One benefit of Trixie's timing was that she could afford to take a nice long nap before she was scheduled to go on. The Great and Always-Professional Trixie could, of course, have stayed up all day and all night and still been able to put on a stunning performance, but this would of course be physically-exhausting, and there was always the unpleasant possibility of embarrassing herself with some sort of error unworthy of her own tremendous talent. So she set her little windup alarm clock, lay down on the cot in her caravan, and snoozed away the afternoon.
She awoke in the early evening, her eyes tickled by the reddish rays of the dipping Sun. She looked at her clock. It was just after 8 -- she'd lain down on her cot at 3 in the afternoon, so she'd had five hours sleep. Adequate rest, for a professional such as the Young and Energetic Trixie. She yawned, stretched, drew herself some water from the barrel she kept in her wagon, and gave herself a quick pour-over bath in her portable tub. The night was warm, so she didn't waste any time heating it up first, enjoying the sensation of the cool water against her fur and skin. Afterward she emptied the tub outside and toweled off vigorously.
She was in the greatest city on Earth. She knew that she could have visited a bath house and gotten a nice warm bath for a few bits. But she did not trust this neighborhood, did not trust the ponies who dwelled there, and did not want to leave her caravan untended for too long. She had heard that this was in places a town of thieves, and her van contained everything of value she'd managed to accumulate in the course of her highly-nomadic life. She felt at peace in her wagon, her own little world full of her own familiar scent, her own familiar things, her own safe place that she took with her no matter what view greeted her outside.
The frustrations of mid-day were all but forgotten, though she still wrinkled her nose in disgust as a stray breeze from the East Harbor brought her the smells of Tompkins Town's signature industry. She supposed that the ponies who lived around here must have long ago gotten used to the stench, though she wondered how other ponies dealt with it when the residents traveled to more fortunate districts. After she moved out tomorrow morning, she knew she would want to clean her wagon, to rid it of any residual odor.
Nevertheless she was relaxed. She wound up her gramophone, inserted a record, and let it play a happy little song in the background as she combed and brushed her white mane, keeping time with the music. She was proud of that mane -- it was long and silky and an almost ethereal light bluish-white, like the sky with thin clouds. It was not puffy and garish like the hair of common ponies, but rather hinted at her high and unique destiny, a destiny she had always seen for herself, even when others persisted in regarding her as merely ordinary.
That was one of the many problems with other ponies. They wanted to reduce the Great and Powerful Trixie to their own level, to make her no better than the rest of them, just an anonymous member of a vast and mundane herd. Her own family back in Hoofington, had regarded her as nothing more than a new addition to their own act, part of their chorus, rather than the very special mare she knew she was. The Hoofington Academy had tried to fit her into their outdated categories. Even Princess Celestia's own School for Gifted Unicorns wanted to force her to conform to their own concept of a mage, deny her all the wonderful possibilities she knew were within her.
It was a good thing she'd met Master White-Beard the Grey, learned the prestige, the patter, the use of the props and other preparations that transformed her from just an ordinary pony to the Great and Powerful Trixie. With her innate and strong magical talent, one that no school or teacher had ever quite managed to classify, she seamlessly wove mundane with magical illusion, magical illusion with true power, modifying her performance on the spot and producing a whole that was so much greater and more beautiful than the sum of its parts, like the Great and Magnificent Trixie herself.
Master White-Beard had -- almost -- understood her. He had been very old, and very stern when it came to making sure that she lived up to her potential, and very kind to her in every other way, like a loving grand-uncle. He was perhaps the only pony she'd ever really cared for, and when he died, something went out of her world which she didn't think she'd ever see again. She'd been to his funeral, but she'd been unable to do more than step in, look at him lying dead, and then run away so that no one would see her tears. He had been the only pony she trusted enough to let him see her weakness. Never again, she thought, would she ever find anypony worthy of such trust..
Though ... sometimes ... when she was tempted to do something really bad, his image came before her, and she knew that she did not want even his theoretical disapproval. She supposed he had become the symbol of her conscience, though she wasn't sure that such a wonderful mare as herself actually needed one. Still, the thought oddly comforted her. It was almost like having him back for real.
