“Moondancer!”
Of course Trixie would ambush her. Moondancer kept walking, not quite breaking into a trot. The hefty load of books balanced on her back swayed precariously. She slowed.
“Moondancer, wait up!”
“I’m on my way to class.”
Trixie didn’t seem to understand that being neighbors did not mean they were automatically best friends. It merited a passing acquaintance at best. That she was an obnoxious little filly who always wanted to demonstrate her newest trick, or play a game as soon as she got back from magic kindergarten, did nothing to help the whole ‘being friends’ thing seem more palatable.
“What is it?” Moondancer rolled her eyes. Please, not another ‘trick.’
“Trixie would like to play a game she played today at school!”
That was new. “Since when has Trixie… have you referred to yourself in the third person?”
“Mrs. Flowers said if you wanted to make people remember you, you should always tell them your name. Trixie wants to be remembered!”
It made an odd sort of sense, but that didn’t make it any less grating. And this is why I am so glad I tested out of magic kindergarten. “Mhmm… I don’t think I’ll be forgetting your name. Ever.”
Trixie’s hoofsteps stopped. Moondancer forced herself to face forward. She could see that silly pose anyway, Trixie reared up, with her forehooves pawing at the air. That silly victory dance would follow if she did look back.
“Good! Trixie is glad.” A moment later, the sound of hooves caught up to her again. “So… would you like to play a game? It’s called hop-a-doodle-do!”
“You don’t say.” Hop-a-doodle-do… it sounds like something a five year old would think up.
“I made it up!” Trixie bounced to stand in front of her, beaming a smile while the floppy felt hat tipped sideways, catching on her horn. “Everypony loved it!”
Point, set, match.
“Everypony?”
Trixie’s one visible ear wilted. “The teacher did. And we all played. Once.”
“Then I don’t see how exciting it could be.” Moondancer sidestepped and continued on.
“But you could try!” Trixie bounded past her, stopping in her path again. “Just one time!”
It was an effort not to growl or pick up the filly and put her to the side. But that was beyond rude, and if she was too forceful, she could hurt Trixie. She backed up a pace and leveled a glower at Trixie that further wilted the visible ear.
“I’ve told you fourteen,” Moondancer paused. That didn’t seem right. She recounted, and continued, “Sixteen times already, Trixie. I am not interested in playing games. Or tricks. Or anything else.”
She started walking away again. Just a little further and she’d be free.
“But it’s like hoofscotch! You love hoofscotch. You even have a—”
“Hoofscotch is for fillies. I haven’t played in years.” Ahead of her, the big intersection where she could escape Trixie loomed like a golden beacon of peace. The filly never wandered further without her parents.
The books balanced on her back fell off.
When Moondancer whirled around, Trixie had her tongue clenched between her teeth, and was holding the four hefty books that wouldn’t fit in Moondancer’s saddlebags aloft in a sputtering aura. Sweat was already beading on the younger filly’s forehead, but Trixie was beaming up at Moondancer in that look-at-what-I-can-do way that had always grated on her nerves.
Moondancer held back the retort already forming on her lips, and made herself stand there, calmly, waiting for Trixie’s concentration to waver. It would do nothing except prove that she was a bully if she took the books from Trixie, and she didn’t want to hurt the filly by so rough a treatment of her magic. Annoying, Trixie might be, but she was still a fellow pony.
“Can I please have those back?”
“You have all these books about games! There must be some game you want to play with Trixie!” Trixie held the books aloft in her aura, eyes dancing from one to the next. “Just one game? Please! What about this one?” One book drifted closer to Moondancer, soon followed by all four. Trixie frowned, and all four drifted back. “Um. It’s this one.” Blue eyes flicked back and forth over the title, and she frowned. “The Ultimate Um Game.”
Moondancer rolled her eyes. “Ultimatum game,” she corrected. “And it isn’t—” Her eyes fell on the title of the first book that had drifted forward. “Fine. One game.” She held up a hoof before Trixie could protest further. “But you need to get some things first.”
“What?” Trixie bounced up and down. That ridiculous wizard hat flopped over her eyes, and Moondancer barely caught all four books before they fell.
She piled the books on her back again, this time cinching them down with the drawstrings that should have held her saddlebags closed. For a moment, she wondered how rich Trixie’s family was. Not very, if they were living in the same neighborhood that Moondancer’s family was, with its houses patched a dozen times with mismatched white stone, the streets cobbled only in rough red brick, and roofs of red-orange ceramic tile instead of pearly marble or smooth, dark slate.
And it wasn’t like Trixie was dressed in the latest fashion. A two-bit bathrobe cut to be a cloak, and a wizard’s hat made out of the robe’s remains and a bit of felt. It was obviously homemade, even if it was fastidiously clean every time she saw it. She sniffed.
