Trixie knows what you’re thinking. This is the moment when Trixie, mistress of magic, finally mastered teleportation, for truly her magic is powerful and without bounds. No, as a matter of fact, Trixie did not master winking then, and while quite fearsome in its own right, Trixie’s magic is certainly not limitless. When Trixie has frightened a whole town of ponies into calling their guards, gathering their weapons, rushing up and pointing them at her, she is officially in trouble.
Trixie had a few options at this point: make a magical shield, and wait for these ponies to poke a hole in it, and her. Levitate all the ponies at once and escape, in the two seconds it took her to collapse from magic exhaustion. Bludgeon a way through with some sort of improvised club. Fail to skillfully grasp and redirect all their spears at once in other directions, causing her untimely death when a few got through. Or attempt to reason with them, that Trixie is merely a performer and a pony, not some kind of monstrous filly who tosses adult ponies around like they were pine cones.
“What are you...” a rusty voiced mare among the spear holders said in a hoarse whisper.
Bludgeon, it is, then.
“She’s lighting up!” one shouted, as if that needed to be announced, before they all attempted to poke holes in her at once. They hit a hard shield of magic, one that would only buy her a second of time, but she needed only half of one. Trixie borrowed a plank one more time, sadly damaging it beyond repair, by tearing it off of the stolen nails holding it to the fallen stage. Her shield blinked out and it seemed like everypony at once decided to thrust their spears into her supple young hide, much like when bog rats attempt to swarm you as one. Trixie was very good at dealing with bog rats, though. She jumped directly at the spear in front of her, pouring all her magic into the plank’s velocity, trusting her magic would smack the pony out of the way before the spear pierced her nose.
It did. Even as Trixie leapt to impale herself on the spear, the pony’s face barely registered surprise as she, and the instrument of pointy death, were driven violently to the left, leaving Trixie soaring through blissfully empty, free space. Behind her, the spears struck nothing but dirt as the ponies lunged before they even saw her escape their circle. They whirled, trying to follow her, to keep her from growing into some kind of hideous bug-like monstrosity and devouring all their foals, or whatever they thought was going to happen.
Trixie didn’t give them the chance to catch up though, galloping strongly forward and fleeing for the road out of the city. They were much bigger and faster than her, so they would catch up, but Trixie was now prepared for that eventuality. She was prepared by what she still held in the purple glow of her magic floating alongside her, as the settlement’s ramshackle cabins rushed by, a solid wooden plank. Trixie waited until the ponies had given themselves to the chase, their strong, fully grown, earth legs easily outpacing her, as they closed the gap in her narrow lead, and in doing so lined themselves up into a nice orderly column.
Trixie then floated the plank horizontally behind her, a sudden burst of her magic propelling it with great force backwards, gratified to hear the sound of shouts and clatters and crashes, and falling ponies who were hit by running ponies who were themselves hit by more running ponies. Trixie was not nearly a saintly enough pony to ensure that none of her pursuers had met the business end of one of their own spears that the rear guard had pointed her direction, but she certainly did her best to hope that nopony got hurt, as she ran screaming out of town.
Trixie had much better luck in her third stop. Which is to say, she learned from her past lessons, completely failed to win anypony over, and had an angry crowd chasing her out of town. But this time they didn’t think to bring spears, just ordinary rocks, so Trixie counts it as a win, overall. The fourth attempt, she got captured, and just a teensy bit tied to a stake. She sort of deserved that though, because somepony in the audience said she was stupid for not being able to ...perform certain tasks, and she sort of... pretended to turn him into a carrot, and then ate it. They had a hard time getting her pyre to catch fire though, because she kept zapping out their matches while she was secretly untying her ropes. Not to mention getting anything to burn in this muggy wood was a challenging task.
Bruised, scorched, starving despite her attempts at thieving food, and magically exhausted, it really was no surprise that the overenthusiastic young Trixie got caught for good on her fifth attempt. She was exceedingly wary, looking around for any pony watching her as she crept up to this town’s staging platform. Just a wooden platform with stairs, she at least didn’t have to build one herself. That hadn’t gone so well in the second town. There was nopony guarding it, or using it apparantly. Just right for her moment of glory.
Trixie poked her head over the edge, looking around, before sliding another foraged stinkpuff gingerly across its surface, then dropping back down below the level of the stage. She popped her nose up to the stage again, sneaking a hollow shower pole to give the appearance of bending steel, and a flower pot she was going to try to biggify.
Nopony was watching yet, just walking back and forth along the main causeway in front of the stage. She snuck a few more props on, and then leaped onto the stage! Well, onto the edge of the stage, and wiggled her rump up the rest of the way onto the stage. She was almost on her belly as Trixie crept to the front, needing to wow the crowd but really, really not wanting them to throw rocks at her again.
