“Let’s see”, Twilight Sparkle thought to herself, “I’ve made the checklist of checklists to make, the checklist of checklist supplies and the checklist of books about checklists”.
Twilight became lost in her thoughts as she flew further and further from Ponyville, the buildings receding into the distance, replaced by trees and open grassland. She didn’t notice and continued to gaze blankly up at the sky.
“But what if the checklist of checklists to make is wrong, I mean I made it before reading the books about checklists! If the checklist of checklists to make is wrong, then the checklist of checklist supplies is wrong too – I could run out of supplies and make the wrong checklist!”
A gust of air suddenly snapped her out of it!
Twilight desperately flapped her wings in an attempt to escape the turbulence, turning around to release that Ponyville looked smaller than her hoof on the horizon. She turned again only for a tree to appear right in front of her face.
THUD!
A couple of seconds later, Twilight re-opened her eyes and rubbed her head slowly. She was able to make out a hazy blue image in front of her and squinted to make it out. The blue character offered a hoof in Twilight’s direction. Twilight blinked and a familiar face came into view – Trixie!
“Trixie?” Twilight inquired as her old ‘friend’ helped her up. “What in Equestria are you doing here?”
Trixie smiled, seemingly pleased by the question. “Well, as you know, the great and powerful Trixie is a truly magnificent unicorn!” She flicked her cape into the air to demonstrate.
Twilight Sparkle rolled her eyes.
“However, Trixie is not quite as magnificent as she’d like to be. So, now that you’re an important princess – “
“I am not more important than anypony – “
Trixie placed a hoof on Twilight’s mouth and continued. “Trixie was wondering if she could be your royal student, and become even more magnificent?”
Twilight Sparkle opened her mouth, then closed it again before any words came out. She placed a hoof on her chin and gazed thoughtfully at the sky for a moment before looking back at Trixie.
“Actually”, Twilight began with a smile, “that’s not such a bad idea, I could do with a royal student, it’d be good magic practice after all”.
She paused again, before making her final decision. “Alright.”
“YES!” exclaimed Trixie as she leaped into the air with her hooves raised and a huge grin on her face. She then realised Twilight was still watching and tried to land as elegantly as possible.
“What Trixie meant to say is she knew you were going to say that.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow at Trixie and they began the long trek back to Ponyville.
---
Twilight returned home to find her castle a complete mess. There were books all over the floor, The Life Cycle of Dragons, The Ultimate Guide to Dragon Behaviour and Dragon Species of Equestria, to name a few. The shiny floor had become a jungle of paper. Any other time, Twilight would have looked around at the floor in disbelief - but she was in the middle of something. Twilight Sparkle never stopped in the middle of something.
“SPIKE!”, Twilight called out.
The baby dragon, halfway through a thick book with a picture of a dragon on the cover, jumped back in shock and slammed the book shut. He gulped and raced over to Twilight and Trixie.
“Yes?” Spike asked, faking a smile. He was too absorbed in his own situation to notice Twilight’s unusual guest.
“I’m going to need two blackboards, a bucket of chalk and The Beginner’s Guide to Magic!”
Spike breathed a sigh of relief at Twilight's failure to notice the mess he'd made, before running off towards the library.
“HOLD ON!” Twilight interrupted.
Spike skidded to a halt and turned around, covering his face in fear.
“Make that two buckets of chalk!”
Spike raced back into the room about a minute later, sweating heavily while attempting to push two old, battered blackboards on wheels with one hand while holding two buckets of chalk and an eraser in the other. Unsurprisingly, after rocking from side to side a couple of times, he tripped over his own feet and the buckets went flying into the air, where they were caught by Twilight’s sparkly magenta magic.
Spike handed over the eraser, somehow still grasped in his hand, before darting back to his book. Twilight Sparkle gently placed the buckets back on the floor and lifted a piece of chalk using her magic.
“Now”, Twilight began, “what category of magic do you want to learn about?”
“Uh… whichever one is the most magnificent?” Trixie replied.
