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// Trixie in Isolation 
// Story: Magic Tricks 
// by ferret 
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Trixie should have realized that clipping day came shortly before her circus plot would bear fruition. The day when any recovering pegasi were swiftly put in their place, and grounded before they could take off again. On that day, Matron Tide broke into Trixie’s dormitory room, unceremoniously clapping the horn protector on Trixie before she could so much as put in a word.

Trixie had learned over the years not to try to resist those things being put on her, as it was always easier to sneak out of them than it was to resist having them put on in the first place. If they didn’t know her capabilities, then she would always have at least a hidden advantage to use against them, if nothing else to buoy her spirits in times of despair. But as Trixie sank on weak knees, in the dizzying total halt of her magic being jerked to a stop, Trixie almost wished Night would just cast that spell on her, so that Trixie would awaken adjusted to this magic deadened feeling.

Almost.

“What—” Trixie managed to say as the matron began rifling through her belongings with abandon. That was the only word Trixie could have said, before she saw ...her.

They brought Bitty to see this, to witness what she had done, and for Trixie to see who had done this to her. Trixie’s friend was there in the hallway, with a desperate expression on her face, and the damning evidence of a collar around her neck, its sturdy leash trailing to where it was tied on the hoof of a staff pony. Pegasus foals didn’t get leash privileges for nothing. It required they be attended, and that they be exercised, and there was no budget for attendants, nor could any of the staff have been bothered. Pegasus foals didn’t often get leash privileges, because that made it the singlemost effective bargaining chip the orphanage possessed.

Bitty was to fly then, as far as the leash extended, until some excuse or infraction would get her clipped anyway. Even if one’s weak, atrophied wings could only keep oneself aloft for a few minutes at best, she was to feel that indescribable feeling that pegasi experience when they leave the ground. And Trixie was to feel the lowest despair, the abject sense of betrayal when you cannot even hate the traitor, but only yourself for being so naive and foolish to ever trust them. Then, much worse, after that.

Bit Bright might have resisted their lure if Trixie had included her in the escape plan, if Trixie had entertained for a minute the idea that her friend could be discovered by the circus too, as anything other than a hot headed, under-fed, weak-winged pegasus. But Trixie did not lie to her, and so Trixie would suffer the consequences of this, and soon so would they all.

Trixie couldn’t blame Bit Bright, but she sure as Tartarus could blame her.

At the time of Bit Bright’s betrayal, Trixie couldn’t forgive her so easily, as later in life, once she had had time to heal, and reflect. Now, Trixie could only feel a sort of detached, hopeless despair. Not even anger, but just emptiness she shared in what she saw in Bitty’s eyes. It was only a matter of time before the angry matron tore out the secret fliers Trixie had thought she’d hidden so well. They were from the last time the circus came, saved from being destroyed like all the other fliers. These ones had the circus tent layout on them, and a shakily mouth-drawn diagram of where Trixie planned to go.

Night waved them in Trixie’s face with a horrible sneer, that combination of smug pride and the terrified anxiety that every overcontrolling maniac feels, when somepony goes against their carefully planned order. Above that tormented grimace, the matron’s horn was glowing; glowing in a way Trixie’s horn could not, because Trixie was numbed, deadened, suppressed. She didn’t even listen to what words were in the matron’s screams, helpless to watch as the matron’s spell struck her with vengeance, and Trixie was lost in blackness, forever.

It always felt like forever, that is. When Trixie ...returned to being awake, she was alone in the quarantine ward. Not because she was sick, but because the doors there had locks on the outside, and the windows had bars on them. Trixie had no magic to sterilize the place because of her horn lock, so who knows how many plagues she could have contracted while she was in there! She almost wished one would though, because it was a week until the circus would come, and Trixie knew what happened whenever she woke up in here.