“One hundred bits.”
Trixie stopped bouncing. “But… That’s my weekly allowance for…” She tapped a hoof on the ground swiftly, stopped, and stuck her tongue out between her teeth and started tapping her hoof again, more slowly.
Moondancer waited, ears taut against her skull. Watching the filly do math was like listening to a cat try to climb a blackboard.
Finally, the tapping stopped, and then another set of taps, a swish of tail, and the hat flopped back over Trixie’s mane. “That’s um… six years.” Her eyes grew wide. “But I don’t wanna wait that long! I have…” A shorter series of taps. “I have five bits. Mom says I should save them up for something I really want, and I really, really want to build a—”
A stamp of the hoof cut Trixie off.
“If you want to play my game, one hundred bits. It’s in the rules.” Moondancer pulled the book free from her pack with a grimace and flipped to a diagram explaining the gist of Hobble On’s Choice. “See? One hundred. No more. No less.” She closed the book before Trixie could read more. With her luck, the filly would be able to not only understand it, but see the game for what it really was.
The Ultimatum Game… as a game. She held back another snort, and watched as Trixie gnawed her lip, glancing between the book still hovering in the air and Moondancer’s eyes.
She found she could not meet those lavender eyes for very long. It irritated her that she could not, and couldn’t suss out why she could not.
“Well?”
“Can’t you play another game with Trixie? Like hoofscotch! Or… or Four Square!”
“No. I don’t play those kinds of games. This game or no game.”
Trixie’s eyes shimmered. To her credit, Trixie didn’t whine. She stood up, back straight, head high and looked Moondancer in the eye.
“It may take Trixie a little while to get the bits.” Her ears twitched, not quite a worried look, and Trixie took a step closer. “Will you play after I do?”
“I will.”
Trixie’s brow furrowed. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
Trixie stared at her longer, and Moondancer finally sighed, and shook her head. “Look, give me, um… the belt on your… cloak and I’ll use it as a reminder. I won’t forget it then, will I?”
The bathrobe’s belt loops still held their tie-strings, loosely wrapped around Trixie’s barrel. She suspected that was the only reason the filly could wear it without the tips dragging through everything she walked over.
“You won’t forget Trixie,” the filly said as she passed the cord to Moondancer. “You promise?”
“I do.” She tucked it between pages in the middle of the book.
“That’s three times!”
Moondancer couldn’t dodge a clumsy attempt to hug her forelegs, but didn’t push the filly away either. She waited, rolling her eyes at each new squeak and squeeze until Trixie trotted away, presumably to find a hundred bits.
The book got stuffed back under the ties holding the rest of the books down. The filly would forget about the game, or lose interest long before Moondancer ever had to make good on her promise.
She found the book again.
It was a few days after Twilight Sparkle had left, after giving her a promise to write and visit more often. It had never occurred to her, before, just how cluttered her private study was. Books were everywhere, settled on every flat surface, and even some of the less steeply slanted surfaces. They sat in piles on the floor, with notes and notebooks stuffed between their pages or acting as spacers for other, heavier books.
All of them represented half-finished research projects and half-started pleasure reads dropped when another project caught her eye; incomplete promises to herself to finish something, some day.
Even her glasses, after they had broken almost two months ago, had become an incomplete project. She kept meaning to have them fixed at some point, but something else always came up, until the tape around the middle felt as natural as not having it.
She had just taken them off to frown at the mended break, and caught sight of the book acting as a level under the table leg that had never quite been the right length. Of course, she had bought it from a mountain goat, and they had strange ideas about what was level.
On Carts, Wear, and Maintenance: A Study of the Ultimatum Game Theorem as it Relates to Proper Rental Cart Rotation and Maintenance. She smiled at the long-winded title. Hobble On had loved to go on and on about inconsequentialities before getting to his point. When she opened the book, it fell open to the crease, and the light blue cord, dotted with gold stars, fell out.
She caught it before it hit the ground, and lifted it up to stare at it. “Trixie.”
Trixie had never asked for the cord back. She recalled that the filly had provided her an update on her progress every time they came across each other. Five bits to start, then ten a month later. Then six. For four months, the filly had kept up the game before she stopped. She recalled, too, that one day a new wagon had been stabled in the space between their houses, and gone the next.
She hadn’t seen Trixie after that. She hadn’t even bothered to ask if Trixie had been sent to a different school, run away, or gone to live with relatives elsewhere. All she knew was that Trixie’s parents, and her parents, had talked for a bit about her leaving, in snatches of conversation Moondancer had caught before going back to her studies.
