Winter was coming. The sun was steadily being raised later in the morning and lowered earlier in the day to cool Equestria down in time for the planned seasonal snowfall. Soon, the Longest Night festival would be held on the winter solstice, and shortly after the passage of another year would be marked.
Trixie had occasionally wondered why Equestria even bothered with winter when a year-round moderate climate could instead be established. When she had first asked this during her short stay at the School for Gifted Unicorns, she had learned that the seasons had naturally propagated on an annual cycle once upon a time, before the Windigos destroyed the balance of Harmony. The biological functions of every living being still relied on there being a low ebb of the year. It hadn’t been until Trixie grew up that she learned to appreciate the short winter days where she could be lazy, and both fall asleep and rise to the pale moonlight of the night sky.
Whinnychester, a town that relied on wheat, perfectly emulated the passage of the seasons. During the summer time most of its ponies were up all day, moving and bustling with chores and work. As autumn swept through the land, harvest season started, before ponies finally began to settle in for the winter. A peaceful somnolence settled into the population during winter as only the most tireless of its residents continued to whittle away at projects through the winter. During the slow pace of life set by winter’s heart, Trixie had taken to going through the magical curriculum she had once been enrolled in but lost out on due to terrible coincidence.
However, wandering out into the local marketplace for groceries this year was a different manner than the last season of rest.
“Oh? Who is your new friend, Bella?”
Green Leaf was a reasonably well-traveled pony, but Trixie doubted even she had seen a batpony before. It had been to the credit of the townsponies that most of the adults had barely blinked at New Moon’s appearance. The fillies and colts, on the other hoof, had been rather rambunctious.
“This is Australe,” Trixie introduced her. “She’s from Baltimare. Mother and father met her parents back when he was peddling some of his finer works in the big city, and we occasionally visited them over the years.”
“Good to meet you then, Australe,” Green Leaf said as she held a hoof out. New Moon didn’t hesitate to shake it, intent on blending in with the town. “So what brings you out here to Whinnychester, then? It’s not as if we have much for tourist traps here.”
New Moon blinked, surprised at Green Leaf’s bluntness, but shrugged it off as she answered, “Getting away from the bustle of the big city, mostly. Too much light pollution at night, too. Trixie wrote me that there was plenty of work here if I wanted it. Maybe not so much at this time of year, but I have a deft hoof for mechanical work. I figured there would be more than a few machines that could use finetuning here.”
Green Leaf chuckled, and she said, “You would be correct at that. I know Winter Wheat needs work done on his combines and he’s bemoaned their complexity to me on several occasions. If you can fix them up, you’ll have a job list longer than your wingspan in no time.”
“There aren’t that many lights here, either,” Trixie said. “Mostly the main street leading through town and the plaza have lamps. I doubt I would be able to do my stargazing in Baltimare.”
“I’m surprised you even went to school in the City of Light, then,” Green Leaf remarked, scratching out some numbers on a notepad. From her sideway view, it appeared to Trixie to be a ledger.
Trixie took a second to understand what Green Leaf had said, before remembering what one of the famous appellative titles for Canterlot was. “The School for Gifted Unicorns was the premiere institution for magic,” Trixie said, then added, “But in the end, it just wasn’t for me.” The lie lingered on her tongue like the filthy taste of dirt.
“Er, if I may?” New Moon interjected, rifling through the several carts of produce Green Leaf had set up. “You wouldn’t happen to carry peppers, would you?”
Green Leaf shook her head. “Afraid not, dearie. I can bring them in on special order for my next shipment, but that’ll be extra.”
“You did like your food spicy, didn’t you Australe?” Trixie mused aloud upon seeing the forlorn expression on New Moon’s face. “I recall nearly burning my tongue on your father’s chili on more than one occasion.”
“We always had milk and bread available,” New Moon said.
“It took me some time to get used to that diet, you know. I think I get acid reflux just thinking about some of the dishes that were served."
“Oh, quit being a big filly."
“Says the pony who didn’t eat half her greens because they tasted too bitter.”
