The View Over Atlantis

by Zobeid


Fell Pony

The next day Moondancer decided Trixie needed some cheering up and convinced her to come along into Keswick town for some retail therapy. As they ambled through the sunny spring morning, brown sparrows played alongside the streets, and some of Trixie’s gloom seemed to lift. Some storefronts were closed and dark, offering mute testament to the economic depression that had settled over large portions of Earth, but there were still some shops offering antiques, books, paintings and pottery, jewelry, specialty foods, clothing and simple wooden toys and puzzles. Very little of what Trixie saw matched her preconceptions of the mass-produced, high-technology wonders of Earth. She commented on this.

“Oh, it’s a tourist trap!” Moondancer answered. “People come here for the mountains and lakes, and to shop for handmade knick-knacks. It’s nostalgia for a simpler time.”

Trixie snorted softly. “Nostalgia for the dirt and backwardness of the countryside? In Equestria everypony wants to move to the big city.”

Just off the Market Square they came to a shopping arcade with a sign helpfully identifying it as “Packhorse Court”. Moondancer glanced from the sign to Trixie and nudged her, grinning, but Trixie merely eyed the sign suspiciously, then lowered her head and grumbled.

Moondancer prodded. “What?”

“It’s eerie. Your world is so different from mine, so alien. Yet I keep running into things that seem mundane, that remind me of home. This town has much in common with Hoofington.”

“Your hometown?”

Trixie hesitated a moment. Hoofington was hardly a glamorous name in Equestria, but that didn’t matter here. “That’s right,” she admitted, and she followed Moondancer into the Packhorse Court.

They wandered about, window shopping for a while until they came to rest at a cafe called the Honey Pot. Taking advantage of the fine weather, they found a table on the terrace and ordered an early lunch.

As they were waiting, they were startled by a shrill voice. “Eeeee! A pony!” Trixie’s ears folded back and she cringed as she spotted a blond-haired, rosy-cheeked little girl approaching rapidly. Human children were notorious for accosting ponies, hugging perfect strangers without warning and planting their grabby little hands all over manes and tails and even faces, and fussing and pestering with endless questions. Trixie had tried to avoid them — successfully, for the most part — ever since coming to Earth. Now, however, a grinning brat was locked onto her like a homing missile.

Trixie shifted from her seat, prepared to run.

Another voice, this one tinged with panic: “Lily, no!” The little girl paused, uncertain, long enough for her mother to dart forward and grab her and pull her back. In a softer tone she admonished, “Don’t get near it!”

Trixie froze, then slipped back into her seat while the mother hustled her disappointed child away. Trixie swallowed, then bit her lip as she looked down at the tabletop. The expression she’d seen on the human mother’s face had been one of fear, and it felt like an icicle through Trixie’s heart. Suddenly, irrationally, she found herself longing for a little girl to hug her and stroke her mane and tail.

As if in answer to her wish, she felt a hand touch the back of her neck lightly, but it was Moondancer. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yes…” Trixie muttered in a voice as tiny and miserable as any Moondancer had ever heard.

They had their lunch in silence, then returned to the Low Nest Farm.

That evening when the whole team, as it were, had gathered for supper and to compare notes, Trixie cleared her throat and clomped a hoof on the floor for attention. She stood up, placing her front hooves on the edge of the table. “The Great and Powerful Trixie would like to say a few words.”

With bemused expressions, Moondancer, Smithers and Ivan focused on her, and Ivan gestured for her to continue. “By all means, Miss Unicorn.”

She lifted her head a fraction higher and spoke loudly, with the booming lilt of her stage act, as if this were another performance. “Trixie has had doubts about this enterprise, and for a time had considered returning to Equestria. Then the PER attack happened.”

Moondancer blurted, “That wasn’t your fault!”

