Author's Notes:

A new chapter, an new day!

So what do we have in store for today? A little story that's been asked for sometime about Trixie's past and her father. So now the questions will be answered! Here's a shout to my best and favorite readers! Texus, and Frankie2!

Sorry if the chapter seems broken and glued together. It was hard to write a backstory. Once again read, rate, comment, love, and tolerate!

Enjoy!

Elsewhere on the farm, Trixie was hard at work bucking the apple trees the traditional way and not with her magic or the technique she'd learned back at the rock farm. She bucked the trees, cursing Applejack's name as she kicked each tree out of spite.

It actually helped her greatly. Though she was strong physically, stronger than most unicorns, she was still a unicorn and not nearly as strong as most earth ponies. There were always exceptions. By venting her frustrations on the trees she managed to kick them harder than normal making it easy to collect the apples.

She wondered what it would take to get the mare to finally let go of her hate and distrust.

She kicked another tree and down came all the apples. One bounced down off the basket but Trixie paid no heed to it. She moved on to the next tree and gave it a swift buck and like everytime before the apples fell. Something about kicking these trees was immensity satisfying for Trixie.

She felt that every kick, every apple that fell, was another notch of spit she could give to Applejack. Once she'd finished the row of trees she'd been working on Trixie marched to the opposite side and began bucking those trees heading back the way she'd come. Along the way she ran into Apple Bloom, Sweeties Belle, and Silver Spoon.

"Hey, miss Trixie!" Silver Spoon called to her waving, the other two waved as well.

"Girls!" The unicorn called back waving. "How are you?"

She trotted over hugging them. They all giggled at the show of affection.

After about an hour Trixie had finished with the help from the fillies. Gathering up as many baskets as they could carry, Trixie placed them into a nearby cart and once full, wheeled it off to the barn. The fillies decided to hitch hike a ride in the back.

The four ponies smiled and laughed as they shared stories about their life and adventures, or misadventures if you were a cutie mark crusader.

"- and that's how I got my cutie mark." Silver Spoon said with pride to Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle.

Both fillies were awestruck with the fillies tale of her cutie mark. She then turned to Trixie who was listening but remained silent.

"Miss, Trixie? How did you get your cutie mark?" She asked the blue mare.

The other two stopped chatting and looked at her intently, waiting to her her grand tale of how she got her cutie mark. What they got was silence. The mare never took her gaze from the road and never said a word.

"Miss, Trixie?" The silver filly tried again. "Did I upset you? I'm sorry, if I did."

"No. Trixie just doesn't like to think of that day." She responded bitterly.

The filly folded her ears back from the bitter sound in her voice.

"Sorry." She said retreating to the other two fillies.

After a few moments Trixie stopped and unhinged herself from the cart. She walked over to a nearby tree and laid down looking rather depressed. The three ponies jumped out of the cart and gathered around the depressed mare to comfort her. She smiled with misty eyes at them.

"Thanks girls." She cooed pulling them to a gentle hug. "So, you want to hear how I got my cutie mark?"

"If ya wouldn't mind." Apple Bloom responded.

"But if it's to hard you don't need to tell us if you don't want to." Sweetie Belle added, Silver Spoon nodded in agreement.

"It started long ago after my mother left me and my father to travel the world and become famous. My father left one day and decided that life wasn't worth living without her. After he tucked me into bed, he left with a line of rope. I knew he had been sneaking out for a while, and thought he was going to see another mare."

The three fillies listened in silent awe of Trixie's tale so far. Not wanting to miss a beat they didn't say a word.

"I followed him out of the small town we lived in deep into the mountains. It was long cold and scary to me at the time, but I ventured forth to catch up with him. Back then i was tiny and had little physical strength. It was difficult but I eventually caught up with him, but when I got there..."

She trailed off looking over to the trees like they held some ancient secret that only she could understand. The girls looked over, but saw nothing. They turned their attention back to Trixie wondering when she was going to continue with her story. After sometime in silence Trixie took a deep breath and continued her story, steeling herself for what she had to say next.

"When I got there-" The fillies nearly jumped at the sound of the mares voice, after the long wait their tiny ears honed in on her like little radar dishes, listening. "He was hanging over a cliff under a large tree."

