The Mare in the Magic Hat

by Impossible Numbers

Part IV: In Which Trixie Walks the Lonely Road

OK, so I’m a coward. I admit it.

Trixie’s conscience gave her a dirty look.

But I’m a coward with no holes in her, see? Anyway, I can think much better a long way away from any chances of having an axe thrown at my head.

Rain hammered the road around her blurring hooves. Onwards she splashed, not daring to look back in case she saw anything that upset her. No sign of the caravan yet; she wasn’t even sure if she was going the wrong way. No sign of the sign, come to that. But then, she might have missed it; she was barely looking up anymore, too busy looking out for tripwires.

Trixie’s conscience, if anything, turned up the heat of its glare.

And yes, it is a shame I’m having to run away from a bunch of little foals, but me? I’m an equal-opportunity coward. I don’t judge by the greatness of their age, but by the strength of their ability to make my life short and interesting.

All she had left was a cape that glued itself to her skin. Sores began erupting along her flanks and thighs: too much running, too much chafing.

Other bits of her mind made menacing gestures in her direction.

All right, all right. I don’t like it either. At least I’m honest this time. That’s an improvement, for a given definition of “improvement”. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have admitted that much. No, I was stupid enough to spread tales of my derring-do and hope none of them came back to dare me to do it. At least I’d admit it now. You’ve got to give me that.

She’d never been given anything else. Spewing hot air about giant bears that she could remove in a puff of smoke… that had once sounded like a good idea, right up until jaws the size of her caravan were spewing more literal hot air back into her face.

She could’ve been a hero. If only… if only…

But therein lay the problem. “If only”. If only history had turned left rather than right, she’d be a rodeo clown with baggy trousers and a drawl. Anything sounded plausible when the words “if only” were tacked on.

The foal had said in her heart, I’m gonna be a hero. Trouble was that the mare coating this heart was saying, I’m gonna get creamed.

By now, her mind almost entirely had her surrounded. No matter how much the remnant of sanity pleaded, its voice in her head was rising along with its chances of getting shanghaied.

Lungs fit to burst, Trixie skidded to a halt, sending a bow wave skimming along the river that had once been a road with mere puddles on it. She massaged her face with both hooves.

All right. All right. I’ll do something. Nothing too risky, though. Maybe I can tell someone, or find a way to send a message out to Equestria. They wouldn’t ignore foals lost in the woods, would they?

Since the remnant of sanity wasn’t completely free of bile, it added; I expect you know where I can find a hero at this hour, then? O Brave Knight of Equestria? Or will you be “Sir” Trixie of Canterlot?

Trixie sloshed up the road. Once more, it curled around and she followed the arc between the darkness of the trees. Overhead, the rainclouds dimmed. Naturally, the daytime glow behind them couldn’t last forever.

Surrounded by encroaching shadows: well, it wasn’t doing her constitution much good. No countryside gal was she; the darkness under the trees was too… empty for her liking. Even a small village would’ve had a helpful lantern or a few lit windows to suggest a world existed at all.

That was probably why the hiss caught her off guard.

“Who’s there!?” Trixie snapped. “What was that!? Where are you hiding!?” Gaze and limbs leaped from place to place. “Show yourself! I’m ready for you! Try anything, and I swear I’ll make you regret it!”

Someone struck a match to her left. Within the orange dab of light against the absolute shadow, two yellow eyes blinked up at her.

Trixie relaxed. The stranger was no paint-daubed foal. So far, so good.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” said the mare, and Trixie was surprised to hear a slight purr in the voice. “You’re heading to Stonecraft, aren’t you?”

All the same, this new mare had proven nothing yet. “Maybe. And my questions still stand, by the way.”

Face tinged orange by the flame – making it impossible to tell her natural fur colour in the dark – the stranger closed her eyes briefly and nodded once.

“Of course,” she said. “Where are my manners? My name is Felicity. I only just noticed you coming the other way, and I wanted to alert you to my presence so I wouldn’t startle you – some success I had there! And I assure you I was not hiding. I’m a traveller, just like you.”

“Oh.” To her embarrassment, Trixie realized she’d forgotten her questions already. “Uh… well remembered.”