Green Leaf’s head darted back and forth between the two, following the trade of biting remarks. The Earth pony didn’t know if she should intervene, unsure if they were barbed comments or if it was two friends teasing one another. Suddenly, she saw a spot to intervene. “So, would you like to make a special order then, Australe?”
New Moon jumped slightly at the use of her assumed name, and turned around, her cheeks slightly colouring. “Er, um, let me think,” She said, hemming and hawing for a few seconds before making her mind. “Yes, erm, some Jalapeno peppers, and some Celeste peppers too. You have beans here already, good, let’s see…” She rattled off a few more items for the list along with the general mass of each item to order in, Green Leaf steadfastly writing the list down in a second notepad. “Also, I don’t know if there’s that stereotype out all the way here but no, I don’t like mango.”
“Huh?”
“Ah, so you don’t know. Supposedly all batponies love mangoes, I don’t. It's a stereotype that needs to die.”
“Ah.” Comprehension dawned on Green Leaf’s face. Tabulating the items she had written down, she quoted a price. New Moon didn’t blink. It was well within her budget, and while she needed to be seen out and about, she didn’t want to attract too much scrutiny, so attempting to haggle was out of the question for her. “Well then, I’ll be sending off my orders in a few days, so your order will be here next week. If you don’t pick it up, then you’ll have to pay off the cost before I allow you to make a special order again.”
Trixie did a look-over of New Moon’s body. She had been doing that a lot over the past few days. Wait, what did I just think? Trixie could feel her cheeks burning in self-induced embarrassment as her train of thought threatened to slip off the tracks, before she finally righted it back on course.
A few nights before, Trixie had finished her illusionary spell, using what fragments of information New Moon knew about the Changeling detection spell that had been devised in the last few years to revise it. Laying it over New Moon’s form, she had changed the batpony’s colours, slate grey fur to a more distinctive marble blue with a darker blue mane and tail. While her amber eyes had merely gained a few shades of brown, the biggest difference to New Moon was the crescent moon Cutie Mark on both her hind legs. The moon itself was black rather than a creamy white, the better to stand out against her fur.
That had been the trickiest part of all for Trixie. Cutie Marks were part of a pony’s identity, even invisible ones. It was possible to give unmarked foals gag Cutie Marks, but the magic wouldn’t last long. Trixie had always had an eye for the field of illusions, the spell matrixes being as intuitive to her as telekinesis was to most other ponies. However, even she wasn’t entirely sure if she could overlay a fake Cutie Mark on top of a real one, even if it was just a visual deception.
It had worked, but Trixie was constantly expecting it to fail. The paranoia she had developed from years of travelling by herself had made a resurgence. So far, however, the spell of her own creation seemed to be working. But it could still fail at any time. Trixie needed to find a way to make it more permanent, yet all the reading of books into the wee hours of the morning, all the baths spent in darkness, all the incense she had breathed in over the last few days had failed to give Trixie insight and inspiration. Only the remoteness of Whinnychester and the low chance of exposure of New Moon's identity gave Trixie breathing room.
“Trixie? Hellloo, Trixie?” A hoof waved in front of her eyes.
Trixie blinked, “Huh, wha-oh sorry, I was just thinking and lost focus, sorry,” she said to New Moon. Turning her attention around to a giggling sound, she gave Green Leaf a light-hearted frown. “Sorry, what did I miss?”
“Your friend making a special order for fruits and vegetables,” said Green Leaf. “Did you want anything yourself?”
Trixie pursed her lips. Unfortunately, pinecones were a delicacy in this area of the world, and much of her budget was already reserved for the numerous books and artifacts she was ordering in. “No thanks,” she said, browsing over the carts full of produce that were currently on display. “But I think I will take, let’s see, some tomatoes, some of the lettuce, hmm, a bag of sugar…”
Winter Wheat was one of the older stallions in the village. Between him and his wife Canola Oil they maintained one of the largest plots around, helped out by those who remained in Whinnychester of the baker’s dozen of children they had raised. Despite the couple’s prodigal loins, not one member of the family was particularly talented with the machines they used for their day-to-day work.