So she lived on the road, by her wits, from hoof to mouth, from town to town? It meant that she was her own mistress, that no ignorant clod could tell her what to do, that she did what she wanted to when she wanted to do it, and for her own purposes. The only responsibilities were those she chose to assume, and those she assumed gladly. For instance, she never flaked on a show, never missed her time, never short-changed an audience. That was her code of honor, her integrity as a professional show-mare. "The show must go on," that was a good summary of her life and her credo.
Trixie had finished brushing her hair. She was hungry, and wondered if she should go out and sample Manehattan's world-famous restaurants. Two things decided her against doing so: the desire to avoid leaving her wagon untended, and the fear that if she ate from a restaurant in a neighborhood that literally stank of ... fertilizer ... she might wind up feeling too ill to take the stage. Time and money enough for experimentation when she had the bits from this gig in her purse, when she had a day or two to herself in some more salubrious quarter of this gigantic city.
Besides which, she had a show coming up, and she did not want to have her current calm state thrown off by any -- encounter -- with the locals. She knew she was beautiful, and unattached, and there were some stallions -- and even a few mares -- who might make the wrong assumption that she was looking for a mate. And then she would be forced to inform them otherwise, with varying degrees of asperity or worse, depending upon the crudity of the approach.
Trixie was not looking for a mate. She was never looking for a mate. To her, the whole messy and vulgar business of reproducing the Pony species was something she wished to leave to more common and ordinary Ponies, and thankfully. She found most stallions boring, and the notion of a romantic relationship with one laughable; other mares were not only boring but unattractive, and the concept of mating with one more than normally absurd.
She was not precisely a virgin. There had been that one regrettable episode with that theatrical promoter, a year ago in Baltimare.
Piercing Gaze had been a minor magician himself before moving into the field of promotion: nothing compared to herself, of course, but still a respectable talent. He had appreciated her own abilities, and promised her great things. He was smart and witty and kind, and in an obvious position to help her. She had worked with him, and they had been enjoying each other's company for a few weeks before things went so badly wrong. The Great and Emotionally Self-Sufficient Trixie rarely needed to employ such a concept, but he had been something of a -- friend. They had been shooting the breeze together one late night after a show, as they had done so several nights before, and things had just -- happened.
She wanted to blame him, as he had almost two decades advantage in age and certainly in experience, but a certain honesty within her that not even her own healthy self-esteem could completely suppress reminded her that it had been that time of the month, that she had quite forgotten to take the necessary medication, that they had both gotten a little drunk celebrating their recent combined success, that the advances involved had perhaps been somewhat mutual. She had certainly liked him very much, before that night. Perhaps she had imagined that it would be wonderful.
It was ... not. It had been clumsy and nasty, a shocking intrusion by another pony into her most intimate places, and the only reason why she completed the act was because everything she had been told and read and heard in songs had made her hope that it would somehow, in some way, get better. Afterward, he had tried to hold her, and she shrank away in revulsion, afraid that he contemplated repeating that humiliation upon her.
She had gazed then into his hurt eyes, and she realized that she had lost her friend.
There was nothing to be done. Apology was unthinkable, as it had not been the fault of the Correct and Rightly-Behaving Trixie, or at worst the Misguided and Carnally-Confused Trixie. Surely he must have noticed how she was feeling at the time? Surely he must have realized that her revulsion was not against himself in particular, but against a behavior that was beneath her dignity as a show-mare, as was obvious by the fact that she would never have been willing to do something like that on stage?
Or perhaps he couldn't have been expected to know. He hadn't understood her, of course. Nobody ever really understood the Great and Powerful Trixie. That was her fate, her doom, the price of her own high destiny.
Still she had cried when she pulled out of Baltimare the next morning, and not for her lost virginity. Rather, for her lost friendship.
That had been one of the incidents which had shown her that she could never really trust another Pony, that she could never have friends, let alone lovers, the way that ordinary ponies could. There had been many betrayals -- though not romantic ones, as she had never let another Pony touch her that way, emotionally or physically, ever again, and she was determined to never let this happen again in the future. Petty, stupid betrayals, friction that reminded her that she was the Great and Powerful Trixie, and they were but common ponies, rather than beings of the same order.
Co-operation was possible. And she was honorable, by her own code. She always started the show on time. She always gave the audience a good show. And no matter what happened, she knew, the show must go on.
This was the path she walked, and she walked it -- as always -- alone.