The mare beamed at her, incisors gleaming orange under the match’s light. Trixie noticed she was holding it up by the hoof, in the skilful manner of one earth pony who never, ever wanted to handle anything between her teeth. Just looking at that smile put Trixie in mind of celebrities telling the press about this amazing new dentist they could now afford, and of photographs on billboards with big toothpaste tubes printed on them.

Those teeth looked a little… off in some way. Too eager, perhaps.

“Maybe I can help you?” offered the stranger. “It’s not safe out here after dark. Someone left their caravan in the middle of the road, but I wheeled it back to Stonecraft out of the way. I thought it the best thing to do.”

“Oh? Did you? I was wondering where the thing was.” Trixie made a mental note to check the stranger hadn’t taken any “perks” from inside. Although, since the feral foals had raided her stock, she doubted there’d be any way to tell.

The stranger inclined her head respectfully. “I could take you to the village, if you like. It’s much safer there.”

Trixie’s lips twitched with surprise. “Oh. This is the way to Stonecraft?”

“Yes. Let’s go together. That is, if you have no objection?”

“I can’t, as of this moment in time, think of any,” lied Trixie.

“Oh, thank goodness! But come! We mustn’t waste another moment. The sooner you escape this place, the better.”

Shaking the match out, the figure shifted in the shadows. Trixie had to focus to catch even that much, but at least they weren’t heading back the way she’d just come.

“It’s such a relief to meet sane company,” said the stranger from the shadow on her right. “You really should get out of here as soon as possible.”

“Uh…” Trixie started walking a little faster, sloshing water as she went. This wasn’t a welcome turn in the conversation.

“I’m sorry. This must seem so out-of-nowhere to you.”

“Hadn’t crossed my mind,” lied Trixie. “Miss…?”

“Please, call me Felicity.” A rustle and a slight hot breath on Trixie’s ear told her the stranger had just leaned towards her. “To tell you the truth,” whispered Felicity, “it’s not just the foals who are acting strange around here.”

“You don’t say,” said Trixie weakly. Something in her head sounded the alarm.

“Unfortunately, they won’t move, you see. Too stubborn. It does something to their heads. I’ve tried reasoning with them myself, but I can’t do anything about it.”

“Uh… if you say so.”

More urgently – almost hissing now – the low purr of the voice said, “Don’t drink the water, under any circumstances. Choose rain instead. And if you end up in the forest again, beware the gnarly ground.”

“What gnarly ground?” Trixie said before she could stop herself. Don’t encourage her, you fool!

“Too terrible to say. All I can reveal is that it lies in the depths of the forest. Strange things happen on the gnarly ground. We avoid it whenever possible; we know its perils all too well. Although it shouldn’t come to that, of course, because you’ll be escaping soon. In fact. forget I said anything.”

Trixie gave up on comments. She had the sharp, sinking feeling of one who, having invited the harmless-looking hitchhiker onto her caravan, was now watching them suddenly foam at the mouth and jabber about flying saucers.

“No coat?” said the stranger, sounding strangely pained, as though its loss was the death of a distant relative.

“Er, no. I had one, but it got lost.”

“I see. And your poor hat’s missing too. A pity.”

The alarms reached an ear-splitting pitch in Trixie’s head.

“Look here, Miss ‘Felicity’,” she snapped, turning and hoping she was facing the right way in the dark, “have you been spying on… Hello? Hello?”

Only silence. The space beside her seemed empty of even the vaguest suggestion of a silhouette. No hoofsteps betrayed her companion’s presence.

Come to that, Trixie realized she’d never heard any the whole time…

You’re hallucinating. How wonderful. This is your fault, Conscience. I’d be just fine if you took a running jump.

Nevertheless, she cocked her ears for the slightest sounds above the splashing of her own hooves. No matter how often she shook her head, the memory of those teeth, of those yellowing eyes, and of that purring, whispering voice had all been too real to be some guilt-ridden apparition. She could still feel the hot breath on her ear, for goodness’ sake.

Trixie could only distinguish the road by the dimming greyness of the reflected sky. In the distance, the dots of light promised salvation. She tried not to think about the intervening mile, or to think of the pure shadows looming on both sides.

---

At least the stranger had been right; Trixie’s caravan was sitting a little apart from the village, to the right of the main road. Trixie herself thought it looked like a wannabe house cosying up to its bigger neighbours.

In the encroaching dark, she gravitated towards it, hooves aching from so much damp walking that she was already dreaming of a lie-down on the boards. A flicker of magic passed through her horn. The side entrance creaked open. Pure nothingness waited inside.