New Moon, or Australe as she had introduced herself to Winter Wheat, had had a father who tinkered with clockworks so much he had gone by the nickname of Cogs. She had fully inherited his own capabilities around machinery.
“The oil on the seal for this bearing is worn out,” she called out from underneath one of the combines that had just been put away for the winter. “The oil tastes a little metallic, you may be getting early corrosion of the metal. I don’t know how often you replace them, but I would recommend a new bearing before using next summer.”
Upon Trixie introducing the two to one another, Winter Wheat put New Moon on the spot by inviting her in to the large shed that held most of the equipment that had been stored away for the winter, getting her to assess the first piece of equipment on his to-do list. Trixie followed close behind with a pen and paper held in her telekinetic grip, furiously jotting down the various condition reports New Moon was shouting out.
“How is the wheel?” Winter Wheat asked.
New Moon paused, before she finally came back out from underneath the machine. Dirt and grease splotched her face and torso in a spectrum of browns. She said, “It looks in good condition, no cracks and no sign of rot. I would recommend you switch to rubber wheels, preferably air-filled over solid. For your fields they’ll be far superior to wood.”
“It’s a little bit difficult to get rubber wheels this far out,” Winter Wheat said, but his voice was of begrudging acceptance.
Trixie smiled as the two other ponies continued to talk to one another, and she continued to write down notes. Perhaps it would be even easier to integrate New Moon into Whinnychester than she had thought.
She briefly frowned as her mind betrayed her and went down a darker path. This couldn’t last, however. Trixie wasn’t entirely certain if the Equestrian military was even pursuing New Moon. A lowly private wasn’t that important, even if her father had in fact been a Changeling and a little higher up in the hierarchy of Canterlot’s Guards.
But there was too much chance for something to go wrong. Equestria was slow with paperwork, but the taxponies that came out every year were ruthless with their scrutiny. All that was required was one slip-up in New Moon’s paperwork and her lack of documents, and she was sure to be found out. From there, the dominos could fall. Or perhaps Trixie’s illusion spell might run out in the middle of the day. Or perhaps, or perhaps.
And so long as Trixie stayed rooted to Whinnychester, New Moon couldn’t move on either, unable to renew the illusion spell herself. Trixie was beginning to despair that there was any way this could end well.
No! Trixie scolded herself, shaking her head and writing down more notes, having thankfully trailed off during a lull in New Moon and Winter Wheat’s conversation, There is a solution to this. I just have to find it!
Her heart beat, pumping blood through her body, the incoming pressure pushing deoxygenated blood back towards her chest. Her mana channels also branched out from the heart, twisting and turning around arteries and veins alike, intermingling to deliver power to every cell of her body. Power leaked from her, escaping every follicle and gland of her body. Power was pumped into her, the artifact above her heart acting as a conduit between her and the world.
It wasn’t enough, she knew. It was never enough. She had humiliated and then exiled the unicorn that had once shown her up, and then trapped the site of her downfall under a giant dome, but she wasn’t content. She knew she was destined for something bigger, something greater. She was Great. She was Powerful.
This small town that had once scorned her and brought her low was merely her first conquest. Every pony who had scorned her from this two-bit hamlet had already been punished for their mockery, and the one who had humiliated her most of all had been exiled, never allowed to set hoof in this village again. The creation of a dome had made certain of that.
Yet with Power had come Clarity, her view of the world hyper-focused through a soft red. Past the red clouds and red plains there was a castle sitting upon a lone mountain peak that stretched towards the heavens, almost as Great and Powerful as she was. Two sisters ruled there, each bearing untold secrets of ages long past. She would march on the heavens and take the secrets they held, and unleash a new age. The old institutions would be purified in fire as three thousand years of history would fall in a single night, and all would come to know her as their Queen.
The commonwealth of equines was only one part of the land, however. As the ponies fell into line under her rule, she would take over the griffons, and the minotaur, the buffalo, the zebra, the deer, and more. Then her eyes would look across the great sea. Oh yes, the world would be hers, and with every new conquest that crossed her gaze, her heart thumped with excitement, and the amulet pulsed red over her heart.