Then the Lulamoons had moved away before another year had passed, and her parents had moved away as well, three years later, to take care of her aging grandmother in Fillydelphia. They hadn’t been back, except to visit briefly, since.
By then, she was well entrenched as a research librarian, and had stayed. The house was hers now. Her sister hadn’t stayed either, but moved in with her marefriend after they had gotten married.
Her entire fillyhood had drifted away from her, and she had let it. The blue and gold cord dangling in front of her nose was another piece of that fillyhood. She could let it go.
Instead, she draped the cord around her neck, pulled out a sheet of paper and started to write.
Dear Princess Twilight,
It’s been only a week since you left, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and spending time with our fillyhood friends. They’re doing great, by the way. I heard you had some issues with a bugbear, but I’m glad that’s taken care of. You’ll have to send me pictures from the wedding.
She paused, and briefly considered starting over. She shook her head and touched quill to page again.
I’m writing because I need to ask a favor of you. A friend
“Can I call her a friend?” She mused that over while she tugged at the cord again, and pulled it free of her neck to coil next to the page.
, yes, I think I can call her a friend. She was… like me. To you. I think she looked up to me, and idolized me. Did I tell you that? I idolized you, Twilight. You were so smart.
Moondancer snorted. The quill hovered over the words, ready to strike them out and start over. But the words weren’t false. Maybe Twilight did deserve to know. Maybe she had even guessed.
But I don’t know if she had any other friends to encourage her. Some things she said lead me to believe she did not. Can you help me find her again? You must have friends all over Equestria by now. Maybe one of them knows where she is.
Her name is Trixie Lulamoon.
I hope you can help me find her. I did something a long time ago that I’m not proud of, and I need to make it up. I know you’ll understand.
Best wishes,
Moondancer
The sound of hooves outside her door sounded just as it had weeks before. These hooves struck the pavement sharply, as if the pony they belonged to was trotting with an attitude. Or maybe it was just her imagination.
Moondancer set the box of books aside, paused as the hoofsteps paused, and pulled free a hefty pouch from underneath her chair, setting it in the middle of the table. It clinked faintly as it settled, but the drawstrings stayed tight.
Bang. Bang.
“Come in. The door’s unlocked,” she called.
A pink glow settled around the handle on the door, and faded. A hoofstep sounded, then three more in rapid succession. Moondancer held her breath.
“Trixie is here to see the liar Moondancer.” It was Trixie’s voice, older, with a richer flair to the intonation. Stage presence, she thought. “She doesn’t know why she is here, exactly, but…” A pause, and Trixie continued, more quietly, “Twilight was very convincing.”
“It’s alright, Trixie. Come in. Please?”
Momentarily, a pink aura surrounded the handle on the door, and Trixie stepped in. “Trixie sees you live in the same house.” Her eyes roved over the interior, slowing as she found the empty bookcases, the empty rooms with doors standing open. “Are you moving?”
“I-I thought it best.” Moondancer pushed a chair out opposite her, and nodded to it. “I have a kettle on the stove, and tea. I seem to recall your parents traded in teas, yes?”
Trixie stared at the stool as if it were a thing unknown, and did not take it. “Trixie’s parents did, indeed, trade in tea. They were the most successful tea merchants in Canterlot!”
It was an effort, but Moondancer smiled. Trixie's parents had traded in teas, certainly, but they had found little success. Perhaps she should have asked Twilight if Trixie had become delusional in the time since. “I… Do you remember that we were neighbors, once?”
Just like that, half of the pomp faded from the other mare. Even the felt hat—it couldn’t be the same one—seemed to droop. “Trixie’s parents… tried hard. They taught Trixie that getting ponies to remember your name was the most important thing in making an impression. They…” Her features firmed into a sneer. “They taught Trixie about the Ultimate Um Game, too.”
Oh. That meant she knew. The fire in Trixie’s eyes as much as confirmed it for Moondancer. “Yes… I’m sorry. I can’t—”
“Do you know how long Trixie scrounged for bits to play your game? Do you?” She stamped forward, shoved the seat back under the table with one hoof, and jabbed the other over it at her. “For six long, arduous months, Trixie scrounged every bit she could from playing tricks for foals and their families. Little Trixie the Magician, they said, she should go on tour, they said. And they laughed at Trixie. All so you could take them from me?”
Moondancer raised a hoof.
“But Trixie showed them all! She went on tour! She became the Great and Powerful Trixie. She commanded ponies’ attentions, she made them gasp in delight and Oooh in awe! She was the most successful entertainer in all of Equestria!” The hoof came down in the middle of the table, and clinked against the bag. “Trixie should thank you for making her see that the only way to command the respect of other ponies is for them to be in awe of her!”