Hours that bled into minutes. That was Trixie’s life. Rearing up to peer out of that tiny window again and again, silently demanding that the sun go down and hurry it up, so that another day could pass, so that the circus could come and go, so all her dreams would die, and Trixie could be let out of this forsaken, wheat rotting—...room. A pony goes quite mad when she is so alone and cloistered. It becomes an almost intriguing experience. You start to see things, and talk to ponies who aren’t there. When they answer you back, Trixie is fairly sure that is a good indicator that you’re losing your mind. When the most exciting moment of your life is the daily meal pushed through your slot, you spend your hours rocking on the floor, or trotting around and around the boundary of the room, or kicking the bed, just to keep your mind off your inability to think clearly.

If that made any sense to you, then Trixie’s sincerest condolences, for there is nothing sensible about it whatsoever. Suffice to say, it gave Trixie plenty of time to think, and plan, and of course since her brain went to mush from the boredom after a day or so, her time was well and truly wasted. When the circus did come to the orphanage, Trixie had less of a plan, and more of a desperate, primal desire to see the lights and tents from her little window, and wish she were out there with them. She could see the colors of the acts at night, indirectly through the tent walls. Too distant and obstructed to make out anything clearly though. What Trixie could do most is hear. She could curve her ear outside of the bars, and let the sounds drift into it, like she was really there. The distant music that filtered across the courtyard to her little room, the bright, bold declarations of the performers and the ringmaster. The sound of foals—

The sound of foals cheering, as some strongpony or acrobat engaged their spirits was the purest joy to Trixie’s ears, but such a bittersweet joy. Trixie cried so hard when... when she heard the foals cheering. Not for any noble or tragic reason, but just because she wanted to see it too. That was all she could think anymore, is she wanted to see it too. And everything had gone so horribly wrong.

That was when, in Trixie’s tormented thought process, she came to the brilliant conclusion that she was going to buck having a plan, and do whatever it took to get out, even if it meant running screaming into the night. She... all too easily overrode her horn suppressor. Trixie’s plan to pretend she was incapable had worked. They’d gotten lazy and complacant, and given her an old one that Trixie had already had some time to weaken from within.

When it gave a fizzle pop and clattered uselessly to the floor, Trixie for the first time in a very long time felt a giddy sense of relief. Not for the rush of her magic returning, but for her sense of purpose, her determination that the wait was over. She was not going to take one more minute of this torment. There was something terribly liberating about having nothing left to lose. Trixie had a long way to go, but she had a lot of time, and it didn’t matter if you had isolation addled thoughts, if all you wanted was to work up your horn power.

...several minutes later, and Trixie was still determined, but she figured she had to get through the wall first, so that might take a lot longer than one more minute to end her torment.

Trixie spent the next days levitating pebbles, testing the steel of the bars, curling her telekinesis into that confusing space inside of a door lock, that most unicorns cannot even touch, since it is where they cannot even see. Trixie had years to practice at this specific task, off and on, and now days straight to fiddle with it repetitively. She knew it would be a simple task for her to unlock this door. Even disregarding her focus, practice and desperation, when it came to the end of the day and all things were accounted for, the simple truth remained that Trixie was very good at magic.

Her strength quickly returned, and Trixie took out her hatred on the wall, seeing in it the faces of her tormentors. They did not laugh at her; they just stared, and Trixie destroyed them one after the other. The matron Night Tide who hated Trixie for reasons she couldn’t fully understand. Spare Mint with his intolerance, and his cruel dispassion, feigning rage to scare foals into compliance. Matron Outsell pitting foal against foal and sabotaging their relationships so they would fight each other and not bother her. Trixie’s forceful strikes against the wall flashed brightly at first, but in the lights of the circus, nopony was going to notice one lonely cell in the quarantine wing with curious flashes inside it.

Soon, they were more efficiently carving ballistic dents into the stone of the wall, cracking and crumbling it. Trixie was just so full of... of some dark emotion, that hatred doesn’t begin to describe. It was a raw animal instinct she felt, to fight anything that came to stop her, the terrified and terrifying frenzy of the cornered wolf. She had removed her horn suppressor, so if they got her now, they would put a worse one on, and again, and again, and the matron would visit her at night and Trixie would have more bruises and older eyes, and nopony would ever adopt her and she would never see her family again. It wasn’t hatred of the staff that drove her. Trixie could have thought the orphanage staff were as malcious as fluffy bunny rabbits, and she still would have done what she did. Trixie’s life was focused utterly on one all important task. Trixie was not going to let that circus leave without her.