Trixie opened her eyes.
Trixie opened her eyes.
It took her a few seconds to reacquaint herself with the ceiling of her room. Once she recognised her familiar surroundings, Trixie focused on her twitchy upper body. Her head was shaking uncontrollably and the muscles of her neck were seized up. That was when Trixie realised she was unable to move.
Her hooves were like iron, unwilling to be lifted from their prone position. The amu—no, one hoof was laid over top her chest. It was like a weight had been dropped onto her barrel. Trixie panicked as she began to suffocate under the iron hoof. Her heart beat faster and faster, each individual pulse melding together in a hammering thump reminding her of the childhood monster under the bed. Trixie opened her mouth to scream. All that came out was a silent whimper. She was going to die here.
The moment suddenly passed, and Trixie’s body rolled over, and she fell off her bed.
“Oof!” Trixie cried out as she hit the floor, the brief jolt of pain from impact finally freeing her locked-up muscles. It took a few seconds to realise what had just occurred. Sleep paralysis. She had been suffering from sleep paralysis, and it had gotten the best of her.
Trixie wondered why she panicked. Then memories from the nightmare came rushing to the forefront. “Oh. Oh,” she said aloud to herself, finding little comfort in her own voice. “That…that was terrifying.” Trixie shivered at the terrifying memories, as she desperately tried to will them away, blinking through a stinging eye. With a start, she realised there was more to her shivers than that. Lifting one of her front hooves up, she brushed the fur of her forehead. Her hoof came away slick with sweat.
The unicorn mare shuddered. There was no way she was going to go back to sleep again in this condition. One nightmare had been enough for the night.
Her horn flared. In the darkness of her room with only a sliver of moonlight washing through, the luminescent glow of her magic was the dominant source of light. Ever since the incident, Trixie would always have a split-second of terror that her magic would come out the ruby-red of the Alicorn Amulet. She let out a relieved breath as instead a warm violet light washed over her surroundings. A similar violet glow cloaked her spare dry blanket as she picked it up, and started to walk down stairs, down to the living area where her fireplace was.
Trixie’s ears perked up with interest as she saw New Moon sitting next to the fireplace, having apparently already stoked a fire.
New Moon turned her head around as well. “Couldn’t sleep as well?” She asked in a mumble. Trixie noted that the lids of her eyes were half-closed, a clear sign of sleep issues in the batpony.
“I got to sleep, but had a bad nightmare,” Trixie admitted. “Do you want to talk about it?”
New Moon didn’t respond. Trixie took the initiative to sit down beside her, wrapping the large blanket she had brought down with her around the two of them.
The room was silent for a few minutes but for the crackling of the flame. Trixie fidgeted, not used to being so quiet in the company of another, and was the first to break the mutual peace. “How much did you hear about the Alicorn Amulet and I?” She asked New Moon.
That at least seemed a subject New Moon was willing to broach. “We were not sure how much of it was rumour and how much was fact, the Princesses were mum about it. What we did hear was that you came into possession of a dark artifact that possessed you and made you take over Ponyville for two days.”
Trixie swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. If she had been possessed, Trixie would have probably been worse off than she was from the massive violation of self she would have undergone. However, at least it would have given her leeway in the court of public opinion. She found herself afraid of confessing the truth.
Then the nightmare came back, and Trixie steeled herself. She had no other friends or family she could pour her heart out to, and the mare felt that that was exactly what was required right now.
“That’s, that’s not actually t-true, er, the possession part that is, at least partly that is,” Trixie said, stumbling over her words. “I, I chose to put it on. The Amulet gave me power and it gave me skill, but all, all it did was remove my inhibitions.” She gulped, desperately wishing for a glass of water to wet her tongue and throat, but continued, “At least, I think so. It might’ve pushed me over, but a great part of it was me.”
Her words caught New Moon’s attention, who looked over, peering into Trixie’s eyes as if looking for a greater inner truth. “What was it like, then? Wearing the amulet, that is?” New Moon clarified.