Trixie pointed a hoof at Moondancer. “Indeed it was not! However, that doesn’t mean Trixie can’t do something about it. Those PER ponies showed their true colors. Now it is time for Trixie to show hers.” She brought the hoof back to her chest, as if making a pledge. “I shall remain and assist with this noble effort for as long as I am wanted. If I can’t help with the stone circle, then I shall find some other way to contribute. Katrina said she had difficulty recruiting talented unicorns from Equestria. Well, she shall have at least this one!” She lowered her hoof to the table with an emphatic thump and watched to see their response.

Ivan was the first to begin clapping, and Moondancer and even Smithers joined in. “Well said!” Ivan added. “And I, for one, am glad to have you with us.”

Trixie looked to the others, seeking any hint of disapproval or mockery, and found none. They were supportive, even proud. It felt good.


The next issue that came up was whether work should continue through the weekend. Lord Peter had phoned and expressed his willingness to pay overtime and keep the workers engaged seven days a week, but Ivan balked. They might get the work finished a bit quicker, but there was much more work ahead, no telling how much, and he preferred to set a sustainable pace and keep the workmen happy. It was Moondancer who had settled the matter. Keeping the sabbath was important, she said, and would allow her to gather her coven and hold the needed ceremonies in peace. Trixie likewise would have more opportunities to scry the circle at her leisure and see if there was any flicker of magic that she could detect.

During the week Ivan assigned homework for Moondancer and Trixie. He explained it thusly: “Castlerigg was one of the first stone circles built, one of the oldest that survives. Thus, it should function on its own. However… Katrina is convinced, and I tend to agree, that we need to also re-connect our monuments with the old system of ley lines.”

“Ley lines?” Trixie queried.

“The old straight tracks. Like way markers, they used to run long distances across the countryside. The markers took many forms. In the megalithic era, a single menhir — a standing stone — would have been the most common. You could follow the path from menhir to menhir. Then you would see intersections marked with barrows or trilithons, or even small henges. It was like… Well, I guess you might compare it with our modern power grid, but instead of electricity it beamed magic from places like Castlerigg to wherever it was needed.”

Trixie nodded. “Then you just need to erect new stones wherever they’ve fallen.”

Ivan sighed. “It’s not that simple. After thousands of years, much of the network is lost or obscured. A lot of the markers have been buried, broken or altered. Some have simply fallen over and sunk into the earth as centuries passed. Farmers clearing their fields have broken up some of them. Others were destroyed to make way for Christianity. Those early Christians thought anything from the pagan past was a work of The Devil. Sometimes after destroying a monument they would replace it with a Christian cross, or even with a church, especially if the site was on a hilltop. There’s not much left, and it takes detective work to even figure out where the ley lines used to run.”

“But it gets worse,” he continued. “We don’t even know the rules. I mean, the underlying logic. We don’t know how big the stones have to be, or how far apart, or how far the lines can run between henges. Do you need a trilithon every fifty miles, or a hundred? Do we need to build more small stone circles between the major ones? I don’t know. All we can do is try to figure out what the old tracks looked like, and try to mimic them, and hope we accidentally build something that works.”

Moondancer said, “OK, but where do Trixie and I come in? What can we do about it?”

“I was getting to that!” Ivan pulled out a large binder and dropped it on the table. He opened it to reveal detailed maps — they appeared to be geological survey maps with many additions and annotations.

“We don’t have the time or resources to conduct vast archaeological surveys of the countryside, but we do have archives full of studies that can be correlated and analyzed. Katrina already has a small group of scholars working on this, piecing together everything they can about the prehistoric ley network and trying to do statistical analysis on it. They’re doing the heavy lifting, but the two of you can review their work and check it against your own knowledge of magic.”

The witch and the unicorn looked askance at the map. Moondancer spoke for both, saying, “I’m not sure why you think I’d know anything about this.”

“I know. I know, just… Look at them. Try to find a pattern. Scry them, look in your crystal ball, whatever it is that you do. It might be a good idea to visit some of the ley markers and related sites in the region, look them over, see if any of them feel magical. See how they run across the landscape and influence their surroundings, that you can’t get from just looking at a map. And if you do all that and can’t come up with anything helpful, that’s OK.”

