A cutie mark was more than a simple branding of one’s personal skills. To every kind of pony, the cutie mark meant not only that they were guaranteed a place in society due to an intricate link with their own destinies, but it’s mere appearance was a symbol of growth. A sign of maturity and understanding, a cutie mark was both anticipated and coveted by colts and fillies all over Equestria as their individual display of specialness.

“I can’t tell what it is,” Trixie Lulamoon spun in a couple of little circles, furrowing her brows. “Is it a glow-y stick? Daddy? Huh? Is it fireworks? What if I don’t like fireworks, Daddy? Daddy? Do the fireworks glow? Is it a wand? Is it –”

“Trixie, dear,” her tan coated father looked up from his newspaper with a deadpan. “Your new cutie mark is very nice and all, but Daddy’s trying to read the paper before work. Why don’t you go and play with your sisters?”

The little filly gave a quiet huff through her nostrils, frowning.

“But Daddy!” she whined, stamping a hoof against the floor as he nonchalantly turned a page. “I don’t want –”

He folded the newspaper with a quiet fwap, and jabbed a hoof at the door.

“Go play outside, Trixie,” her father frowned. “I don’t want to have to tell you again.”

She bit her tongue, swallowing the hard lump in her throat and dragging herself out the rickety wooden door and into the bright morning sun.

It just wasn’t fair.

Just because Trixie was the youngest of her five sisters, she was always considered last. Did her first cartwheel? Dixie did it first. Learned to juggle using only her already weak magic? Nixie was better. Got her cutie mark at last? So did everypony else. It was supposed to be her special day.

Trixie huffed, stomping through the grass as she allowed her thoughts to wander. She had her cutie mark now, after all. That must have meant that she found her special talent.

Which was strange, because she hadn’t been doing anything at the time except vying for her father’s attention, only for it to be stolen away from her at the last moment because Pixie could juggle.

“Trixie can juggle too,” she muttered bitterly under her breath, kicking viciously at an especially tough stalk of grass. “Stupid Pixie. Stupid juggling.”

The stalk of grass seemed to be taunting Trixie with just how readily it sprang back up after being kicked down, resulting in her kicking it again.

“Stupid grass!” Trixie glowered at the lawn, which did not look back at her even though she would have sworn that it did. In her defense, it was indeed a very threatening looking yard. Long, overbearing grass that was nearly as tall as the filly herself combined with tangles and roots all throughout it made it seem like a miniature jungle of sorts.

“Hey, loser.”

Trixie shrieked at the sound of her elder sister’s voice, tripping over one of the roots and landing squarely on her face. Scrabbling up from the ground, she glared at the lime colored unicorn with a fire in her eyes.

Pixie only blew another bubble with her gum.

“You should never sneak up on Trixie!” the filly demanded heatedly, cheeks burning at her sister. “Trixie doesn’t like it!”

“Trixie is talking in third person again,” Pixie deadpanned, blowing another bubble. “What’cha doing out here, loser? I thought you were still trying to put that foal’s puzzle together.”

Trixie flattened her mane with her hoof, holding her head high.

“For your information, Pixie,” she spat proudly. “Trixie has already finished the foal’s puzzle! In record time, even!”

“Okay,” Pixie replied automatically. “What was it a picture of?”

Trixie did not answer.

“What’s the matter, loser?” she sniggered into her hoof. “Didn’t you finish it? Or is a little foal’s cardboard puzzle too much for your fragile little head?”

“It is supposed to be a line of carriage wheels!” Trixie bellowed. “Trixie can’t help it if all the pieces look the same!”

“Yeah. I am so amazed that you figured that out all on your own just from the picture on the box. Way to go, genius.”

Trixie harrumphed, but clung to her sister’s last words.

“How do you know that Trixie isn’t really a genius?” she inquired haughtily. “Maybe you’re just too dumb to realize Trixie’s genius!”

“You got stuck underneath the house,” Pixie deadpanned. “Right after you sticky-taped cardboard to your sides so that you could pretend to be a princess.”

“TRIXIE IS TOO A PRETTY GENIUS PRINCESS!” she squealed angrily, galloping straight back into the house to hide in her room. Stupid Pixie just couldn’t understand, that’s all it was.

Trixie buried herself in her thin blankets, curling up in a miniscule cerulean ball of fluff as she hugged her pillow. Stupid Pixie. Trixie would show her, she just had to prove it and then she wouldn’t feel bad at all.

With a determined puff, the filly eventually dragged herself out of bed and perused her toy box beneath her bed, pulling out her few prized possessions. The foal’s puzzle remained woefully incomplete, but everypony already knew how it was supposed to be put together. No, if Trixie wanted to prove that she was a true genius, irrevocably, she needed a greater puzzle.

The slightly larger foal’s puzzle of Equestria’s princess didn’t seem too appealing, and she unconsciously rubbed her sides. Sticky tape was surely evil. It took a bit more digging before Trixie finally found what she had been searching for.

There, at the bottom of her worn toy box, was the puzzle cube that her mother had given her for her birthday, years ago. Miniscule frown forming on her face, she dragged the puzzle out and held it carefully in her hooves.

The puzzle cube. Her dreaded foe.

Day after day, Trixie had attempted to properly align the cube’s colors to match on each side. Her father offered to help, but each time she denied. If he was going to ever be proud of her, she needed to do it herself; that, she was sure of. And so, Trixie spent hours at a time, puzzling over the contraption. But her will remained firm. When Trixie was through, the only thing she would be called would be 'genius'.

At first, she had tried using her hooves to push the pieces into place – unfortunately, even her small hooves weren’t agile enough to fix it on their own, so she was forced to resort to magic.

And because her magic was weak, Trixie found that trying to solve the puzzle was much more draining than she anticipated.

With another determined look, Trixie shuffled her blankets around herself to form a comfortable little makeshift seat. Kicking her hooves up per usual, Trixie held the toy aloft and focused every last drop of magical strength that she could muster, furiously attempting to shift the conundrum cube into a solvable solution to her persistent problems.

Trixie had no such luck.

She must have tried for hours, tearily biting her tongue between her teeth every time she felt like giving up in confusion and anger. Giving up wouldn’t prove anything.

And after a while of focusing, Trixie even forgot what she was attempting to prove. Her yawns were unheard even by herself, and she hardly even noticed when the little multicolored box slowly slipped from her telekinetic grasp and onto the floor.

She would have retrieved it, but she was already fast asleep.

Pixie watched the little filly struggle and fight back snivels at her umpteenth failure, unexpectedly showing a remarkable fortitude. She simply stood at the door and stared through the crack of the nearly closed door for the longest time, wondering if she should continue with her initial plan to apologize to her sister so that she didn’t run off and tattle.

But Trixie remained where she was, failing time and again to solve the puzzle that her mother had gotten her so long ago.

When the filly was fast asleep, Pixie crept inward and wordlessly snagged the puzzle box from the floor.

When she was finished solving the puzzle just as her father had shown her how, Pixie silently and cautiously placed the little cube onto the snoozing filly’s chest. She froze when Trixie shifted, but only wound up clutching the brainteaser box in her hooves as she slept.

Pixie mutely traversed backwards like a fading phantom, ghost of a smile growing on her own lips. Surely it couldn’t do any harm to allow the silly filly to think that she had done it all on her own.

And if she ever figured out that she hadn’t, maybe she was a ‘genius’ after all.