April 10, 2027
Baltimare – The Hungry Ursa
Saturday – Late Night
The backstage area at the Hungry Ursa was even more stuffy than the lounge. With fewer places for smog to filter, what fumes did emanate through the cracks collected and adhered to everything like a second, clammy skin. Quantum instinctively touched her mane, wondering what kind of magic it took to keep a pony who primped in such a place looking fresh from the makeup table.
Finding her quarry was a simple task. Amidst a moat of dusty cardboard boxes overflowing with a multitude of props and garish outfits was a small, lonely makeup table. Hanging above it was a single lightbulb attached to a chain. Affixed with a shade to angle its beams downward, the bulb served as the only light in the area. As such, every object was attenuated with a long, wispy shadow. Staring into the table’s vanity mirror with her elbows on the table at her chin in her hooves, was Trixie Lulamoon. The cyan mare’s left ear swiveled at the sound of boxes shifting. Without bothering to turn around, she waved one hoof lazily in the air.
“Leave the flowers on the floor in the usual spot, Jasmine. Then shoo. I’m busy.”
“How many flowers do they give you after a performance?” Quantum blurted out boldly. Instantly on high alert, Trixie spun around in her swiveling seat and drilled her eyes into the stallion who was her daughter.
“You!?” Trixie blurted, her horn instantly coming into purple-hued life. “What are you doing back here, you bug? This area is for employees only!”
Quantum made a dismissive gesture with her hoof. “Relax. I just want to talk.”
Trixie peered at Draw Out for a few moments, ensuring that he was at a safe distance and not making any threatening moves, before she allowed her own magical light to wink out. Plunged back into weak incandescence, the room carried her words around and echoed them off every surface.
“Talk?” Trixie huffed, trying to keep Quantum beyond the horizon of boxes with her eyes alone. “Talk is cheap for ponies like you. I told you this before – The Great and Powerful Twiggy is not to be handled by the likes of you!”
“Your name isn’t ‘Twiggy’,” Quantum replied stubbornly.
“Excuse me?”
“I said,” Quantum pushed a breath of defiant air out of her nostrils in almost exactly the same way her mother had a moment before, “Your name isn’t ‘Twiggy’. It’s ‘Trixie’. The Great and Powerful Trixie. And I bet the very idea that you would allow yourself to be ‘handled’ by anypony at all is an affront to your sensibilities that’s so bad it makes you want to blast every single pony in that room out there straight into next Hearthswarming, right?
Trixie thrust a hoof in the minty mare’s direction, opened her mouth to tell her off, and…swiveled back around to stare into the mirror, folding her forelegs on the tabletop. Quantum cantered forward a few more steps.
“Why are you doing this?” She asked her mother. “There are other ways to make a living than…selling yourself.”
“Don’t act like you care, you pig,” Trixie spat, watching the other mare’s reflection over her shoulder. “And how dare you even begin to suggest you know what’s best for anypony in this slummy little city? You are nothing but a cheating card-shark who does nothing with their time but stealing other pony’s bits, drinking, and wasting every day away in this cesspool of debauchery. And don’t you even try to tell me that you don’t approve of ‘selling oneself’.”
“‘Cesspool of debauchery’?” Quantum repeated. “That’s a heck of a thing to say about your employer. Do you like Tilt?”
Trixie narrowed her eyes but didn’t reply.
“You don’t, do you?” Quantum pressed. “I saw it in your eyes out there. The very idea of his hooves on your coat disgusts you. You’ve just gotten good at hiding it.”
“…you are no better than he,” Trixie mused.
“This isn’t about me, and I’m NOT trying to pick you up!” Quantum shouted, slamming herself in her own chest with every enunciation. “Look at yourself! You’re a magician, not a callmare! What would your daughter say if she saw you like this!?”
Trixie’s ears perked up. In the mirror, she gaped at the reflection of Draw Out, who had since come closer. “What did you say…?”
“Your daughter. Quantum. She doesn’t know you’re doing this, right? You told her—I mean—I bet you told her you’re earning money some other way…”
“Y-you…how do you…” Trixie sputtered.
“If you told her the truth,” Quantum ventured, “if you made her understand…maybe you could find another way. Maybe you wouldn’t have to deal with this all alone.”
Mom, Quantum thought, sniffing in a sharp breath, please, listen. You’ve got to listen. To change the future.