At last, with nopony the wiser, Trixie stood up straight, and then reared up boldly and announced, “Presenting! The really amazing magical—” that was when the diving pegasus snatched her right off the platform, carrying her squealing into to the sky. Before Trixie could so much as orient herself despite the dizzying vertigo, the pegasus holding her threw her into the air!
As it has been said, pegasi do not often or at least not willingly come down into the valley here. A hoofful of unlucky, crippled foals, and perhaps one mare seen in passing. That was Trixie’s flight experience. Trixie had never had her own hooves off the ground before. And now, for the first time in her life, she was 300 feet off the ground, in freefall.
The second pegasus caught something that may have once been Trixie, but was now nothing more than a panicking screaming mess. They were flying forward through the sky faster than Trixie had ever gone before, sliding through the air like greased wheels. Trixie barely had time to even perceive how fast they were going, before her world turned upside down and spun again as the second pegasus threw her in a graceful twirl back to the first pegasus.
Trixie was certainly alarmed enough to wink to safety, at this moment in her life. Unfortunately, teleportation takes a good deal of time to prepare, especially when one has not become exceedingly proficient at it. Furthermore, to have an idea of her destination, Trixie would have had to at least be able to tell what direction was up. Very wisely, and skillfully, they would not let Trixie rest for a second, keeping her in utter, helpless motion, a motion so gut wrenching that her brain shut down so fast, that Trixie didn’t even perceive the moment she passed out.
The mare held Trixie gently then, Trixie suspects, as they spiraled in descent to a circle of wagons. Trixie would have loved to see the camp from above, but her regrettable unconsciousness was very important for their continued safety. She only regained consciousness much later, her mind awakening sluggishly from its unplanned outage. When had Trixie fallen asleep? Hadn’t she been performing, just now? Did she fall asleep on the stage? Sliding her eyes open, the sight of iron bars had Trixie’s eyes widen, and the sudden rush of memories coming back had her scrambling to her hooves, backing up and looking around wildly and...
And she couldn’t feel her magic.
“No...” Trixie lifted a shaking hoof up to her horn. She couldn’t feel her horn, because there was a thick sheathe in the way. Its magic parasitizing upon her own, holding itself tightly onto her horn, and dampening any sense she had of her powerful magical ability, Trixie had a horn suppressor.
“Not again!” she screamed, gripping at it and gasping at the pain, but pushing on it with both hooves in sheer desperation. “Get it off! No, please! Trixie is sorry!” she shrieked in panic, “Trixie is sorry, Matron! Trixie did bad, please, please let Trixie go! Please no more I don’t want to go back no more!”
That was for the most part word-for-word what summoned the other circus performers, to come barreling into the wagon, in which Trixie was caged along with the other monstrous creatures. Well, it’s not entirely fair to say the circus thought that’s where she belonged. They didn’t know what to do with Trixie at this point, and Trixie’s cage wasn’t closed or locked. But for Trixie, she was back at the orphanage again. She was imprisoned, and her magic blocked, and it was only a matter of time before she felt the punishing strikes that came for magical disciplinary infractions. She must have been a pitiful sight indeed, because somepony went right into her cage and pulled her out, not worrying that she would override the blocker, nor that her frantic lashing of hooves would hurt their flesh, Trixie was unable to escape being held by a giant, massive, monstrous
...and very soft pony, with blue fur and a deep pink mane. A pony Trixie knew, and loved from afar.
When Trixie had returned to simply crying again, and regained enough of her wits about her, Trixie wiped the tears from her eyes with a pastern, looking up in awe at the only pony who had ever managed to make Trixie laugh, a very large blue pony’s face, smiling down on her. Trixie was being held on said pony’s rather monumental belly. Trixie felt herself begin to be slightly rocked.
“... is Trixie at the circus?” Trixie asked, in the quiet that came when she stopped filling the air with screaming. The pony didn’t answer.
“Gooble, you are a Tartarian miracle worker,” came a gruff voice to the side of this massive pony, a pony on which Trixie seemed to be cuddled, somehow.
Down the blueberry pony mountain, another pony was standing on the ground, outside of a large wooden wagon, whose stairs led up to an open door, an open iron cage within knocked askew. His own mane and tail were a thick brown, cut short to reduce the risk of any snags or grabs, a dark contrast in color to his lime green fur. His cutie mark was that of an upraised paw of a big cat, but his talents were better shown by the ugly scars drawn down his barrel, where something remniscent of his cutie mark had attempted and failed to make pony cutlets out of him. He had a fearsome moustache, groomed in sharp, square edges around his muzzle, that made it always look like he was frowning. It was very rarely an inaccurate statement to make.