Reluctantly, Moondancer pulled the binder closer, and said, “Trixie… It looks like we have some busy days ahead.” Trixie nodded, frowning slightly.



The next several days were indeed busy ones. Trixie and Moondancer studied the maps, visited local landmarks, and tried to teach one another magic in their spare time. They also found time to shop the traditional Market Day in Keswick, and Moondancer made arrangements for members of her coven to come and hold a ceremony to re-consecrate the henge.

On wednesday the wind picked up, gusting and whistling, and dire warnings of an unseasonable arctic blast issued from the Met Office.

In the pre-dawn hours of thursday the temperature plummeted ten degrees in less than an hour and continued falling throughout the day. Ivan organized a shopping trip to acquire warm clothes none of them had expected to need in the springtime. Clothing for ponies had yet to appear in the area, but Trixie came away with a new scarf to supplement her hat and cape.

By friday morning freezing rain had begun to coat the roads with patches of ice. Work was called off at the stone circle, and Moondancer sent the message to all her followers to stay home. Mildred had stocked up on hot chocolate, and the day’s activities turned toward staying warm and watching the telly.

In alarmist tones, talking heads described a faltering of the Gulf Stream that normally warmed the British Isles, and strange behavior of the jet stream high in the atmosphere. Satellite images showed a spinning cloud mass descending from the Arctic Circle. Trixie had known humans were unable to control weather, but she was grudgingly impressed by their power to observe, explain and predict it. Even their supercomputers, though, couldn’t model the chaotic interactions between the advancing Barrier and the Earth’s natural climate systems.

Some attempts had been made to bring weather control to Earth. Celestia had dispatched teams of weather pegasi, along with as many hastily-trained newfoals as could be mustered, but the planet was vast, and its weather — outside of the already-converted Exponential Lands — was unruly and difficult to work with. At best the pegasi could wrest control locally, on a small scale. They couldn’t stop the mega-storm that was now descending on Britain and Europe, and nobody could predict with any certainty when it would lift.

Mildred scurried about, getting the winter blankets out of storage and making sure the furnace would work. That night bitter cold seemed to seep into the house through every crack and seam, despite all attempts to keep it at bay. By saturday morning snow was building up on the ground, and it continued falling from a dark sky. Confined to the house, everyone grew more restless and weary as the day dragged on.

Trixie rubbed her eyes with the side of her pastern, tired and frustrated. For an hour she’d been trying to teach something of unicorn magic to Moondancer, but it seemed impossible. Lacking a horn, the human could do no more than listen to Trixie’s descriptions and watch her demonstrate spells. This had been entertaining for a while, but there seemed to be little common ground between what Trixie did and anything Moondancer knew of magic.

Moondancer was also growing weary, and she suggested, “Why don’t I teach you some more Wiccan magic for a while?”

Trixie scowled. “What Wiccan magic? I haven’t seen you do anything.”

“I demonstrated the negative banishing ritual almost as soon as we met.”

“I didn’t feel any magical discharge when you did that. There was no aura, no sound, and no visible result. If I did that in school, I’d get an F on my report card.”

“Human magic doesn’t work that way.”

“Gaah!” Trixie exclaimed. “That’s what you always say! Every time you do something magical and nothing happens, your excuse is that human magic doesn’t work that way. Why not just say it doesn’t work, period?”

Moondancer was speechless for a moment, but only a moment. “That… That’s not fair! You’re judging something you don’t understand.”

“Then show me!”

Moondancer took a deep breath. Then she brightened up and said, “Oh, I know! We can do some candle magic next.”

Trixie quirked an eyebrow. “Candle magic?”

“Yes! That’s easy. We light different numbers and colors of candles with symbolic meanings, to summon various types of good fortune.”