Trixie flicked on the light. She’d saved up for months for a decent magic-based illumination system, so to see the pale bar flash on and off overhead was a bit of a letdown. Then again, she’d been recycling it for years, often prising it out of the wreckage of previous caravans.

Her home was an empty wooden box on wheels. Boards, wooden planks, and timber ribs were all. Her sigh echoed amid the unfurnished space. Drained of what little energy she had left, Trixie eased the door shut.

“So much for that,” she muttered.

The rest of the village really was nothing but humble lodges on either side of the road, as though someone had cut a bypass through the forest and then thrown these scraps together as an afterthought. She could tell which one was the inn because it had “IN” painted above the door. Other examples of architectural variety included “BANK”, “BAR”, “GIFT SHOPPE”, and her personal favourite, “HALL”. Not “TOWN HALL” or “COMMUNAL HALL” or even “HALL WHERE WE KEEP THE FOOD”. Just… “HALL”.

Had it been a settler town, she could’ve found a sheriff to talk to, but that wasn’t how it worked out here. Police officers, Royal Guards, and private security staff were city-dwellers or townsfolk. Even sheriffs were anomalies, found only in the desert. Everywhere else, the “community” usually saw to it that pickpockets and muggers got what was coming to them.

Once upon a time, that would’ve suited young Trixie fine; a travelling fraud could easily escape such local jurisdictions, often by simply going over the next hill. Besides, even discounting her youthful bluster and arrogance, she’d generally found that a crowd’s IQ went downhill fast. Throw in the ability to conjure illusions and shout about the mysteries beyond the known world, and she could leaving a small village with her belly full, her pockets jingling, and the happy memory of terrified ponies making signs to ward off evil.

Trixie sighed and shuffled onwards, sloshing water under her hooves.

That particular episode was a stain on her history. She’d dropped that act early in her career, though mostly out of a growing suspicion that it’d land her in jail at some point. Looking back on it now, squelching in the mud of the road, Trixie cringed.

Yet already she felt the unwelcome déjà vu creeping back into her heart’s nest. She found herself automatically scanning the lodges for a target.

Disdain – not just at herself – forced her to march on. The sooner she got this out of the way, the better.

It was probably very narrow-minded of her, she was sure of it, but she lived and breathed the city excitement, the magic of lots of ponies mixing together, and her urban pride couldn’t bring itself to see the “picturesque” or “quaint” in places like this. Villages were mere punctuation marks on the story of her life. Their only role was to tide her over until she could get to the next big town.

She ambled along the road, under the heavy rain and over the reflection of a sky soon to be absorbed by the night.

All the same, the villagers themselves were usually a welcoming and friendly sort, the kind to point out the nearest eatery and then offer to pay for the meal.

She passed the “BAR”, where several loud voices jabbered and laughed. Chairs scraped along the floor inside, and mugs slammed down on tables. It had been much quieter – to an almost deathly degree, she thought – when she’d eaten there the previous day and had her meal so happily paid for. A crowd beckoned: a crowd in an amiable mood. As she walked past, she moved closer to the orange glow around the door.

Not a bad lot per se. It was just a shame agriculture wasn’t that big a deal this close to nature.

The generous meal they’d paid for yesterday had consisted of wild crab apples that were solid vinegar. Her mouth wrinkled itself up with the sheer sting of memory. In addition, they’d given her purple, bulbous, spidery things they’d insisted were natural carrots, but which tasted more like raw soil. She could make the comparison because they’d still had bits of soil stuck on them.

Remembering that, she instantly ambled on, past the thin suggestions of warmth and light.

They’d beamed at her. They’d said it was finest Stonecraft grub. It had certainly reminded her of the time she’d eaten apples addled with maggots.

However, she’d made no attempt to point this out at the time. She knew those beaming smiles. When it came to local pride, a villager could make the most vociferous patriot look like a kid playing pretend. Tact was a survival response out here in the boondocks: Trixie had fled one too many pitchfork-wielding mobs to wish to face another one anytime soon.

After all that, she’d slept in her caravan. She didn’t trust inns or, for that matter, any strange bed that wasn’t premium hotel quality. Not that she’d even seen a premium hotel in weeks. Much less could she afford one.

