even more attention than her own marvelous show. What was even better was that with such attention, the exhibitors often accumulated a hefty sum of bits…
A smile slowly grew across Trixie’s muzzle as she looked down at the opportunity before her, her eyes lighting up with an eager twinkle.
“Excuse me,” she said, trying to contain the excitement in her voice, “But do you, ah…need some help getting out of there?” Again, the stallion nodded. Trixie’s smile turned into a beaming grin. “Alright, please hold on. I’ll be back shortly.”
The azure mare suddenly whirled around and giddily sprinted back to her cart. A gleeful giggle escaped her lips as she contemplated her future. Her own amazing abilities would still astound audiences for the most part, but the addition of the wild-stallion would give her something fresh to work with.
Of course Trixie knew that there would be necessary expenses in caring for the wild-stallion. He would need a proper cage--every wild-stallion Trixie had ever seen lived in a cage as they were generally unsafe, but until she had one she was confident that her own power would be enough to subdue him if he ever lifted a hoof against her. Besides, he’d seemed agreeable enough from what she’d seen, and as a bonus he understood Equestrian. That alone would make him even more amazing than the average wild-stallion.
The azure mare continued to ponder all the possibilities of her discovery as she reached her wagon, scrambling up the steps and throwing open the door.
“Rope,” she murmured under her breath as she dashed inside, “Rope, rope, rope…” Trixie began to dig through the cluttered mess of her cart, sorting through piles of silk handkerchiefs, trick cards, and other various props that were bunched up against the walls. The floorboards creaked beneath her hooves as she dashed back and forth. The mare left no compartment closed as she searched. She popped open trunks and pulled drawers out of her dresser, reaching inside and scouring for anything long and braided.
The mare yelped as she suddenly flopped face forward onto the floor, landing with a muffled thud atop the bundled curtain of her stage. Quite a few obscenities flew out of her mouth as she rose up to her hooves and turned to sneer at whatever had tripped her. Trixie’s ireful glare softened as she laid eyes upon a jumbled coil half-hidden beneath the curtain.
A gleeful cry of victory sounded off as a blue blur shot out of the wagon, a tangled rope dragging behind it.
******
Tarpan once again heard the sound of a pony approaching, its hoof beats drumming rapidly on the ground. In another moment he saw the face of the blue mare, her horn aglow with a soft, pinkish light the color of her eyes. Hovering next to her was a knotted mass of cord, enveloped in the same aura. The Neighanderthal watched as it began to writhe and wiggle as if it were alive, the countless twists and turns trying to undo themselves. The mare stared at it with a fierce concentration, occasionally giving quick glances down at him.
“Fear not, wild-stallion,” she announced, “The Great and Powerful Trixie shall soon have you out of there!” She turned her attention back to the rope, which seemed to be growing more unruly and tangled the longer she worked with it. “Yes,” she said, sweat forming on her brow as tried to undo a particularly troublesome knot, “In mere moments, she shall free you! Won’t that be wonderful?”
Tarpan could only nod his head again. Though he could again remember the words of the southlanders, his throat had grown dry in his nightlong struggle against the mud, and speaking the language was difficult to begin with. He would have to find some other way to thank his rescuer, as well as this ‘Trixie’ she spoke of. At least until he had something to drink.