“Ah. And how long, exactly, would it take for this vaguely defined good fortune to manifest?”

Moondancer shrugged. “It varies. You can’t exactly schedule something like that. It’s in the hands of the spirits.”

Trixie snorted. “Spirits, really? You can’t even prove that your magic does anything. You’ll go through your little ritual and then, days later, the next time we have a bit of good luck, you can claim the spell had something to do with it. That’s not magic, that’s a fraud!”

“Fraud?” Moondancer’s voice cracked. “Where do you get off, calling me a fraud? You… you… entertainer! Stage magician!”

“Oh, did Trixie hit a nerve?”

“OUT!” Moondancer pointed at her door. “Out of my room!”

“FINE!” Trixie retorted as she turned to leave. “Trixie has wasted enough of her precious time on your delusions.” She trotted out, nose in the air, and Moondancer slammed the door behind her.

Trixie lowered her head and grumbled to herself as she moved down the hallway toward her own room. Loud voices gave her pause as she approached the lounge, men’s voices raised in anger. “FINE!” she heard one shout, followed by the slamming of a door. After a few moments of silence she moved forward with caution and peeked into the lounge.

There was Ivan, sitting on the sofa, slumped with his head in his hands. He ran his fingers through his ruffled hair, a peculiar and un-pony-like gesture to Trixie’s eyes. His normally mirthful countenance was gone, making him look old.

Trixie moved closer, nudged his knee with her muzzle and asked, “Hey, are you all right?”

“I’ll manage. It’s just Smithers being an ass. He thinks his job here is to say no, and that the more he says no, the better he’s doing it. I’m having to fight tooth and nail with him for every little change of plans. You might think with the fate of humanity at stake, that he’d cut us a little slack.”

Trixie frowned, glancing downward contemplatively. “But he doesn’t believe it’ll work.”

“He called me a crackpot! Delusional, he said. He thinks we’re wasting time moving rocks and dirt to no purpose, fiddling while Rome burns. What he thinks would be more productive, I really don’t know.”

Trixie sat on her haunches, and awkwardly rubbed one arm across the other. “Could he be right?”

“What do you mean? You think I’m a crackpot too?”

“I didn’t say that! But… Moondancer has been trying to teach me about witchcraft, and I’ve yet to see her produce a single spell with any visible result. She keeps spouting nonsense about gods and spirits and symbols and rituals, but there’s never a spark of actual magic. I haven’t seen or felt any magic that I didn’t produce myself since we arrived here. Not from her, not from you, and not from the stone circle. You said magic on Earth was hidden, but my patience is running short for some of it — any of it — to become visible. If it’s more than just a fantasy, that is.”

He eyed her warily. “If that’s what you think, why are you here? You pledged yourself to this effort! Are you going to abandon us already?”

“Trixie always keeps her word — even if she later comes to regret it. I said I would help humanity somehow. Maybe I should be helping get humans converted, or help get the Exponential Lands ready for the masses of newfoals to move in. Maybe moving rocks around is not the best use of Trixie’s precious talent!”

Ivan squinted. “Helping humans get converted? You mean like…?” He left the sentence hanging.

Trixie’s mouth hung open as she realized what he was implying, momentarily speechless. When she found her voice, it was shrill. “You can’t possibly think that! How dare you imply…”

“We don’t want to become ponies. Everyone in Golden Dawn is dedicated to preventing that from happening. If you encourage conversion, or endorse it, or facilitate it — after telling everyone you were on our side — then how do you expect us to take that?”

Trixie was trembling as she stared at the floor, her ears folded back, and she snorted and scuffed the floor with a hoof, and Ivan wondered for a moment if he’d gone too far. In a snap, though, she turned away from him and went straight to her room.

Ivan slumped once again and rubbed the bridge of his nose. After only a few moments hoofsteps and a sizzle of magic caused him to look up, only to see Trixie marching past, wearing her hat and cape, and wrapping the scarf around her neck with magic. He said, “Don’t tell me you’re going out in the blizzard! Are you daft?”

