"Goodnight sweetie."
With a kiss on her cheek and a nuzzle, Dazzler left the room, flicked the lights off, and closed the door behind him, leaving his daughter Trixie alone in her bed.
She heard the hoofsteps slowly fade away, until they were no more. He had gone to sleep. Perfect.
Trixie slowly slid her covers off, lighted up her horn just the tiniest bit, and reached under the bed to retrieve a large, colourful tome.
Shivering partly for the cold biting her uncovered limbs and partly in guilty pleasure, she set the book on her pillow and opened it at the bookmarked page. Time for adventure.
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"There is absolutely no way the treasure is hidden there!" yelled Captain Stellar Crash. "Pegasopolis has been abandoned for a reason! And then looted and ransacked who knows how many times! And then lost to the four winds! There's no way something this important can still sit there undisturbed, much less have us find it!"
"The map cannot be saying anything else, captain," Azure Dreams replied with the utmost certainty. "And no one has found the contents yet, yet, of that we can be sure."
"And what makes you think this time will be different for us, eh, you little, presumptuous filly?"
"Well, for one, this," Azure tapped her head, "And for another, this," she pointed further up, to her horn. "Only pegasi have been there after the Fall, but you said Greenbeard's crew counted all kinds of ponies in her ranks, isn't that true?"
"Er... ye, you're right laddie," grumbled Stellar, rubbing her chin.
"Which means it may be protected by some barriers or.. or protections that only unicorns can disable! Azure, you're a genious!" Exclaimed Peppermint, jumping up and down to the captain's side, who was trying her hardest to ignore her second-in-command's over-excitement.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The whole scene was unfolding in front of Trixie's eyes, quite literally: by use of her recently discovered talent, she was witnessing and hearing the conversation between the pettish purple pegasus pirate, the foalish, light pink earth pony admiral, and the blue, intrepid, smart, adventurous blue unicorn filly (which looked suspiciously a lot like Trikie).
The strain of keeping the illusion up barely registered as a tug on the back of Trixie's consciousness at his point; it'd been quite a long time by now since the large pictures had become just for reference. First it's been a single character moving awkwardly, then two, then with a simple backdrop added, and so on, until she could recreate the majesty of the Cannon Star in full, the pegasus pirate cloud-ship which scourged the cloudbanks above oceans and landmasses alike.
Slowly but surely, the filly kept reading, her voice whispering every action of the small puppets located between her and the large open tome; the bedsheets well served as the unending Cloudsea on which the Cannon Star sailed.
And on she went, following closely every step of the trio's adventures, fighting adverse weather, meeting shady characters, trying to stay one trot ahead of their nemesis Greenbeard and his pegasus band of looters and raiders, and battling giant monsters of the high skies.
The pirate trio had engaged a giant, enraged phoenix, when Trixie yelped and pulled her hoof back in pain: she could swear she felt the heat when Dawnfury had breathed fire near her forehoof. Noticing in relief nothing had in fact happened to it, she giggled quietly to herself, and resumed reading.
Action and hard choices awaited them at every turn, until her heroes were finally in sight of the ancient lost city of Pegasopolis. It looked just as amazing as she had... well, not exactly, it was really kind of simple, just a cheapish cloud city in ruins, and it looked kinda blurry too...
Trixie's eyelids were drooping on her, and the profound yawn confirmed that not only her magic was unfocused, but she was falling asleep on the spot. With a thought, she dispelled the illusion, plunging the room into darkness. Slowly, methodically, Trixie set the bookmark, closed the book, and lowered it under the bed, then covered herself and adjusted herself on the pillow.
She was asleep just seconds later.