***
At the Palace of Canterlot the celebration was just getting under way. Princess Celestia presided. Her smile was easy and natural, and she was heard more than once to laugh. She ate much cake, drank plenty of tea and sometimes just a little of something a bit stronger. Once, she even joined in a dance. None observing her would have suspected her inner turmoil, or that as she passed her friendly gaze over her Court, she was devoutly hoping that -- if the Sun rose again -- it would rise on a world still containing all of them, intact and alive.
But then, she had never claimed to be Honesty.
She had waved goodbye to her kinsmare, Princess Cadance, escorted by Guard Captain Shining Armor, Twilight Sparkle's elder brother -- who was very obviously enamored of his charge. She wondered if it would have mattered to Shining if she had explained to him that she actually had known Cadance billions of years before the planet on which they were standing had coalesced from nebular dust, indeed billions of years before the supernovae that had formed the supernovae that created that primal dust cloud had shone with Celestia's own Fusion light. Probably not, she thought. True love knows no check of circumstance.
Though he might find the astrophysics involved too confusing. He wasn't as smart as was his sister. He was still one of the best of the Ponies, though, and one couldn't have everything in a stallion.
Shepard's flotilla is either leaving on a very long journey, or a very short one. I hope for all their sakes that it's the former.
In any case, on the Invincible she's as safe as any pony can be right now. The hell-storms won't start for a while after my sister snuffs out the Sun. Plenty of time for them to reach harbor.
She had already bid farewell to her distant nephew, Prince Blueblood, the 52nd of His Line, and the rightful ruler of the Unicorns should Equestria itself be shattered. He had launched in his air-yacht, the Wind Fish IV, his destination Stalliongrad. He was a bit of a nincompoop, but not really all that bad a pony -- she suspected that, should the worst happen, he might reveal unsuspected virtues. In any case, he would be the one behind which they might unite.
The rightful heiress to the Pegasus Mandate was with Twilight Sparkle, and would soon be traveling to the point of maximum danger. Her family hated her anyway, though Celestia would have rated her above the whole rest of her inbred clan. There was something different in her ... something new ... or perhaps, something very old. Celestia had read the oldest of the tomes salvaged from Paradise Estate, and she had her suspicions about the true heritage of the High Lady Fluttershy.
There was no rightful heir to the old tribe of the Earth Ponies, as they had always been more of a federation. But Celestia knew many of the leaders of their kind, and was confident that they would remain strong to the last. They would probably be the ones to find the deep caves, the geothermal vents, and begin farming mushrooms. Some were educated and inventive enough to develop advanced life support techniques, and survive even as the atmosphere began to precipitate in the Earth's last ghastly rain.
Let it not come to that, Celestia prayed to her Father. Let the Ponies not face the last possible extremity. She knew there was something behind Luna's persistent Nightmare, one which not all her pleading seemed to be able to shatter. She feared that something would come seeping down from the stars long before the Earth's ecosphere had died, something foul, and hungry.
But of course if all that happened, she reminded herself, she wouldn't be herself anymore.
She promised herself that she would remember, resolved to come back to defend her Ponies if there came that last cataclysm.
She couldn't be sure that her Cosmic self would care, but she nevertheless made the promise.
She couldn't do any more.
***
After eating her solitary meal from her wagon's cupboards, Trixie cleaned the plates, cleaned herself and made her final preparations. She took up her special harness, the saddlebags with the hidden compartments, then her favorite purple stage cloak with the blue and white stars, and perhaps more importantly with false linings and more hidden pockets. The matching hat, also with its secret places. She meticulously checked all her props, both the overt ones and the hidden supplies in all those pockets and compartments. This was a habit her Master had drilled into her from the beginning, and one for which she could plainly see the purpose.
Always check out your own props, she thought. Don't trust anypony else to do the job.
She could almost see White-Beard's nod at this, and she basked in the warmth of the old mage's imaginary approval. Is it really imaginary? she wondered. Sometimes it feels as if he's still out there somewhere, still cares about me, is still watching over me. She scoffed to herself. The Highly-Educated and Not-At-All Superstitious Trixie is above such sentimental speculations! she told herself firmly.
And yet ... still she had the sensation, now tinged with a certain odd laughter, exactly like his own dear dry chuckle, a thought which warmed her own soul.
Yet it worried her. Because, sometimes when she had the sensation that he was still watching over her, it was just before something extremely dangerous was going to happen.
But what could happen here, at a local festival in the greatest city in the world?