And for what? Once she’d woken up and stepped out onto the street around midday, she’d put on her usual low-tier performance: a few card tricks, a couple of riddles, and the old “smokescreen teleportation” gag. Respectable applause, respectable nods, a few bits and bobs for her trouble, end of interest. They’d bustled about whatever business villagers dragged themselves through in their spare time.

Oh, a few had given her cheery goodbyes. That was it. That was life for Trixie, nine times out of ten, and usually on her way to the tenth place: a big town worth visiting. Of the nine stops, she’d forgotten all other details within minutes. It was like the opposite of magic.

Somehow, the thought weighed more heavily on her than the rain-soaked cape. She even found herself hanging her head.

Business, Trixie, she thought warningly. Get your stuff back, if you can.

She found the doorway – twelfth house on the left, she remembered – and rapped a hoof smartly against the wood. The first pony who’d greeted her, and the last pony who’d stopped waving to disappear indoors, must still be inside…

The mare with the twin braids opened up and beamed at her.

“Good evening, Miss,” the villager said. “Can I help you?”

“I’ve been robbed,” said Trixie, not remotely in the mood for pleasantries. “Some foals – uh, I mean, never mind the details. Please, I need some supplies before I can get out of this forest. They cleared me out entirely.”

“Oh, phooey,” said the villager cheerfully. “You look fine to me. Not cleared out in the slightest. Still got your insides, I take it? Then again, it would be hard to walk and talk without them. Hi, my name’s Adder Stone. What’s yours?”

Trixie stared at her. Then, with a shake of her head, she disregarded virtually everything that had just happened.

“Look, can you give me some food and some money? I don’t need much. I just need enough to see me to the next settlement. Then I’m getting a Royal Guard, or whatever they have, to come get my stuff back…”

Ignoring the fact that I just got robbed by a bunch of kids, she thought.

“But first I need –”

“A name! What’s your name, stranger? What’s your name?”

After Trixie’s eyebrows came back down to earth, she said through gritted teeth. “You know me. We spoke this morning. It’s Trixie. If this is some kind of country bumpkin joke, it isn’t –”

“Pumpkins? We don’t have pumpkins around here. Would you like a rock?” Adder Stone vanished into the light of the interior. Trixie had to blink away the sudden blinding flash before a silhouette returned. “I’ve got lots of rocks: tough rocks, sissy rocks, rocks that climb on rocks… Six bits a bite, and that’s daylight robbery tonight!”

A bucket pressed into Trixie’s face. With her muzzle squashed by the pressure, she glanced down at the pile of black chunks piled up inside. Then she refocused, and noticed they all seemed to have holes in: a mass of triangular rings, crude as though carved by children.

“Look. It’s very simple,” said Trixie, pushing the bucket away with a hoof and leaning forwards. “I need food and money. Food. Money. It’s not complicated.”

“And it’s not tonight, my strange friend,” said Adder Stone, cheerfully shoving the bucket out of view. “Tonight, it’s the Feast of Foalish Fancy. Masters are servants, servants are masters, the king of the day tells us all what silly things to do, and frankly I think the bean was rigged. I welcome you humbly into my home!”

She slammed the door so hard that Trixie’s nose was shoved backwards into her skull.

Wincing at the pain, she stepped away and growled until her muzzle popped back into shape. What on earth is her game? She seemed fine earlier today.

Just great. First, those wild foals, then that strange ‘Felicity’ talking about gnarly ground – whatever that is – and now this…

Wait a minute…

Suspicion flicked on a light in her brain. Once more, Trixie rapped her hoof smartly against the wood.

“Hello, again,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Uh… excuse me, but are those foals in the forest from this village, by any chance?”

“Foals?” Adder Stone squinted at her. “So you’ve been to the King’s land, have you? Tut, tut, tut, my friend. I hope you had your papers with you.”

“Papers…?” Trixie clicked her tongue impatiently. “You do know about them, then? Because those foals have been drinking some noticeably contaminated water –”

“Ah, I’m afraid it’s nothing to do with me,” said Adder Stone with a shrug and an apologetic smile. “That’s the King’s business, you see. We know about their sovereignty, you see. We can’t help you with your problems out there in his country.”

“His sovereignty? Miss Adder Stone, don’t you realize your foals are running amok in the wilderness? In fact, they’re not even all from this village, are they? There are hundreds of the little monsters! They can’t all have come from here!”