The girls furrowed their brows wondering what that meant, but Silver understood and gasped placing her tiny hooves over her mouth. "That's terrible! Why would he do that, and leave you?!" she yelled hugging her.

"What do ya'll mean Silver? Isn't he just hanging around under a tree?" She asked.

"Yeah, what's wrong with that?" Sweetie added not getting it either.

Silver Spoon facehooved growling, but Trixie gave them a kind smile. She patted the grey filly calming her before answering the other two.

"No girls. My father tried to hang himself."

"WHAT!?"
"WHAT?! WHY?!"

They both cried out together.

"He just... lost his way."

Seeing the two confused fillies she tried to think of a way to explain this to them. "He wasn't lost in a location sense. He was... He simply thought life wasn't worth living anymore. So, he tried to hang himself."

Sweetie Belle remained silent while Apple Bloom tried to comfort her by stroking her mane.

"So, what happened next miss, Trixie?" she asked.

"Well, that was when also I got inspiration for my ursa story. The story of how I slayed an ursa major." She took a moment to settle comfortably under the tree. The grass provided enough cushioning for her and Silver Spoon laid at her side. The other two sat across from them laying on their bellies.

"After following my father up the mountain I found him hanging by a noose. I remember panicking then." She conjured a little image of her as a filly with a large brown unicorn stallion hanging off the tree as she'd said. He swung back and forth struggling against his noose. "I got scared that he was hurt and went to go free him from his bind, but... I didn't know he'd chosen a spot next to a dire bears cave."

The image of herself with saddle bags ran up to assist her father pulling his ropes to free him. Then he suddenly started pointing behind her as a massive bear appeared behind the unaware image filly. It was like any other bear but it had long bony spikes all over its body and its eyes were red.

"I turned to see what my father was pointing at and that's when I saw a dire bear charging towards me. I got scared and froze with fear. I was sure I was going to die then and there. The beast raised it claw to strike me and I looked away, and in that moment I remembered something my mother taught me."

***Years ago***

Filly Trixie closed her eyes and concentrated as the dire bear swung its massive paw down but was stopped by a barrier that little Trixie had created. A pink wall blocked her front and the dire bears paw bounced right off harmlessly. But it would not relent. Swing after swing, the bear thrashed the wall Trixie winced like she was struck instead.

Behind her, her father, tried to fight hims binds but his consciousnesses was fading quickly. He watched as his daughter fight off the dire bear to protect him. How foolish he'd been. He'd hoped that his body would have been eaten by the dire bear that lived here and left no trace of him behind, now his daughter was here and he didn't want her to meet the same fate.

He gasped trying to loosen the rope with his hooves and wheezed out weakly, "Trixi-xie run..."

Not hearing him, she took a defiant step forward and put more power to her shield making the bear hurt its paw on the next strike.

"Hah! Take that you dumb bear!" the filly yelled triumphantly.

But it didn't last long, fir Trixie didn't know the difference between a dire beast or its regular counterparts. All she saw was a bear. The beast roared and swatted the shield once more shattering it with unholy strength sending Trixie flying back into the tree. She gasped for breath fighting back tears trying to get up.

She looked up to the dire bear and with all the strength she could muster, she summoned one more shield around her. The bear became angry that his prey didn't fall easily and began an relentless assault on Trixie's pink shield. That's when she noticed the bear was leaning forward with every strike. She looked over to the ledge which was nearby.

Slowly she inched over holding her shield watching the bear's movements drawing it closer to the edge with her. "Just a bit more..."

When she reached the edge the beast was now mindlessly attacking the shield with nothing but primal rage in its eyes giving no thought on what it was doing. She thought of an illusion trick her mother taught her some time ago, a way to make a copy of herself but to make is work she needed a distraction otherwise this would fail and she'd end up as bear food. Keeping her concentration on the bear and her shield, Trixie reached into her saddle bags and pulled out a small smoke bomb she'd made herself.

She then focused on the second spell. She wrapped her magic around her tiny body and focus on her shape and figure, slowly they began to split apart and at the pivotal moment when the two entities split, she threw the smoke bomb down and ran around the bear under the cover of the smoke from the bomb. The bear was so enraged by the distraction it never say into her deception. There standing in front of her in fear was the little filly shaking wide eyed at it.