Indeed, that’s what brought about her panic at the end, is the tents rolling up, and the carts rolling away. From her little window, Trixie could see the circus ponies cleaning up and making for their trek across the bog to the next town, and she had not gotten through the wall yet! The solid stone was thick and sturdy, built to last a thousand foals trying to break through it. Trixie was no ordinary foal, but she faced no ordinary task before her either. It was either this or the door though, and while Trixie could open the one to her cell easily, the other thick metal doors with locks on the outside halls would stymie her long enough for an attendant to come find she’d escaped.

If she had been thinking better, Trixie would have used guile and deception to sneak past the attendants when they did come to feed her her meal, at a time when all the doors barring her escape would have been open except the one she had already defeated. But no, all Trixie could think is she had to get through that wall. The circus was on the other side, and she had to get through that wall.

Trixie redoubled her efforts, doing whatever she could to... to simply do something. Trying to think of ways they would try to stop her, ways to get around that.  She even... Trixie should have known to exercise caution and restraint, but this is certainly not what occurred, when in a fit of pique she managed to melt her meal tray into molten slag. She tried to think about how she could overwhelm the attendants, frighten and dissaray them. How she could coax the ones at the gate away, so she would have time to operate the mechanism. How she could get this wall to chip away faster. How she wanted to levitate the whole circus to make them come back and wait for her.

There is a... spell that sets stone on fire. Trixie wishes she had never discovered it, in her hour of need. She would have done much better to discover teleportation, invisibility, or flight. Misdirecting pony eyes, Trixie could do through magic and trickery, but escaping a stone prison that forced her to see nothing but the same walls every single day? Trixie wanted those walls to be gone. She wanted them to go away, so they did. The magic she discovered looked like she was just eating them away at first, but then the crumbling dust flared with a fascinating greenish flame on the ratty floor rug. Trixie didn’t know what she was doing at the time, but she knew that she couldn’t hear the circus anymore, evening was coming, and she had to get out of here right away.

...it was later that evening that Trixie succeeded. Not in the way she expected, though. Trixie’s improvised, hate driven, stone removing spell was not so effective at digging. It needed a broad large flat surface to cast upon, and in that cramped dimple in the wall, Trixie had barely opened a hoof’s span through it to the outside of the quarantine wing. An immense accomplishment even for an older foal, but still not enough. It was with Trixie’s hoof stuck out that hole, trying to physically worry it larger somehow, that she startled suddenly at the sound of her attendant, demanding Trixie give her the food tray, for her evening meal.

One look at the twisted metal of her food tray’s remains, and Trixie began hyperventilating. They were going to know, and they were going to see she had no horn protector, and what she did to the wall. They were going to bury her alive! That’s what Trixie was absolutely certain of at the time. She was delirious from prolonged isolation, and certainly not of sound mind, so the nearest she could describe her thought process is that the only thing worse than this little room would be a little coffin, six feet underground, with barely enough space to move your hooves.

So they yelled again, and Trixie... Trixie unlocked the door. She pulled the door open to their stunned and startled faces, two mares, one as backup no doubt should this crafty monster of a filly manage to make her escape. Trixie bolted between them and their faces hardened and they rushed at her to knock her down. She saw a horn suppressor one had. She—she did what may have been the worst thing she’d ever done and perhaps worse than anything she’s ever done since.

First, she cast her barrier spell, a familiar pop as it appeared and pushed the orderlies away from her, and her away from them, making Trixie skid backwards on the flagstones. Then, she cast her new spell she... she had wanted the floor to collapse under them, to drop them down into the basement so she could make her swift escape. Trixie cast her spell on the floor, and the stone caught fire. And they caught fire. They were trying to escape—they were backed up against the wall, the horrible, impassable stone wall, and Trixie couldn’t... there was nothing she could do.