Trixie was silent for a long time, and in that time, her daughter didn’t dare to move. The cyan blue mare, who wasn’t as young as she used to be, stared into the hazy vanity mirror stuffed behind the stage of the Hungry Ursa, and pawed at the bags under her eyes with a hoof. In her head, she saw the witch Twilight Sparkle, who had made a fool out of her and was almost certainly laughing it up with her friends back in Ponyville. Her lips moved, but her voice was so quiet, it was hard to say whom she was addressing.
“All I ever wanted to be was a magician…” Trixie mumbled to herself, staring into the mirror and heedless of her company. “But I was never good enough. Not good enough for my parents. Not good enough for my siblings. Not good enough to have friends. All I ever had…was the magic.”
“That’s not true,” Quantum said softly, stepping closer still. She could feel a certain moisture under her glasses that wasn’t an allergic reaction to all the smoke. “You have your daughter, and…I don’t think you really understand how deeply she loves you, or…” she paused, remembering those fateful days in Canterlot, “…how far she’s willing to go for you.”
Trixie’s shoulders were quivering. The whites of her eyes had taken on a pinkish hue. Quantum stared at her mother’s reflection. This…this was the mother she knew. Not the pony Trixie was pretending to be, and not the creature she would one day become. The raw, honest love and deep, lonely insecurity in Trixie’s eyes wrapped around Quantum’s heart like tendrils, pulling the strings of her heart back and forth between devotion and shame.
Trixie Lulamoon was in pain. Quantum Trots Lulamoon never knew. And never bothered to try to understand.
“Mom…” Quantum hiccupped, forgetting herself entirely and placing a hoof on her mother’s sagging shoulder. “Please…don’t let things stay this way. Get out of this place. Find honest work. And for Celestia’s sake, talk to your daughter. Tell her everything. Heal. Do it while you still can.”
Trixie stared into the mirror. For the briefest of instants, the smile on the face of the stallion standing behind her looked uncannily familiar. Then, she remembered herself. Remembered where she was. Remembered who was touching her. Remembered everypony that had been touching her, and everything they had all put her through.
“ENOUGH!”
Quantum was a moment too slow. A cardboard box overflowing with trashy costumes slammed itself against her temple, sending her sprawling legs flying in every direction. When she was in a disorganized heap on the floor, she looked up to see the glowing purple horn of her mother. Trixie’s expression was one that her daughter had only seen once before. Just before Canterlot began to burn.
“My personal life is none of your business, you fiend.” Trixie glowered menacingly. “I don’t know how you learned my daughter’s name nor how you were able to find out about her at all, but I promise you this – if you ever so much as exhale the air necessary to form the syllables of her name ever again, even in your sleep, I’ll rearrange your pretty face so badly that even the timberwolves I’ll throw your bloody carcass to won’t want to eat you. Get this through your thick skull – I am The Great and Powerful Trixie, and I can destroy you. I swear to the deepest parts of the Everfree Forest that if you screw with my family, I will KILL you. And when I’m through, I’ll exorcise your pathetic soul from your body and cast it into the foulest, most torturous Hell ponies have ever conceived!” Shaking with rage, Trixie panted out her last words, “And I’ll do the same to Tilt, that old nag behind that stupid bar, all your friends, and every other son of a nag who even thinks they know anything about my markless Cutie, my child, whom I love, and who’s simplest smile is worth more to me than ten thousand of your disgusting lives. Now get the hell out of my muzzle. Don’t talk to me, and don’t come within five hooves of me ever again. EVER!”
Her ears flattened tightly against her skull, Quantum hugged the floor and prostrated herself before her mother’s tear-streaked rage. Practically scooting out the backstage area on her stomach, she made for the stairs and fled before Swizzle’s bouncers realized she was gone again. She had to gallop down the hall to her room and dive face first into Draw Out’s bed to stay ahead of the opening floodgates.
There she stayed for the rest of the night.
The last time her mother had told her off so passionately, Quantum had tried to kill herself (or at least go away forever) by leaping into an untested Accelerator device. This time Trixie’s words were different, and Quantum didn’t have to scratch too far past the surface to see what lay beneath. In 2027, her mother loved her dearly. In 2039, there was nothing left but hate.
Quantum Trots smiled beneath the worn-in tear tracks under her eyes. Damn the numbers. There was still hope to make a new future, and she would make that future. Come Hell, high water, or spirit ponies vying for her soul.