Once he spoke, the stallion turned away from Trixie and this strange mare, walked up into the wagon she had escaped, and righted the cage in there. Trixie recognized it as the cage she had awoken in. He did not come out again, the noises of his movements remaining within, so Trixie took stock of her situation. She was resting on a very large pony who was in a small clearing lined by a circle of wagons in the woods. The road was nearby, this being one of the few turn-off points that a caravan could rest at.
The circus was between towns currently. Well, not at a scheduled stopping spot, but they had hurried their hooves to catch up with Trixie, after having been chased out of the previous town for releasing uncontrollable monsters on them. The nearest next town’s fires could be seen at night from this location, but the circus had been for the most part incognito as they planned their strategy.
Trixie knew none of this at the moment, and merely wriggled out of the larger pony’s grasp, sliding down her smooth belly to a secure footing of three hooves on the ground. Trixie’s fourth hoof she brought to her horn, which still had the inhibitor attached to it. Trixie’s initial panic had been one of great confusion however, and once she was sure that the punishment was not coming to her, having her magic dampened became what Trixie had come to know as merely another part of her weekly, sometimes daily routine. The inhibitor was cheap silver, nothing like the polished obsidian ones that took Trixie days to unravel their secrets. She could have probably blown it to pieces on the spot, but instead she calmly bided her time, and quietly slunk around.
There was the ringmaster hurrying towards her, so Trixie darted behind a wagon covered in splashy stars and painted bursts of light, illuminating a pair of flying ponies. She didn’t continue running, but crawled sideways underneath the wagon, crouching there. Her horn was useless, but her hooves were not, so when three ponies trotted up to her location, a precisely tossed series of rocks clattered on the stage of the wagon opposite from hers. That was where the ringmaster, and two others followed, a rather petite looking purple mare, and a longer, lanky pale yellow stallion.
The ringmaster himself was a very glowing aquamarine, with pale blue eyes and a brilliant red mane, with the cutest little swoosh in front. He wore a cape and bow tie ensemble he often wore even outside of stage performances. The cape was black with white stars on it, to contrast his rather attractive color combination.
Trixie... isn’t ready to talk about it yet.
They all went thundering off after Trixie’s manufactured hoofbeats, while she crept out from her hiding spot and went looking around on her own. It could be useful to learn more about this circus, to learn of their weaknesses, and get more ideas on what mysterious secrets they had. Trixie needed to learn how to make foals laugh and cheer, instead of run screaming just because their hair was a little on fire. And perhaps she could find some clue why the circus went through so much effort to kidnap her, what dark secrets were going on in this veneer of a carnival.
There were six wagons here. The one across from her when she emerged had a fiercely roaring burleo painted on its side in full color. The one she hid under, home to the acrobats, was even more bold in declaring their importance to the world. Besides those, there was a wagon that was obviously the clown wagon from its ridiculous appearance of bright colors, polka dots and eaves that appeared to be gingerbread icing. It was larger than any of the others, a trial to pull along to say the least, but also home to the most ponies in number, of this ragtag bunch.
Trixie had just discovered the snuffed out fire pit still smouldering from the night before, when they found her again. With a foolish shout, the ringmaster pointed her way and started gallopping toward her. But Trixie was not ready to talk with ponies just yet. It wouldn’t hurt to look around a little more, in case they kicked her out again when they did capture her, despite apparantly foalnapping and imprisoning her, and trying to kill her magic. No, Trixie did not want to talk to them right now.
Instead, Trixie improvised, kicking into the fire pit and sending a cloud of ashes exploding into the air, until it thoroughly enveloped the ponies chasing, after her in alarm. Trixie made sure that when they fought through it anyway, to where her current location was, she would be long gone and out of sight.
Trixie had spent a long time surrouded by ponies and walls at the orphanage, but she had also spent a long time on her own, entirely separate from any pony at all. Neither experience had been pleasant, but both experiences made Trixie reluctant to get on the level with a group of ponies who were chasing her, especially ones who had foalnapped her, especially ones who had rejected her.
They played this sort of game of hide and seek for quite a while. The other performers got in on it eventually, making it very hard for Trixie to succeed without the use of her magic. When she snuck in a wagon to hide, Trixie found its contents exciting and exotic. She had not yet become acquainted with what a travelling wagon looks like. In truth this was one of the more normal wagons of this circus, save for the presence of two separate hairbrushes next to the small sink and mirror. But the fold-out bed, the walls covered in cabinets, the bolt shuttered windows, the posters on the ceiling rather than the walls, those were all quite new to the filly.