“Hey, hey. Relax, my friend. You know what kids are like.”

Trixie spluttered under the crossfire of a dozen objections. Eventually, an alliance emerged from the clearing dust.

“‘You know what kids are like’? Good gracious, you utter fool! They’re being poisoned! Deranged! Driven insane! They’re drinking toxic waters, when they’re not throwing me into them! Foals are running wild in the forest, waylaying innocent travellers and acting like savages, and you don’t care!? What about the mothers? The fathers? Family? Friends? Doesn’t anybody care?!”

Adder Stone continued to smile at her, perfectly happy with whatever she’d just said. Suspicion whispered in Trixie’s ears. Those eyes looked a little too glazed.

“Wow,” murmured the villager. “You seem too tense. I need a drink.”

She closed the door; this time, Trixie leaned away from it just before the slam. Raising her hoof to rap smartly against the wood again, Trixie chewed her lip. She lowered the hoof.

As though prompted by a new noise, her gaze shot towards the “BAR”. Laughter and chatter continued unabated. By now, suspicion was jumping up and down on her cerebral cortex, waving its limbs for attention.

Felicity said not to drink the water, she thought. Even though I was heading into the village, away from the forest. But that doesn’t mean a lot out here, does it? They get most of their food alone from the forest, so if they get other things too…

Rain drummed against the rooftops and pattered across the puddles. Trixie sloshed through them to reach the entrance, where a rusty old horseshoe hung off a rusty old nail. They recycled a lot out here.

She held her breath, and then eased it out gently. We’ll just get a look, and then head to the nearest town. That’s all. The Royal Guard or whatever will take care of this. No hesitation. No doubts. What we find, we find.

Hoping her suspicion was wrong, Trixie pushed open the door and guided it as far as it’d go.

At first, there were no surprises. She’d been to hundreds like it around and across Equestria: one small counter served by one small pony; normal-sized rooms that were fine for a normal home but cramped for a drinking establishment; tiny round tables, surrounded by tiny round stools, and each bearing a couple of roses in a glass if anyone was peckish. Even the mugs looked like many she’d quaffed at a hundred counters.

The villagers didn’t look out of place either. Most sat and jabbered at each other, faces reddened by sunshine. A few tried to spin on their heads, a couple doing this on actual tables. One stallion tried making binoculars out of two mugs, which would’ve made more sense if they weren’t made of ebony. A pair of them climbed onto a table, linked forelimb to forelimb, and danced on their hind legs. All in all, a typical end-of-the-day outing, if she wasn’t mistaken.

Trixie slid through the flailing limbs and scraping chairs. Now that she was in their midst, the jabbering resolved into coherent words. Or not coherent words, as it turned out.

“With this thorn, I’ve invented a new way of flying at night. OW! My hoof went baddy-bad!”

“Smell this orange. It’ll make you invisible. See? No you don’t, because I smelled it first!”

“Always wear bells before going to bed, that’s what I say. That way, you’ll wake yourself up in the morning.”

“I heard if you roast a stick for a month and then throw it in the river, and it floats upstream, you can make it into a powder that’ll bring you eternal good luck.”

When she reached the first table, she stopped and peered over the nearest mare’s shoulders. Inside every mug on the table, what looked like blue paint stared up at her.

One of the stallions crashed onto the table, splashing the occupants’ faces with blue. Trixie winced and backed off at once, bumping into an elderly mare trying to juggle five mugs simultaneously. Hastily apologizing as mugs rained down on the next table’s heads, Trixie hurried out of the mob and through the door and onto the puddle-strewn street. Behind her, the door creaked to a close.

“I hate it when I’m right,” she said. “But a whole village… poisoned?”

And if the foals were willing to throw me into a river to drown, then what would fully grown ponies do?

Shadows reduced the world to a thin strip below her hooves: reflections of the dark grey above. Trixie stared down at it as though hoping to divine her next move from the pitter-patter of raindrops. She couldn’t stay here. Not a moment longer. Yet if she left without food or money, then what were her chances of passing the forest boundary, especially with those foals running around out there?

The caravan was just a box with wheels on. Never mind that she’d seen predecessors reduced to firewood. At least those times, she’d never been more than a day’s walk from the next village, with a rabbit under her hat and the power to draw coins out of passersby.

But now? Utterly stranded.

