The rain fell with a soft pitter-patter as the little blue filly approached the hole in the earth. The muddy ground felt cold beneath her hooves, and she shivered as she edged closer to the abyss. Far below, the casket, a deep midnight blue, sat waiting at the bottom. The filly fought an overwhelming urge to jump, to join that world of blissful silence.
The sounds of overly loud sobs from behind brought her gaze back to the world of the living. Turning her head, she saw her mother sitting in a chair, head in her hooves. Others milled around, offering their condolences as they tried to comfort her. The mare simply shoved them away from here, her sobs becoming louder, more obnoxious. They whispered of her grief, and how great it must be to cry so hard, but the filly knew otherwise. The mare was drunk, she’d seen the bottle in her hooves that morning.
She turned back to the hole, where the stallion who had raised her lay. She sniffled, a few tears drifting down her cheeks. Gently, she lit her horn and lifted the rose she had been carrying in her mouth. It was perfect, in full bloom, each thorn painstakingly plucked off by her young hooves. She had placed upon it an enchantment that had changed it from white to a brilliant, sparkling gold …his favorite color. Slowly, she levitated it over the pit. It stayed there for a second, a single ray of sunlight from between the clouds breaking over it, and then she dropped it. The rose fell, landing neatly on top of the pile on the casket, it’s shining gold creating a brilliant contrast from the silken white of the other roses and the blue of the casket.
“Goodbye, Daddy.” she whispered, “Goodbye.” A final tear slipped off her cheek and splashed onto the grass. She heard gentle steps as a second pair of hooves came into view next to hers. The older filly placed a hoof on her shoulder, an expression of concern on her face. She simply nodded, and flung her hooves around the light orange filly. They hugged, sobbing into each other’s shoulders as they shared their grief. The smaller of the two glanced up to see her mother looking straight at her.
The mare opened her mouth, and yelled in a familiar filly’s voice. “Trixie wake up!”
Trixie’s eyes flung open, and she sat up with a scream. Sparkle was perched on her bed, a grin on her face. “It’s morning!” she sang with the kind of joy only a child would find at the crack of dawn.
Trixie groaned and flopped back onto her pillow. Her mind wandered back to her dream. It had seemed so real she could almost feel the rain on her fur. What a long time it had been since she’d dreamed of her father’s funeral.
Sparkle’s face peered over her, breaking through her thoughts. She noticed that the yellow-gold of her sister’s eyes had a strong similarity to the gold of the rose from her dream…
“Trrrrixxxieeee.” whined the filly. “It’s Saturday, you always make pancakes on Saturday.”
“Ah, fine. I’m up…” moaned Trixie. She slowly sat up and hopped out of bed, wincing as the cold, wooden floor hit her hooves. Straightening up, she grabbed her squealing sister off the bed with her telekinetic grip and trotted out to the kitchen.
Lighting a fire in the old brick fireplace to warm the cold room, she levitated her sister into her chair and walked over to the cupboards.
“Pancakes…” she muttered to herself, pulling the necessary ingredients off the shelves. She poured the different items into a bowl, mixing them into a sticky batter. Pouring some onto a pan on the stove, she turned back to her sister.
“Where’s Mom?” she asked, already guessing the answer.
Sparkle made a face, “Mummy’s snoring on the sofa.” she giggled, “She’s really loud.”
Trixie smiled and turned back to the pancakes. Flipping the first off the pan and onto the waiting plate. She poured some more batter to start another as she placed the finished pancake in front of her sister with the bottle of syrup.
Sparkle successfully distracted with the tasty treat, she slipped out of the kitchen. Sure enough, her mother lay conked out on the couch. Trixie froze. She looked so weak...so fragile. Her face streaked with dried tears as her hooves cradled the empty bottle of alcohol. Sometimes when she saw her mother like this she could almost find a way to forgive her for the years of pain.
Almost.
She walked over to the mare and reached a hoof out, shaking her shoulder a little more gently than she intended. Her mother opened a bleary eye, and Trixie forced a small smile.
"Morning. There are pancakes in the kitchen, best cure for a hangover. Just...take a shower first, alright? You smell." Muttering something incomprehensible, the mare rolled over and fell asleep again.
Rolling her eyes, Trixie turned away and trotted to the front door. She took a deep breath, before opening it up to find five newspapers heaped on the porch. It appeared the neighbors weren’t going to waste the opportunity to laugh at her…ponies in this side of town tended to have even more of a thing for gossip than the Canterlot elite.
Trixie levitated up the papers and shuffled through them. Her eyes widened with each ridiculously inflated headline, each about her…antics…in Ponyville, naturally. The final paper on the bottom was a copy of The Ponyville Times, Trixie studied it for a second, before moving it away from the pile of the others.