“Trixie needs to cool off,” was all she said, and she continued on toward the front door without even glancing his way.

Blizzard was an overstatement, although snow was still falling from the gloomy sky. Trixie tromped out into it. At first she didn’t pay attention to where she was going, but after a few minutes realized she’d wandered onto Castle Lane, following the familiar path to the stone circle. It was natural, instinctive, for a pony to follow a familiar path without giving it any thought. It was best not to get lost in the snow, anyhow.

Trixie’s feet were cold, and the wind was bitter. She stopped a moment to cast warming spells on her clothes and hooves. It wouldn’t last forever, but for a time the magic would keep her from getting frostbite or hypothermia. For a few moments she stood and listened, her sensitive ears picking up nothing but wind and the soft hiss of snow falling. She resumed her sullen march down Castle Lane.

Glancing right and left, she pondered the sudden return of winter in May. Green grass and flowers were buried under snow, to say nothing of young crops in the fields. The experts said this was caused by the Barrier — yet another misery brought to this miserable world, another painful import of chaos from Equestria. The gloomy sky, the cold, and her mood were all in accord.

At least she was out of the house. At least she was away from those humans, for a little while.

Not knowing where else to go, she entered the field where the stone circle and henge were under construction. Work sheds, JCBs and mounds of dirt were all covered in blankets of white, abandoned and silent. The machines had been working to rebuild the earthworks — the henge — that surrounded the stones. They had dug a deep ditch around the stones and piled up a bank around the ditch. It wasn’t complete yet, but it was taking shape. Trixie walked through an entryway that had been left clear, intentionally she assumed, and made her way to the stones.

She sat, planting her rump and tail in the snow, and she looked around the ancient stones, gray and indifferent. They’d been snowed upon countless times. The passage of seasons, years, centuries, meant nothing to them. They had no advice to offer Trixie.

Or did they? She closed her eyes and listened to snow flurries sizzling across the ground, between the stones. Then she cast a spell — the subtle, swirling tinkle of unicorn magic, so often unnoticed, sounded loud against the background of fimbulvinter. The spell was meant to scan, to detect, to sense any other source of magic around her.

Trixie maintained the spell, seconds ticking by, straining to find anything. Then she released it, along with the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and her head slumped low. There was nothing, nothing but the same emptiness, the same lifelessness, that she’d sensed everywhere in this doomed world. She sighed and listened to the snow falling, and felt the chill slowly gnawing its way through her enchantments, reaching for her bones.

A noise in the distance made her ear twitch. She opened her eyes, perked up her ears and swiveled them to locate the disturbance. A crunch of footsteps and a slight snort or snuffle told her somebody was approaching. Had somebody come looking for her so soon? That hardly seemed likely. She peered past the cold stones, through the drifting snowflakes, into the gray. A shape was barely visible shuffling toward her.

It didn’t seem like a human shape. It was squat, its head bobbing slightly as it walked. Trixie squinted, her eyes teasing out more details as it neared. For a moment she thought it was a pony like herself. It was much bigger, though, its proportions distorted, and as gray as the stones around her. Its fetlocks, mane and tail were shaggy, streaked, and crusted with rime frost and snow. Seeing her, it stopped, then tossed its head and snorted, blowing out a white cloud of frost.

Trixie’s mind whirled, memories of long-ago stories and myths flooding back to her, which she’d always dismissed as nothing more than bedtime stories, and in an instant she realized what this feral-looking, awful thing must be. A bolt of fear shot through her, a chill striking through her heart that far exceeded mere snow and wind. Eyes wide, ears drooped, she scooted back a couple of steps and whispered one word: “wendigo…”

Then she turned and bolted. She dashed through the snow, raced down Castle Lane. She never looked back. Tears streamed from her wind-stung eyes, and icy air clawed at her throat, but she ran as though a manticore was at her heels. Somewhere she lost her hat, though she hardly noticed. She skidded around the corners, hooves flinging snow, until she reached the house at the Low Nest Farm.