Trixie took a few moments to collect her thoughts. She said, “Even before I put it on, I think it had already influenced me. I went to the shop with money in hoof, but when I spotted it, I think I was going to steal it.” She swallowed, and continued, “The shopkeeper interrupted and prevented me from running off with it, so I purchased it with bits. I should have known then that something was up, but I didn’t listen. Then I put it on. It was like I was looking at the world through a lens, like when you try to peer into water, and the Amulet gave me clear vision for the first time.”
Trixie didn’t mention that it was through red-tinged eyes.
New Moon sat in silent. It wasn’t the silence where she was busy contemplating what Trixie had told her. It was the silence where she was urging her to continue, knowing there was much more to the story still.
“It gave me a strength I never possessed before. In all the show acts I had performed before, I called myself ‘The Great and Powerful Trixie’, but I had just been fooling myself. The Amulet made me feel great, truly great for the first time. But I ended up like a filly in a candy store. Spells that I only knew in theory, unable to ever pull them off in practice, suddenly I was able to fling them around with ease. But with every spell I cast, I was losing the morals that they instilled in us from the first day of school. If I hadn’t been stopped when I was, I don’t know how far I would have gone. I don’t even know if the Princesses would have been able to subdue me.”
That got New Moon’s attention, “That powerful?,” she asked, letting out a quick whistle. “I don’t know about Princess Luna, but Princess Celestia was defeated at the Royal Wedding by Queen Chrysalis a few years ago, and you and I know how little a single unicorn’s love should be able to go.”
Trixie wasn’t so certain of that. Shining Armor may have been a single unicorn, but he had been promoted to Captain of the Royal Guard at a young age. He may have been dating Princess Cadance at the time, but she doubted he had gotten the job solely on nepotism. He would have had to have some degree of talent and trained skill to get in.
She shoved those thoughts aside, continuing on, “Yes, that powerful. It was an insidious artifact, but all it did was give me the power I never even dreamed of obtaining. In turn, it left me with nightmares.” Trixie shivered again as the nightmare she had just had crept up on her. “Since I found out my father died, I’ve never actually left this place, you know? I’ve tried, I’ve sincerely tried, but I don’t even trust myself if I were to leave not to wreck the world again somehow. I don’t know how much of it is from whatever taint the Amulet left behind, but I know some of it is.”
“It haunts me still.”
New Moon was quiet again, but this time she was contemplative. Trixie turned her head back towards the fire. There was one piece of imagery that stuck out to her from her nightmare, of being purified in fire. Not actually being on fire no thank you, Trixie thought to herself, but merely looking into the dancing yellows and oranges of the fire uplifted her spirits. Fire was something of spontaneity, of change. It could be a new beginning, just like the embodiment of fire itself, a phoenix.
“I should’ve come to visit you earlier, you know.”
Trixie craned her head around to look back at New Moon.
“When my father first heard about a Changeling being found in Whinnychester, he got a copy of the report. When he found out it was your own father that had supposedly gone missing, he realised what occurred right away and told me. We should’ve come to provide support. I’m so sorry, Trixie. Did they bury him at least?”
Trixie shook her head. She could feel tears staining her cheeks, but managed to say, “No. It was his wish he be buried next to my mother. The guards burned his body instead and disposed of the ashes in the river.”
“I don’t know what happened to my father’s body,” New Moon said. “My mother has some connections. She might have been able to get his body treated according to batpony tradition.” She sighed, “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to return to Canterlot, ever.”
“Tell me about him,” Trixie said. She knew New Moon needed a shoulder to cry on, and being able to talk about some of the memories of her father would be as good a therapy as any in this situation.
New Moon wrinkled her nose, before she started talking. “He came from the Badlands hive, just like your own father. Well, you know that much. He went around as a regular pegasus in those days, starting off in Dodge Junction and slowly drifting north as he picked up on pony customs and managed to fit in better over time. Eventually, he made his way to Canterlot, where he worked in a shop repairing clocks. That’s where he met mother.”