“You don’t know the categories of magic?”
“Of course Trixie knows! She just – can’t recall them right now.”
“Well that’s the first thing you need to know then!” Twilight said, flicking open The Beginner’s Guide to Magic and beginning to write on one of the boards.
“There are several major categories of spells, these include mind spells, appearance spells, energy spells, movement spells…”
As Twilight rambled on, Trixie pulled her pointed purple hat over her face. She came here to learn magic, not fill in a citizenship form!
After roughly a minute of listing examples from each magic type, Twilight finally looked back at her new student and realised something was wrong.
“Is everything alright?” she asked.
Trixie groaned in reply.
“Perhaps we should try a practical lesson instead”, Twilight answered her own question.
--
The first stop in Trixie's "practical task", which Twilight Sparkle had of course spent several minutes preparing for, was Fluttershy's cottage. With that many animals to look after - Twilight thought - there'd have to be something they could help with. Twilight and Trixie couldn't help but hop along the path to the cottage - there were so many pretty flowers lining the way - part of some biodiversity program the creature specialist ponies were doing in the Everfree Forest. Gently, Twilight's hoof tapped the door.
"Oh... um... hold on a second" a quiet, shy voice muttered from within.
A few moments later the door swung open, and Fluttershy revealed herself, carrying a bag of fish-shaped biscuits in her mouth.
"Hi!" Twilight began, "we were just wondering if - wait, what's that?"
"Oh... um... I'm-I'm just about to feed the otters."
"Great! Do you think we could help?"
"I-I don't know, they're usually very friendly but... um... they can be a bit fussy about food"
"It's alright", Twilight assured, "Trixie can do a simple organisation spell, right?"
Both Twilight and Fluttershy turned to the student expectantly.
"Huh? Oh, yes, of course, it'll be a breeze for the great and powerful Trixie!"
"A-alright" Fluttershy finally conceded - she had a feeling that something would go wrong, but she always had that feeling, and things usually turned out okay... right?
Trixie, following the lead of Twilight and Fluttershy, proudly skipped over to the otters' pond, levitating the bag of food with her magic. The pond was a small pool of water near Ponyville's main river, with one or two lilly pads drifting on top, and the otters tended to use it as a place to rest, for the very small percentage of their time that they didn't spend playing around in the river and making a show for the local ponies - they had a reputation for being almost as entertaining as Pinkie Pie.
The otters crowded around expectantly and began chirping at Trixie. Twilight's student focused hard, closing her eyes and imagining the perfect otter biscuit. A select hoof-full of the biscuits floated out of the bag and landed on the floor. The otters were skeptical at first - the treats didn't smell like Fluttershy - but once one of them took a nibble, the entire holt of otters were scrambling for the food. Twilight clapped her hooves excitedly, and Trixie proudly lifted her nose into the air - her success, however, would be short lived.
One of Trixie's hooves slipped on the wet ground, and she lost focus on the spell. Not only did the bag spill all its contents into the pond, but bits and pieces from all over the surrounding woodland came flying over as well. Within a few seconds, a crowd of angry, hissing otters had engulfed Trixie, and she was running back and forth, screaming at the top of her lungs.
"Help! Twilight, Fluttershy, Celestia, that random pony from Manehattan, somepony, help! Get them off!"
Calmly, Fluttershy walked over to the otters.
"Um... please calm down", Fluttershy began.
Immediately the otters were soothed by their friend's words and they let go of Trixie, who ran and hid behind Twilight, tossing away the small amount of dignity she had left.
"It was only an accident, she didn't mean to mess your food up, and the food she did give you was very nice."
The otters chattered among themselves, and then decided to calmly walk over to a trembling Trixie and lick her on the face.
"Trixie... apologies for her error", Trixie managed to spit out, first looking at the otters, but then turning to make eye contact with Twilight, as if to ask what should happen next.
"Don't worry Trixie", Twilight assured, "there's plenty of other chances, that was a good effort".