//------------------------------//
// Anger 
// Story: The Five Stages of Grief with Trixie Lulamoon 
// by Curly Q 
//------------------------------//

It’s very easy to hate her. Very, very easy. From the way she tends not to converse, but lecture, the way she doesn’t look at you while she does it, the way everypony just flocks to her side, so eager to get a word in with her, the way her little mulberry feathers just rustle as she feigns bashfulness over the accolades heaped on her for absolutely no effort on her part, from that stupid pink stripe in her dumb manecut to all the many ways she is so absolutely perfect-

Well.

It is very easy for Trixie (formerly the Great and Powerful) to hate Twilight Sparkle.

Scratch that: Princess Sparkle. Because her head wasn’t already big enough. At the rate it’s inflating, surely it’ll fill the whole of the Palace Ballroom before they reach the evening.

“W-what? Oh thank you, Mister Fancy Pants- erm, alright. ‘Fancy’. Yes, Rarity did make this for- huh? Yeah, uh, I’m sure she’d be happy to make one for you. She’s over there by the stairs if you’d like to- My wings? Well, they’re certainly… feathery. My horn? Uh, you all know I was a unicorn yesterday, right?”

From her perch at the corner of the snack table, the sky-blue unicorn scowls even deeper. “Lousy attention horse,” she mutters, muffling her vitriol behind a mug of cider, courtesy of the orchard lorded over by Princess Sparkle’s orange crony. At four refills in, the fizzing amber barely even scorches her throat anymore.

“Now, Trixie,” says the Googly-Eyed, Bobbing-Blue-Hoof Shaped Avatar of Her Conscience, “You shouldn’t say such things about Sparkle, especially after she was nice enough to invite you to this party. You should go over and congratulate her, even if she is a prissy, spoilt, show-stealing, hoof-pointing, fat flanked-”

A few eyes turn in the direction of Trixie, and the mug comes back up, halfway masking the scowl lording over her face. It does little to mask the daggers that launch from her eyes into the sheepish, grinning face of Princess Sparkle. They are missiles turned on anypony that thinks to comment on the ire being directed at the newest member of the Royalty, and a strong deterrent at that. The incensed sorceress is given a wide berth by the other party goers, enough that the line of hate directed at the ever oblivious Princess Bucking Sparkle remains all but unbroken.

After a half hour passes without anypony saying one word to her, Trixie has absolutely no idea why she even bothered to attend.

“Because,” pipes up the GEBBHSAHC, “Twilight wanted to bury the hatchet and you knew it wasn’t doing any favors holding onto all that anger. It certainly isn't because she wanted to rub your muzzle in how she’s a Princess and you’re a dirty vagrant looking for yet another home BECAUSE TWILIGHT BUCKING SPARKLE MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO GET A JOB ANYWHERE EXCEPT ON A STUPID BUCKING ROCK FARM BECAUSE SHE’S A SNOTTY LITTLE BRAT THAT CAN’T STAND TO BE OUT OF THE SPOTLIGHT FOR FIVE DUMB MINUTES!”

And the sound of Trixie’s labored breathing echoes throughout the now silent ballroom, every pair of eyes focused on the sorceress, many with their jaws agape. In the center of it all, a little purple alicorn stares at her in horror, eyes glimmering with tears.

Trixie coughs. The mug comes up. Shoot. Empty again.

“Can I get a refill over here or what?”

Nopony thinks the night can get any worse after that.

They are wrong.