Walking back into the kitchen, she placed the newspaper on top of the fridge, where Sparkle wouldn’t find it, then promptly chucked the other four into the fireplace, watching with a kind of vindicated pleasure as they burned.
Sparkle glanced up, syrup drizzling down her muzzle. She watched the newspapers as they started to burn, and her eyes narrowed in confusion. “What’s that?”
Trixie smiled. “Oh, nothing…just some trash. Using old paper saves wood, after all.” She studied her sister’s messy face with a frown before grabbing a towel off the bench and attacking her sister’s sticky muzzle with passion. Sparkle squirmed as Trixie did her best to wipe off the syrup from her face.
“Get off Trixie!” she muttered crossly, pushing the towel away. Trixie stuck out her tongue at her sibling, and then closed her eyes in concentration, calling her sister’s hairbrush from the bathroom with her magic. Pulling up a chair up behind her sister’s, she gently began to run the brush through the filly’s mane.
The bristles gently cut a path through the delicate curls, and Trixie lifted a hoof to twist one of the pieces back into shape. Her sister had such a lovely mane… A fascinating two-color style that very few ponies naturally had. The top half a sweet, soft blue, the same color of Trixie’s coat, the bottom light lavender. It was a unique combination, curious and captivating, but beautiful on her little sister. The two colors stood out flawlessly against Sparkle’s alabaster coat. Trixie’s eyes once again drifted to the lavender of her sister’s mane…such a similar purple to that Twilight’s…it seemed even with her own sister she could not escape that mare.
She didn’t mean to dislike Twilight, honestly. Trixie couldn’t find a fault with the mare that was obvious, at any rate. It was simply…jealousy. It was a fickle thing, but it could drive ponies to do terrible deeds.
Miss Twilight Sparkle…personal protégée to her high and mighty Princess Celestia, and an Element of Harmony…Magic, to be exact. It hadn’t been hard to figure out who the mare was, Trixie had merely had to dig through the papers a bit to find articles about her. “Defeat of Nightmare Moon”, etc. After that, Twilight seemed to be popping up in every paper she got her hooves on, and with each paper… she grew more and more jealous. Not of her title as Magic, if the element had picked her, then Trixie supposed it was right.
It was simply…everything else. Twilight Sparkle seemed to have a perfect life. Her connections to the princess and her affluent background meant the mare would never have financial troubles. Heck, her big brother had married the princess of love…she was basically royalty. She had friends that adored her and ponies that respected her. Growing up under the wing of the princess, she had never gone want for anything.
If life had dealt Trixie a bad hand, as Slim had said, then Twilight Sparkle had come out with all aces.
“Trixie!” yelped her sister. “You’re hurting me!” Trixie gasped and retracted the brush from her sister’s mane. It appeared that while she had been lost in her thoughts, she’d been roughly dragging the brush through Sparkle’s hair.
Trixie sighed and lifted a hoof to stroke her sister’s curls by way of apology. Her anger at the world always seemed to be taken out on the wrong things: her sister’s mane…and Twilight Sparkle.
* * *
“Push me, Trixie, push me!’ cried Sparkle as she plopped herself down on the swing seat with a smile on her face. Trixie laughed and trotted behind her sister, sitting down and using her forelegs to push her sister gently through the air.
The filly’s innocent giggles grew louder in volume with each push. Eventually Sparkle was high enough that she gave a nod to her sister, and Trixie moved away so that she could attempt to swing on her own steam. Beaming with pride, Trixie watched Sparkle slowly begin to gain control of the motions of the swing. She was growing up so fast…
She shuffled back a couple steps, and took a seat on a bench next to a rose bush. Trixie had planned on spending the day hiding from the public eye inside the house, but through her sister’s insistent pleading, she had somehow ended up at the park.
She glanced at the bush next to her, roses. A lump formed in Trixie’s throat as it brought back the memory of her dream, which she had forgotten in the buzz of the morning’s activity. Her father’s funeral…it had been one of the hardest days in her life, possibly even worse than the day he actually died. Seeing him there…sealed in the ground…really knowing, finally, that he wouldn’t be coming back to make it alright again…that it was just her, and her mom…and the baby.
Trixie absentmindedly studied the rose bush, before lighting up her horn and igniting a rose in her pink glow. Calling forth the same spell she had created many years ago, she concentrated her magic on the rose, slowly turning the red petals to a glittering gold. Slowly relinquishing her magic’s grasp on the delicate flower, she contemplatively studied the now sparkling rose. A small gust of wind made the petals quiver slightly, and she lifted a hoof in surprise as she felt a tear trace her cheek.
“Trixie!” Sparkler ran over to her. “Did you see… Why are you crying?” Trixie looked over at her sister, who was standing next to her with concern written all over her face.