Trixie didn’t even know them. They had never hurt her terribly. She only knew those orderlies by the food tray they would take every day in her room at the sick ward. They gave her food, that’s all they did! She didn’t want her spell to do this! But those green flames trapping them hungrily consumed the floor, and then the walls and then... Trixie thinks she screamed. She remembers somepony screaming, besides them. She doesn’t remember much beyond that, besides running, and casting her spell again and again. Not to do... that, just to scare ponies away! She hadn’t even realized what she’d done, only that she had to get away. And that’s all it did, is scare ponies away, sending any charging determined adults scrambling back on their hooves as a barrier of flames kept them from harming her.

Trixie did run screaming into the night, come to think on it. She gallopped for the front gate heedlessly, and for every attendant that tried to tackle her to the ground, another was distracted with running past her at the building behind her, calling out in horrified alarm. Trixie did not look back. When Trixie reached the gate, she wasn’t sure whether to feel lucky or insulted. It was closed and it was latched, and for the first time in her life, it was left completely unattended. With a twinkle it was unlatched, and Trixie strained as she frantically turned the mechanism, grinding the doors slowly open, just enough for her to squeeze through. And then she was running screaming into the night.

Trixie stopped eventually, once she crested a hill. She turned to look back, and... everything was on fire. The whole orphanage looked like a solid sea of eerie green flame. It was so quiet from here, watching the orphanage from a distance as it burned down to its foundations, and then its foundations burned.

Trixie stopped even thinking about running. She just sat there on the ragged grassy hill, stunned at what she had done. It had been all over in an instant. They couldn’t take her back now. Nopony could go back now. All her years of torment were just... gone. And she... Trixie thought she killed somepony, or two, or two hundred. She had no way to tell what rescue efforts were underway, or who had managed to get out of there alive. It didn’t burn dirt, only igneous rock, so if ponies avoided the stone structures they should be fine. But what of the foals still inside that building? The circus had just left, so it was quite possible many foals, and orderlies, were still outside. But did ‘many’ mean all?

As Trixie watched her horrible, hateful home consumed in flames, she was sure of only one thing. That orphanage was gone. Trixie curled her tail around her hindquarters, and wondered how she could have been so stupid. She would have called upon any magic to get out of there, so why did it have to be that magic that answered her? It was obvious in retrospect, that she had been burning the rock instead of merely crumbling it, but beyond that, Trixie was utterly and totally lost about what had just occurred.

You may have suspected this, but an untrained unicorn can be a dangerous thing. There are well studied, practiced, safe pathways to the most powerful spells known to ponykind, but for a filly who doesn’t know any of that, all she can do is reach out blindly, seeking something that will save her. The magic of the world is a very crowded place, and even a blind unicorn will latch onto something, but what that something will be is unpredictable, unplanned, and very much a thing of chaos.

Trixie had been living in that orphanage for a very long time, never leaving its walls; it had become her entire world at some point, because she simply didn’t know enough of the world to remember anything more. By the time she escaped, everywhere that wasn’t the orphanage seemed as frightening and wild as the wildest wilderness to her now. She had wanted nothing more than to rid herself of those walls closing her in, sealing her in a cruel, dead stasis, but now that they were gone overnight, she felt terrified by the expanse before her. She felt terrified of herself in that expanse, for what she could do without any limits or safeguards to stop her, for what she did.

Trixie had no idea what had, and what was going to happen. She couldn’t live in this bog, nor could she just walk into a town and start stealing food. If they caught her again, she... she didn’t know how old she had to be to be tried as an adult. She didn’t even know if there were any other orphanages around here. Trixie actually knew very little about where she lived, all her years spent abandoned inside those walls. Trixie spent a good deal of consternated, ignorant pondering on that hilltop, until her frazzled brain finally recalled the whole point of this endeavor.

The circus! Of course!

Trixie was going to join the circus!

And the Guardians help anypony who tried to stop her.