She fumbled at the door for a moment, trying to use both hooves and magic on it at the same time. Then she was in, falling onto the carpet and kicking with a hind leg to slam the door shut.

Ivan was first to respond to the noise and rushed over to kneel by her side. “Trixie? What happened, what’s wrong?” Shivering and coughing, she tried to speak but found it impossible to form coherent words. Instead she grabbed him with her hooves and pulled close, tucking her muzzle against his chest. “You’re freezing!” he exclaimed. Puzzled, he hugged her, then yelled over his shoulder. “Mildred! Something’s happened to Trixie. Bring us a blanket!”

He then picked her up in his burly arms and carried her to the lounge, and laid her upon the sofa. Mildred arrived momentarily, took the damp cape and scarf, and wrapped a blanket around the little unicorn, then she returned to the kitchen to fetch some hot tea. Smithers and Moondancer also trailed in to see what the ruckus was about.

After sipping some tea, Trixie caught her breath and managed to say, “Listen… Listen, everyone! We’re all in great danger. I saw a wendigo at the stone circle.”

It was Smithers who said, “A what now?”

“A wendigo! You’ve got to believe me. I saw it.”

Smithers looked to Ivan, who shrugged and looked to Moondancer, who shrugged and looked to Trixie. “What’s a wendigo?” she asked.

Trixie blinked, momentarily nonplussed by their ignorance. In Equestria it was hard to imagine anypony not knowing the myth by heart. “It’s a monster! They feed on anger and hatred, and they make snow and ice. They make it winter all the time. That’s why it’s like winter now. That’s why we’re buried in snow, don’t you see? The wendigos are here. They’re freezing your world.”

Smithers and Moondancer looked at one another, and Mildred just looked worried and confused. Ivan, however, began to gather up his coat and bobble hat. Trixie noticed. “Ivan? Where are you going? You can’t go out there with those things!”

Unperturbed, he answered, “Well, I’ve never seen a wendigo before. And it was at the henge, so that’s my responsibility. I’m going to take a look.”

“I’ll go too,” Smithers said, and he went to get his winter clothes. Without a word, Moondancer fetched hers as well.

“Wait! What? You… You’re not all going to leave me alone here, are you?”

Ivan said, “You’ll be safe here. Mildred will stay with you — won’t you?” Mildred nodded.

Trixie gulped, and then pushed aside the blanket and slipped off the couch to stand on all fours. “I’ll go too.”

Ivan’s brow furrowed with concern. “Are you sure? You don’t have to do that.”

“You don’t believe what I saw. Well, I’ll show you! You have no idea what you’re getting into, and you might need some magic.” She paused for a moment, perhaps realizing that she didn’t know what she was getting into either. Then she added, “Besides, The Great and Powerful Trixie needs to find her hat.”

The four of them went out, piled into Ivan’s SUV, turned the heater to maximum, and rolled into the snowy gloom, which was only becoming darker as the hour grew late. Upon glimpsing her hat Trixie called a halt and levitated it back to the car. Then they proceeded up the road, retracing Trixie’s terrified dash until they eased into the work site.

Ivan stopped the car, though he left the lights on. He opened the door and stepped out, and the other humans followed. Swallowing her fear, Trixie followed last. The snowfall had almost stopped, with only a scattering of tiny, dusty flakes swirling down in the breeze. They moved away from the car, spreading out slowly, looking around. Ivan examined the ground, trying to see if tracks in the snow could tell anything about what happened.

“Ivan!” Moondancer hissed, and waved him over to where she stood. He tromped over and peered where she was pointing.

Peeking around one of the leaning stones was an equine shape, partially crusted with rime. Looking at Ivan, it snorted and gave its head a little shake. “Will you look at that…” he muttered. He dropped to his knee in the snow and reached out a hand, and he uttered a tsk-tsk sound to entice the creature. “Come on, boy… I won’t hurt you,” he said softly.

