Less is More

by EpicGamer10075

Travel

Trixie’s life was an odd one.

Most creatures found themselves a permanent home and lived there until some impactful event forced them to move to somewhere else, where they’d again settle for as long as they could. Those homes were a place to always retreat to, where after going to work, school, or simply doing whatever they wished outside, they returned to and laid in the unmoving space amongst an unmoving town or city, always knowing what everything would look like when they awoke the next day.

Trixie, though, was a traveller. Her home had wheels, and most days she simply pulled it from place to place for hours at a time. Despite her theatrical personality and the strong acts she put on in front of others, she was actually rather reserved and patient, with the physical strength and mental fortitude necessary to make those long treks all by her lonesome.

It was rather lonely, she reflected as she sat amongst calm fields in the dimming light of sundown, but it had given her opportunities few others have ever had. She had pulled her home across land, and had it brought across sea and through the sky, allowing her to see new and interesting sights nearly every day.

She had hiked across plains and hills, feeling the serenity of nature ever-present around her, trudged through seemingly endless deserts and pushed her home through the deep pits of sand, made her way through blistering mountain valleys and seen her exhausted breath become visible before her amongst the light shower of snow, floated on makeshift ferries across lakes and watched cheerful sea-ponies dance through the water’s surface, ridden cloud-carts to cloud-cities with the ground becoming further and further from her hooves, and been to nearly every nation she could to see their culture and put on a show for them.

There had been plenty of pony civilizations, sure, but there were also the feisty Gryphons amongst their wooden towns built on treetops, the cheery yet sleazy Horses living in their bustling markets, the forever-angry Dragons scouring their caves and mountains, the militaristic and honourable Longmas in their dry and heated, yet beautiful empire, the silent yet kind Kirin in a relatively-nearby forest grove, the large and out-of-touch Yaks in a frozen wasteland of a nation, the alchemical masters that were the Zebras in their dense, yet dry settlements, and even some Changeling hives, thankfully none of which were were the sadistic Queen Chrysalis’s, but happened to be quite different from each other.

All of that, and so much more, was open to her amongst her lengthy travels that she charted on maps and hiked by hoof, and she could hardly imagine it ever being different now. She always felt constrained and almost claustrophobic any time she was in one place for too long, and kept on the move to continue bringing her magic to others around the world.

She smiled to herself, watching the clouds go by and and the stars slowly become visible in the darkening sky, as she recalled the stunned and smiling faces of the many creatures she had performed for. While some nations were more eager to welcome her shows than others, the glee and amazement on the children’s faces as well as the shock and awe on the adults’ filled her with joy and pride in a way that nothing else could, and it always gave her the motivation to keep going, keep showing more people her magic.

She often wondered to herself if any of the creatures she met could even imagine a life like that, with no single place to call home, with no single set of people always around them, with little protection from the elements, and especially little to fight against the ever-present loneliness that pervaded these trips between settlements.

It could certainly be difficult at times, even to her, but what she found along the way more than made up for it. She found new audiences to stun and amaze, new cultures to see and enjoy, new places and routes to take in the scenery of, and new stories to tell thought up from her time alone, but above all else, she found freedom in this life.

Freedom was a strange concept, with so many creatures calling their lives ‘free’ and the world at their disposal, yet never really going beyond their own backyard (relatively speaking, anyway), while even more were kept from it all as a cog in a larger system set up by the rich, powerful, and bigoted, yet still content to live with nothing more. The massive trick they all pulled on themselves to make themselves believe they were free when they were truly just trapped was one that even impressed the travelling magician, but one that disappointed her even more.

How could they all live a free life without actually being free?

She shook her head and sighed into the cool breeze, and knew she’d never keep herself from this freedom ever again, and that that was why she travelled.

Author's Note:

Trixie’s always been an interesting character to me, with the ‘travelling’ part of her ‘travelling magician’ career being a centerpoint.

She’s definitely in a lower echelon of society, and I’d imagine she despises how people with more power than her misuse it in one way or another, and so she really only cares about the lower and middle class being part of her show, and harshly puts down anyone that tries to ruin everyone’s enjoyment for their own selfish or foolish reasons.

There’s so much she must have seen in her travels that never get mention in canon or in any fanfics, but seeing so many different places and never being tied down to one spot are critical to her character, so this story is about how that has shaped her worldview, the good things that come with it, and how she sees everyone else.