“She was from one of the Prench islands, wasn’t she?,” Trixie asked.
New Moon nodded. “That’s right, Marequelon. It was a small community with not much for jobs, so she followed its motto ‘A Mare Labor’ and migrated to Equestria for work. Dad met her in his pegasus form and the two dated for a bit, then when he revealed his true form she didn’t reject him. It actually worked for the better, anyways. There was, still is anxiety in the batpony community about outsiders.” She whinnied in an obvious mocking snort. “They’re worried about us being subsumed into the general pegasus population, and they’ll shun any batpony who dates outside the clan.”
“So he took a new form for the sole benefit of your mother, then?,” Trixie deduced.
“Not just for her, no. He managed to ingratiate himself with the batponies as well by virtue of simply being the same tribe. Half of them don’t even care a whit about cultural similarities so long as you have furred wings.” New Moon snorted for the second time in as many minutes. “I suppose I should be grateful, though. Some of them have had families there dating back several centuries, so if they were like some of the regular nobles my parents and I would have been looked upon for being outsiders, new blood. Instead, they got mom and dad jobs. They got dad through background checks somehow, how I don’t know but they did. Obviously he couldn’t use his past jobs as references considering his new form.”
“Oh?” Trixie asked, curious. “What was his ‘backstory’ then, so to speak?” Trixie’s own father, Wooden Chisel, had regaled her with stories of the hive, but then he had drilled her on his ‘past’, the story of his childhood as a pony to use if anyone ever asked.
“He claimed to have been a childhood friend of mom’s who followed after her by about a year. It took a couple of trips to the islands and a lot of practice with the Prench language to pull it off, but he did. They figured it was an easier way to keep a cover story straight when there’s few people who have been to the islands, and if someone were to every question his language skills he could excuse it as having little opportunity to use Prench on a daily basis in Equestria. And so he joined the Royal Guard, and with his experience in the shop he took to tinkering with clockworks as his main hobby.”
“Then they had you,” Trixie said.
New Moon sniffed, wiping a tear from her face. The batpony mare had thus far been fairly engaging, and Trixie hoped she could keep it that way and help New Moon work through her father’s death.
“Yeah, and then they had me. Mom said something about how dad had to take time off when I was born, not just because of course he had to, I was just born, but because her joy that first day filled him up with enough energy to last him weeks. She liked to reminisce a lot as I grew up, telling me stories about her own fillyhood, remembering my own antics as I grew up, even how her and dad came up with potential names for a foal before I was born. My parents named me New Moon because of course it’s something they would do, dad wanted to fit in and half of all bat ponies have night-themed names anyways,” she said, before hanging her head down. “Heh. It’s not common but some ponies will call a new moon a dead moon. Dead Moon sounds like a good name for me once I get caught. Sometimes I wish my parents named me Full Moon instead.”
Trixie jolted up at her friend’s last few lines. As she had opened her heart up to New Moon, the unicorn had thought they might be able to find relief from their woes in one another. They weren’t. If anything, they seemed to be feeding off each other’s miseries. This was bad, very bad. She needed to find something to break this mad chain and quickly.
Wait a minute, Trixie thought to herself, A dead moon? Something about that line tickled something in her memory with a fancy. She scrunched her snout in fierce concentration. The fire was an annoyance, the warm air drying out her cornea. It was as if the whole world had disappeared, leaving naught but for Trixie, the fire, and the moon hanging over her thoughts in all its forms, crescent, gibbous, new and full.
Her eyes widened. “That’s it!”
“That’s, huh?”
“That’s it!” Trixie declared a second time, suddenly jumping to her hooves, inadvertently burying New Moon deeper in the blanket. It was as if she had just received applause from the end of a performance, all the excitement and euphoria washing over her and magically super-charging her very being. Trixie felt alive again. “I’ve got it!”
“You’ve got what?”
“A way to let you move around more freely, to not have to renew your spell nightly, to make your true appearance impervious to detection! A way for me to get past the rut the Amulet has left me in! I’ve finally figured it out!”