Trixie forced a small smile. “Oh, nothing. Just…grown up problems, is all.” She felt a couple more stray tears make their way down her face.
Sparkle frowned and clambered up onto the bench next to her sister, wrapping her little hooves around the mare. “You always say that hugs make everything better.” she whispered.
Trixie chuckled and wiped her cheek. “Indeed they do.”
Sparkle’s eyes drifted the bush next to them. “Isn’t that a rose? ...Why is it gold?”
“Oh…I made it gold.”
“Why?”
Trixie looked into her sister’s wide eyes and sighed. “Just practicing. Here…” She plucked the rose from its stem, and tucked it into Sparkle’s mane. She smiled. “It matches your eyes.”
Sparkle grinned and hugged her sister tighter. Yawning, she rested her head against her side. “My teacher says that roses are what ponies that are in love give to each other on Hearts and Hooves Day.” she mumbled, before looking up at Trixie with curiosity. “Did a stallion ever give you a rose on Hearts and Hooves Day?” she frowned. “…Or a mare?”
Trixie stared at her sister, then laughed. “What makes you think my special somepony would be a mare?”
Sparkle shrugged. “Dunno. But, I heard a teacher yell at Cloudy about saying only mares and stallions can be special someponies…said is was important to be “accepting.”’
Trixie grinned. “Well, that is a very good lesson to learn. However, that doesn’t mean everypony would just as willingly date a mare or a stallion, no matter what. It can be a sensitive subject for some ponies.”
Sparkle frowned. “Sorry Trixie.”
‘It’s fine. And…” she looked down at her hooves. “No. I’ve never gotten a rose on Hearts and Hooves Day. I don’t really mind though.”
“Why?”
“Because I…Well, I’ve always been too busy to worry about that nonsense. I’ve got performances to focus on.” And a family to take care of.
Sparkle yawned again. “Your shows are the coolest ever.”
Trixie felt like crying once more. ‘Thank you.” she whispered, before clearing her throat. “Now, let’s get you home, you sleepy filly!”
* * *
Trixie sighed as she reached the gate that was the entrance to a rather dark place. No matter what, she always seemed to end up back here…to the only pony she’d ever been able to truly confide in.
She trotted past the other ponies, each condemned to their small, cold homes for eternity. She shivered at the thought that she, ultimately, would end up here as well…perhaps sooner than the average pony. Now…where was he? No…no...Ah, here he was...where he always was.
“H-hi Daddy…” she whispered, smiling sadly. She sat down in font of the little stone grave-marker and sniffled, urging herself not to cry. Still, a tear managed to escape her eye and race down her cheek.
“Sparkler’s well.” she said as brightly as she could. “I took her to the park today…” Her sister was always the first subject of their one-sided conversations. To Trixie, it often felt like the only way to keep a connection between the father and daughter that never knew one another, and never would.
As Trixie did her best to recite the information about her day with her sister, she felt her voice quaver, and the tears at last began to run down her face freely. “Oh…” she cried, flopping to the ground, and curling up in a shivering ball. “Daddy…I did something awful. I hurt other ponies…especially a mare who never did anything to me.”
Trixie twisted her mane and used part of it to wipe the water from her cheeks. “I’m a terrible…terrible pony…” she muttered. “I let jealousy consume me, and ended up creating a monster out of myself.” With a sigh, she looked up at the gravestone. “After that day…I just couldn’t find work anywhere else. I couldn’t perform, nopony wanted me…I had to take a job at that rock farm just to keep food on the table and to get the repairs done to the wagon.” She trailed off in thought.
“I was stupid.” She muttered bitterly. “I was so desperate to get work I went looking for something to make me better…the Alicorn Amulet.” Trixie looked up at the gravestone angrily. “I didn’t know ok?! I didn’t know! I just wanted something that would make me impressive enough that ponies wouldn’t care what happened in Ponyville!” She furiously pounded her hoof against the ground. “I didn’t know…” Trixie lowered her eyes. “But it was my fault. All it did was feed off my own negative emotions, amplify them…If I hadn’t…If I hadn’t had such horrible feelings about Twilight…about Ponyville, it wouldn’t have been able to make me do the things it did.”
Trixie thought back to that first day in Ponyville, it hadn’t been Twilight’s fault…but how much of it had been hers? She had simply made up a story that drew in an audience… It was called entertainment. How would she know those two daft little colts would believe her?
Yet Equestria had blamed her, and now she had done something that would mean she would most likely never perform again. It wasn’t fair…she was hardly a bad magician, considering she was, for the most part, self-taught.
Yes…jealousy could do terrible things to a pony.
Trixie slowly stood up. She needed to get home. Starting tomorrow, her focus would have to be terms of employment, and getting rid of newspapers…any that got within eyesight of Sparkle
“I’ll see you soon, Dad.” She whispered.
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