Unless…

Trixie grinned; it was a grin that rose like a battle-scarred crocodile from the depths of a foul-smelling swamp. Easy targets.

She splashed back and knocked on Adder Stone’s door.

“Good evening,” she said, forcing her voice to rise on false cheer. “I wondered if you could step out here. I’ve found a new way to make holes out of stones. But you have to come outside and stare at this patch of ground first.”

“Great! Let’s see if we can find a toad in one!”

Adder Stone stepped across the threshold and set her face to stare. Grinning, Trixie slipped past her.

The interior was hardly any different from that of the “BAR”, and the wooden room had hardly any decoration beyond the one framed family portrait and the brick fireplace. It was the work of a moment to find the bed in the adjoining room, lift up the boards under it, and find a little stash of coins tucked away. They always thought it was the least likely hiding place.

Trixie licked her lips and summoned the coins up to eye level. That’d be enough to get a pack of cards, maybe some joke shop items she could co-opt – she’d learned that trick from the great Ersatz Enchanter shortly before he’d upstaged her in Hoofington – but first she’d check the kitchen for some food – no one could live on coins – and even if it was disgusting, she could… at least… survive… on it…

Halfway across the bedroom to the front door, Trixie woke up.

She blinked. She stared down at the coins floating next to her elbow. She saw them for the first time, glowing behind her own blue aura of magical talent.

What am I doing?

It’s an emergency, prompted the pragmatist inside her. We won’t last to the next location with no supplies. Besides, it’s not like these ponies are going to see you again. Who cares, anyway? They’re just any old backwater ponies. They’re a dime a dozen. And we got to deal with the poisoned water somehow, even if only by telling someone at the next place.

But Trixie, the Great and Powerful Trixie, would never rob anyone. Only bad guys did that. Good guys did great deeds. They were just and honourable. She’d known that since she was old enough to tell that the Power Ponies in the comics were her home team and Mane-iac’s henchponies were the away team, and every single comic she’d ever read had proceeded from there.

Sure, the Great and Powerful Trixie had told stories about vanquishing Ursas and Hydras, and she’d cheerfully tied up hecklers with their own ropes, but those were… well, showpony crimes. They burst outwards. They showed the world what she was. She’d never snuck around the place like a snake, except to get quietly ready for the next vanishing cabinet trick.

She shook the conscience out of her head and stepped towards the door. From here, she could still see the ridiculous Adder Stone staring at the ground, apparently enthralled by her own imagination.

On her way across the entrance hall, Trixie about-turned and saw the framed family portrait. This time, she stopped and examined it.

One mare. One stallion. One filly. One colt. All smiling those special fake smiles that remain when all else has eroded away waiting for the blasted painter to finish already.

She sighed. What would those foals think of her, if she went out that door? How could she tell them that she’d done it to help them, really?

Don’t be sappy. You need a professional to solve this mess. Get the Royal Guard.

Trixie’s jaw tightened.

At once, she marched into the bedroom. She dropped the coins into the gap, and let the board snap back into place. She marched out of the room and across the threshold, ignoring the mare still staring at the ground. Rain patted her along her spine again, in spite of the heat within rising to boiling point.

Professional, huh? Oh, so Trixie’s not good enough for you, is she? Can’t handle herself, you think? Unfit for heroism, am I?

Well, I am the Great and Powerful Trixie! I fathom the unfathomable, do the undoable, think the unthinkable! I something something the ineffable, and that is no mean feat! I am known and admired by the mighty and the meagre alike! A mob of babies and a spit of tacky water are nothing, NOTHING, to the likes of me.

In the middle of the street, she stopped marching. Rain and darkness soaked into her consciousness. To her right, the laughter and jabbering never ceased. She imagined, under those dumb smiles and even dumber antics, the hearts of parents crying out for missing foals.

“Very well!” she enunciated sharply. “First things first. I’m going to need some supplies, and then we’d best have a look at our mysterious Waters. The Great and Powerful Trixie is a professional, and a hero besides! I will not be reduced to common thievery!”

Now the sky vanished in the darkness. Only the faint glow of lights around the “BAR” doorway showed her where she was. Her caravan was long since lost to the night. Her useless, notably supply-free caravan. And the only supplies around were owned by ponies in no fit state to hand them over.

“Ah…” she began. “Slight flaw in the plan there…”

---