The wagon was empty, of course, because everypony was out and about trying to find their little lost runaway. But eventually, somepony thought to check inside the wagons too, and when they did, Trixie had been too hasty in climbing out the window, too hasty to check if anypony outside had seen her climb out the window. Too hasty to notice if there weren’t already five ponies out there to see her in plain sight.
So with five odd looking ponies coralling Trixie against the wagon she’d escaped from, the ringmaster pushed past the fire eyed pegasi to approach Trixie. “Young mare, you... young mare—you...!” he said in a thrilling tenor that always wowed the crowds, this time speaking in insufferable irateness. “You have been visiting every town,” he said in a trembling rage, “You tried to join the circus, you... you couldn’t take no for an answer! And you keep crawling back to us, you insufferable little—!”
“Trixie is not crawling back!” Trixie shouted angrily. “Trixie was stolen away, by your pegasuses! Why have you foalnapped a young mare? Just to yell at her?”
The ringmaster looked at her, then pressed a hoof to his temple. “I suppose you still want to join this circus,” he ground out in reluctant acquiescence, “After all you’ve done.”
“Trixie will never join your circus!” Trixie told him in desperate fury, and by all that’s good his eyes widened in surprise at that. “You have done nothing but laugh at Trixie and take her away from her stage!” she shouted, “You’ll see! Trixie will perform again and again, and she will find out how to keep the ponies from running away, a-and Trixie will have the bester act in the whole world, and you’ll be sorry you didn’t let her join when you had the chance!
“And you cannot stop her!,” Trixie declared madly, “Trixie is going to be the most magical mare who ever lived!” There was a tremendous flash, as everypony cried out in alarm, Trixie’s horn suppressor shattering into bits of glowing hot molten metal. When he pulled his cape away from his eyes, the ringmaster could see the young mare, not even a mare yet, just a souped up image of an older filly pretending that she could be as grown-up as any of them.
Her horn was glowing with an almost blinding, brilliant violet light.
There were no cries of pain, thankfully, from the destruction of the magic suppressor. There was only silent staring. All eyes on her. Judging. Fearing. Trixie’s nerve broke, and she ran away, trying to make it look like she was just stomping off angrily. She picked a pony—it didn’t matter, a big one—and her magic dragged him up into the air, just enough for Trixie to squeeze underneath his pedalling hooves, and get out of that stunned circle. Her righteous trot turned into a gallop as she ran away from the wagon, away from the wagons, away from everything. Where to, Trixie knew not where, but somewhere that would have more answers than this terrible waste of a dream they called a circus.
“Trixie, wait!” that beautiful voice called out, stopping her in her tracks.
It was the ringmaster, looking wearier than one who had run ten miles, rather than merely down the road a ways. Trixie stopped running long enough to regard him warily. “You are Trixie, right?” he said, “It’s just the orphanage, right? You’re not talking about some other mare?”
“Trixie doesn’t want to talk about the orphanage,” Trixie mumbled hastily, failing in her struggle to fight back the tears. “Trixie didn’t do it! Trixie didn’t mean to...”
“For the love of pete!” he exclaimed aggrivatedly. “I could care less about what you did! It’s what you’re doing that has to stop! Besides, that was a collossal magical disaster! There’s no way a little filly like you could have...”
He stopped speaking, and just looked at her silently. To what conclusion he would come, Trixie lacked the understanding and empathy to anticipate. She had an entirely different understanding of the meaning behind his quiet, thoughtful pause.
“Trixie supposes you’re going to offer to let her join the circus again,” she said speaking sideways, sullenly.
“No,” he said with a note of finality. “I’m not going to do that.”
He fell to his knees. “I’m going to beg.”
“Please, please, please join the circus,” the ringmaster pleaded, hooves held together in supplication before Trixie. “You have no idea how to put on a show. You have ruined the last five towns for us, three of which wouldn’t even let us in their gate, and the other two chasing us away before we even arrived. You are trying to brute force so much raw talent, you are a monster little filly. We are out of supplies, out of coin, and out of options. I need you to please join the circus so somepony can do something about your act, before you ruin us all!”
Trixie honestly wasn’t aware if she was even crying at that point. She wasn’t sure whether to be gratified or insulted. Some festering pride inside her breast wanted her to flick her tail in his face and just leave him lying there in the road, but even as she contemplated that, she remembered what she did to those townsponies, to the orphanage. She remembered those long, lonely, sick, scary nights Trixie had spent alone in the woods, so afraid that she was going to die because something was wrong with her, that she didn’t know how to fix. She remembered those long, lonely, angry nights spent in isolation, in the quarantine wing, making her want to smack her head against the wall just to get that terrible echoing silence between her ears to shut up. She remembered... Bitty.
“Trixie will consider it.”
Really, all he had to win Trixie over was mention that there was a bowl of hot stew coming her way, should she wish to tag along.