The animal whickered and trudged through the snow over to him and started sniffing about his hand.

Trixie was gobsmacked, staring in wide-eyed wonder while her mouth hung open. Finally she managed to squeak out one word: “What!?”

“It’s a fell pony,” Ivan answered, as if that explained anything. “He must have got lost in the snow, as confused by this weather as everyone else. Come on over and say hello.” He reached to the pony’s shaggy mane and brushed away some of the accumulated frost.

Trixie moved toward him cautiously. “Fell? Pony?”

“A pony of the fells — a hill pony, in other words. Fell ponies are the native breed hereabouts in the hill country, been here for centuries. I’ve heard the queen even rides one.”

The wild-looking equine suddenly turned his head, stretched out his neck, reaching with his nose to snuffle at Trixie, but she squeaked and scooted back from him. “What — what was it trying to do?”

“That’s how they say hello to another horse, by putting their noses together and sniffing at one another’s breath. He’s just trying to be friendly.”

“How crude!” Trixie declared. She watched as Ivan petted the fell pony, then her expression softened and she moved closer to it again. This time she winced but held her ground as the pony once again sniffed at her nose, and she even managed a hesitant little sniff in return.

Ivan chuckled heartily. Then he pondered out loud. “Poor guy… He’s cold, and hungry too, I’d bet. We should bring him back to the farm and put him in the barn, and get him a blanket and some fodder. When the weather lifts, then we can ask around and find out where he belongs.”

“Do you think you can get him to follow?” Moondancer asked.

“Ehh… It would be easier if I had a rope.”

There was a magenta glow as Trixie levitated her hat and turned it over, and a length of slender rope came snaking upward from it. “Will this work?”


Later on in the evening, when everyone was back at the farm house and the fell pony was squared away, Trixie went to Mildred and said, “Please make up enough hot chocolate for everyone. I’m going to gather them all together in the lounge for something important.”

When the puzzled humans were all together, and all had their mugs in hand, Trixie stood upright on her hind legs and declared, loudly, “The Great and Powerful Trixie has a story to share with you all tonight. It is a story from Equestria, and perhaps the most important one of all. We have all had arguments today, but that must end. Please take this to heart!”

Trixie removed her hat and set it aside, and her horn glowed with magic, and she conjured up a scene outlined in translucent, ghostly colors. Tiny ponies appeared on the coffee table: earth ponies dressed in ragged clothes at one end, finely dressed unicorn ponies perched upon a rock on the other end, and pegasus ponies wearing what looked like togas hovered above.

Trixie began her story, employing the lilting tones she always used to address a crowd: “Once upon a time, long before the peaceful rule of Celestia, before ponies discovered our beautiful land of Equestria, ponies did not know harmony. It was a strange and dark time, a time when ponies were torn apart — by hatred!”

“During this frightful age, each of the three tribes — the pegasi, the unicorns, and the earth ponies — cared not for what befell the other tribes, but only for their own welfare. In those troubled times, as now, the pegasi were the stewards of the weather.” Trixie’s little animated pegasi began to shake a little animated cloud, making droplets fall from it. “But they demanded something in return: food that could only be grown by the earth ponies.” A pair of little animated ponies appeared pulling a cart, and they passed a bundle of vegetables to the pegasi — grudgingly, it seemed.

“The unicorns demanded the same in return for magically bringing forth day and night.” The earth ponies gave another bundle of food to the unicorns while the light upon the table shifted dramatically. “And so mistrust between the tribes festered until, one fateful day, it came to a boil.”

Dark clouds formed above the cartoonish ponies, and phantom snow began to drift down onto the tabletop. “And what prompted the ponies to clash? Twas a mysterious blizzard that overtook the land and toppled the tribes’ precarious peace…”

Trixie’s audience watched, spellbound.