The hoof pounded against the table again, and knocked the pouch over. The strings came untied, and golden bits spilled out across the surface.
“Trixie came because she—” Her eyes went wide, and they darted from Moondancer to the spill of coins.
It wasn’t an inconsiderable sum. A week’s wages. Of course, not gathered in a week. It had taken almost a month to scrounge together so many bits without touching her savings. All for a symbolic gesture. The bits were all but meaningless, now. But, to their young selves, a hundred bits had been an insurmountable obstacle.
“Trixie is not for sale. Nor can her forgiveness be bought.” But the thunder had gone out of her performance, and her eyes wavered from Moondancer to the bits again. “How many bits?”
“One hundred. Exactly. I never meant to steal them from you. I meant it to be impossible.” Moondancer glanced at the bookshelf to her left, and called down the book from its shelf. The crease in the pages was still visible, acting as a bookmark for the pages where she had made her promise. “You remember, don’t you?”
“Trixie admits… she does.” The mare’s gaze wavered up to Moondancer from the bits, and to the book, and she swallowed. “She remembers… I wanted to play with you.”
“I’m sorry.” The book thumped to the table, and it fell open naturally along the crease. Neatly coiled in the center of the page was the still-bright, blue and star patterned bathrobe belt, knotted at both ends to keep from fraying. “I remember, Trixie. And…”
“You hurt Trixie.” Trixie coughed, looking aside. “When she… When I understood why you tricked me, I didn’t want to be your neighbor anymore.” She looked up at the ceiling. “My parents had been travelling merchants. When they had me, they said they wanted me to know what it was like to have a neighborhood, and to have neighbors. To live in one place all the time, and know that the roof over your head wasn’t going to be under a different sky tomorrow.
“They told me… Trixie…” She shook her head. “Trixie that neighbors were special. That, because they always lived close by, you could count on them to be there. Why? Did… were they wrong? Trixie wondered that for a long time.”
“They weren’t wrong.”
“Then why did you lie to me?” The stool rocked in Trixie’s aura, slid out, moved under the table, hesitated, then slid back out again and stayed, but she didn’t sit.
“Because I had a single goal in mind, to the exclusion of all else. I wanted to be better than Twilight Sparkle. Because I wanted her to notice me. And…” Moondancer shook her head and pulled her glasses off. They were repaired, finally, and she had started making inroads on a dozen other incomplete projects. Just then, she couldn’t recall one of them. She could barely see the mare across from her for the filly that took her place. “And I made the same mistake she did.”
Trixie sat down, placing the bag of bits between them, but made no move for it. “We have something in common.”
“Twilight wrote to me about your… er…” Not mistakes. She needed another word, but there was nothing in her mind but that one, and no word she could think of to describe anything else, either.
Trixie stiffened, eyes narrowing, as if the unspoken word had been shouted. She sagged, chest pressing against the table, chin drooping to rest almost on the surface. “Mistakes. Trixie made mistakes, too. How much did Twilight say about them?”
“That you had made them, but that she had been there to help you fix them, too.”
“She… Trixie made big mistakes. Twilight gave her another chance.” Her eyes rose to meet Moondancer’s. “She told Trixie that she had made a big mistake, too. With you. And that you had given her another chance.”
Moondancer smiled, almost laughed, but covered it up. “Oh, I did. She had to pester me for near a week before I gave in. I… I hope we can skip that. It got a little messy. And the librarian at the Canterlot Metalurgical Archives still gives me the stink-eye.”
“You? Misbehave in a library?”
“Mostly her.”
Trixie smiled, and covered it up, but her lips twitched. “Twilight? Misbehave in a library?”
Moondancer snorted a laugh. “I know, unbelievable.” Her smile faded. “She wanted very hard to correct her…” It was hard, then, to call Twilight’s treatment of her a mistake. “Her…”
“Mistake.” Trixie reached across the table with a hoof to touch the pouch. “Twilight told Trixie about other mistakes she’s made. Big and small. She… was very earnest in trying to convince Trixie to come.”
“I did, too.” Moondancer tapped the book again. “I made a promise. You… you said you learned about this type of theory already. Was… I would be happy to teach you anything else. Or play a game.” She tipped her head back, flicking an ear at the door to the backyard. “The hoofscotch squares are still there.”
Trixie chortled, and smiled, tipping her head to the side to look at the back door, as if she could see the squares out back. Her smile slipped, and she met Moondancer’s eyes. “What…” She cleared her throat. “What does Moondancer get out of all of this?”
“I would hope, a friend.”
Trixie reached out a hoof. Moondancer took it. Neither glanced at the bag of bits.
“Hoofscotch, then?”
Moondancer smiled. “It would be my pleasure… but I’m a little rusty.”
“So am I.”