A year later...
Trixie's breath puffed into clouds around her, joining the bracing winter air mixed with the vapor of the nearby locomotive. Trottingham wasn't known for its insurmountable crime any longer, but instead for its bustling ports, its revitalized city life that fully embraced a hybrid pony/gryphon culture, and now apparently for its newly installed tram and train lines that stretched across the country. Trixie even heard rumors of an ambitious project of a few entrepreneur unicorns in Canterlot that planned to fund the construction of a rail line across the vast Ambleantic Ocean, connecting Trottingham with mainland Equestria.
To Trixie, the city didn't feel the same way as it did before. Perhaps, when Trixie first arrived, she was too focused on retrieving a future lost to her that she ignored the nitty-gritty details of the city. Perhaps, back then, she didn't care. A year ago, her broken heart matched in tone and repetition to Trottingham's, and as if she had never left, the city's palpitations now matched with the hope-embraced heart of Trixie's, as well as the introductions of a million others', all hoping to find a better life in the revived city-state of Equestria.
It transformed along with Trixie, and with that knowledge, Trixie felt a kinship with the city, the same friendship grudgingly found in sessions of group therapy, a togetherness that can only be obtained by surviving the same ordeals.
Confident that Trottingham's metamorphosis had indicated a positive change in Trixie's own life, the repentant magician magically willed her bags forward from the frost-layered ground, in search of a familiar face...
The sole object that, however, Trixie hoped never to see change was her friends. Isolation was never something she intended to suffer of again.
Trixie couldn't see him. The gray skies shedding fallen snow had darkened, and the train station's lights illuminated paths along the rail road and inside the station itself. Other than a few families welcoming new arrivals, she walked alone.
It reminded her of her first sordid journey to Trottingham at a local seaport. The mist choked her and weighed down her luggage, and the city lights in the far distance striking her eyes through the salty fog teased her of how alone she was. Somewhere in the city were families, friends, lovers. Ponies that had the capacity to listen to your day, to smother you with their attention and affection.
She found friends of course.
But what did it matter if you simply "found" some? Why should the past ever involve itself in the present, the future? Something Trixie had strived to experience was a constancy. She didn't want change, but a nice healthy conservation of... well, everything.
She achieved that with constant mail and letters to the friends she made in Trottingham, especially one. At first, they've grown close through the letters, even though they were separate by vast distances. As tension developed, things were said in those letters, further developments of what happened in Trottingham a year ago. And then time past, and those communications slowed in frequency. Trixie missed them dearly. Impersonal words on blank paper didn't do their faces and innocent little quirks justice. And as soon as time past, it seemed that she really did lose them by way of distance.
Making friends are easy. Keeping them is the challenge.
Trixie snorted to herself, waiting in the night atmosphere. The train station was empty now, leaving her alone to her thoughts, breathing, and the bustling fray of the nearby city. Snow began to litter the cold concrete and drainage grilles, the only exception to the pure, heavenly blanket being the hoofsteps left behind her trailing trot.
Soon, with the Moon coursing through the sky, doubts clouded Trixie's patience. He's not here. What'd I expect? Trottingham's changed, and so have I. Why did I think that something, someone, couldn't have been affected by such a wave of flux. Ponies and Gryphons change, and most don't reflect what they've left behind and witness their past and mistakes.
So why can't I?
She wondered and waited for Celestia knew how long. The snow was beginning to accumulate on her coat and luggage, which were neglected during her personal contemplations. She ran through all the things that she was going to squirm and chatter endlessly to Leif, of her adventures and mishaps, of her successes and failures, of her perseverance and defeat, of her love and guilt. On the train ride, the tension and dreaded excitement of withholding all her pent-up excitement placed an unimaginable weight on her chest, something she mentally frenzied to displace, to explode, to destroy the dams of secrecy and all-well-known tendency of sentient beings to tell all, to share experiences. Such impulses would embitter her no more, she thought. She decided a year was enough. Things had to be said.
But she no longer felt the necessity of "telling", just a hole where a chuck-head of stray emotions and memories from a year of exploration and work had drilled into, presently leaking and replaying in her head.
Once she finished reminding and replaying her massive tale, a compilation of an annual's worth, in her consciousness to relieve herself of the burden, she sighed again in the cold. She picked up her luggage, and began the journey to ending her pilgrimage to Trottingham: The entrance of the train station's ticket booth back to her hometown.
However, as soon as she got up and placed a hoof on the frosty, ice-encrusted platform of the train station, the friction between the hoof and the ground gave way, her imbalance now allowing both her face and concentration on holding her luggage up hit the cement.
Trixie coughed out a mouthful of snow, and first checked her frost-bitten snout for a loss of teeth. Exasperated, she carefully stood back up, not giving a care of her mundane misfirtune. As the Saddle Arabian saying went, 'there wasn't a need to beat a horse if it's already defeated and dead'.
She started to heft her luggage bags one by one, as waiting hours in the middle of a raging winter exposed leaves one quite tired, until she realized one of her bags were missing.
Why'd I trust those letters into fooling me? I hoped that somehow everything would be the same, and every word said in those letters were true...
Somepony tapped Trixie on her shoulder. The touch literally melted the snow off her 'cold shoulder' when she noticed that it didn't feel like a clumsily-applied hoof of a Pony, but instead a slender, meticulous talon of a Gryphon. The light, careful touch hadn't implied any form of adversity or personal anger, but applied purposeful compassion.
Millions of thoughts bombarded Trixie in a few miliseconds.
Someone familiar. A friend, perhaps? It's a Gryphon.
An image was projected in Trixie's mind. Kind, sharp gold auburn eyes.
Her heart stopped, and Trixie knew that it wasn't going to jumpstart again unless she turned around.
She heard a voice. It was composed of a rather familiar accent. "Sorry, I'm late. Wings don't respond like they used to in the cold, Glimmer Rain's present duties require her to stay at Canterlot with Grid and Hops was too busy to come, and traffic was brutal... can ya blame a gryphon?"
There was a pause, but the voice continued, "Celestia, I'm glad to see you. You didn't change a bit."
Trixie turned, and found her mouth instantly curling up.
Leif, now in front of her, returned the smile, "So, Miss Lulamoon, how're you liking our new, improved Trottingham?"
Trixie leapt, leaving her baggage to topple to the ground, and nearly tackled Leif to the icy flooring.
Trixie whispered, "I love it so far."
When she uttered that sentiment, she didn't see in her thoughts Trottingham, but instead a clumsy, young yet forgetful Gryphon that helped her like no pony ever did: Leif.
Somepony that was her friend... and quite possibly more. Her thoughts absently went back to that kiss...
She dropped to the ground (on her hooves this time) and lost herself in the conversation she had reserved for Leif and Leif alone, as Leif himself assisted in relieving both her mental and physical burden as he carried some of her luggage.
The whole way back to Hops's new pub, Leif held her close under a stitch-scarred wing, allowing his warmth to comfort Trixie from the bitterness of the winter, and held her hoof lovingly with his talons. Those letters that went back and forth between cities, between different worlds and social structures, did more then support them during trying times.
The day, and Trixie's story for the time being, couldn't have ended better...
End.