The bear leapt towards her, but never found his target. He let out a roar as he fell forward but caught himself just as he went over the ledge. Thinking fast Trixie levitated a large boulder over the bear. Running on desperation and adrenaline she put out more mana into her magic than she'd ever done before. She placed the boulder over the bear and smashed it down over the beasts head, but its grip was true.

She lifted the boulder up and hit him with it again, and again, and again, and again, but his grip never faltered. The filly looked at the edge of the cliff where he lay gripping his face now bloodied and one eye was damaged so badly is was unable to open. She saw the ledge was cracking and about to give away. She then dropped the boulder onto the bear and focused on the cracks.

Slowly the bear recovered from his battering and inched off the cliff heading towards Trixie. She was sweating as she poured all she had into the cliff face. Her body glowed brightly as the bear reared up to deliver the final blow. Just the the cliff broke away falling from beneath him, and the bear roared falling to the bottom of the mountain.

Panting and exhausted, Trixie let herself fall to the ground from pure exhaustion. She glanced over to her sides seeing her cutie mark had appeared. She felt joy and pride in what she accomplished tonight, now she could share it with the most important pony in her life. "I- I did it... daddy.... huff I even got my cutie mark, huff... Daddy?"

She turned slowly to see her fathers limp body still hanging from the tree, he was never able to free himself. Struggling to stand up, Trixie forced herself to march on towards her father. When she reached him, she saw his eyes were still open but had a blank terrified look on them like he'd seen something awful. He swung slightly from the wind and Trixie pulled him back over and let him loose.

The body slowly laid on the stone cliff face. Trixie gently placed her father down as to not hurt the body.

"Daddy?" She walked over to nuzzle him but he gave no response. "Daddy? Come on. You gotta get up. Daddy? We got to go home, wake up... Daddy?"

She hopped off him and tugged on his ear with her mouth, pulling hard. "Dad? Dad?

Trixie had failed to save him. She realized now she had taken too long to fight the dire bear that she failed to do the one thing she'd meant to do. Save her father. Though very young, Trixie was very aware to the concept of death, but never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that she'd see her father die so tragically.

Eventually she tried to convince herself that he was joking with her and played on that.

"Daddy! This isn't funny anymore! Get up!" She cried kicking him gently in his side.

"Come on wake up! Why aren't you getting up!? DADDY!"

She continued to call out to him, begging him to get up and tried every annoying thing she could think of to get him to awaken. She didn't want to believe he was gone. She tried time after time to get him to move but only ended up pushing him closer to the ledge. She cried for over an hour calling to him and never got a response.

The night waned on, and little Trixie found herself beyond exhausted, her tears long gone. Freezing with no warmth she dragged her fathers body into the dire bears cave and huddled him into the corner.

After gathering enough wood to start a small fire she closed his eyes. She felt better seeing him like this. He looked so peaceful. She snuggled up to him placing his arm around her like he was holding her. It made her feel better, but only just slightly. She slowly succumbed to her exhaustion and slowly dozed off to the realm of dreams and nightmares.

***Present***

All three fillies stared slack jawed at Trixie's tale of how she'd gotten her cutie mark. It wasn't even a story of her cutie mark by this point. To her, it was a constant reminder of hard times and horrible mistakes on her part. things she would rather have forgotten. None of the girls said a word as she stood up shaking herself to get the excess dirt off her fur. The blue mare walked back hitching herself back to the cart the harness took a minute for her to get and once she'd completed the task she looked back to the fillies.

They hadn't moved from their spots. They sat where they were watching her like she was the oddest thing in the world. Sweetie Belle was in tears, Silver Spoon looked upset as did Apple Bloom.

"Come along little ones. We still have much to do before the days end." She said walking down the path back to the farm house.

The fillies eventually got up and followed Trixie keeping a certain distance from her along the way. Sweetie Belle looked back and forth to Silver and Apple Bloom.

"You know what?" She asked Silver Spoon.

"Hmm? What is it Sweetie Belle?"

The white unicorn filly sighed, looking at her blank flank then to Silver's cutie mark. "I don't care if I get my mark anymore. As long as I have my family, that'll be enough for me."

The other two nodded in agreement. Trixie all the while thought back to her time on the rock farm. There was once a time when she nearly followed in her fathers hoof steps and nearly took her life. Once again, she owed her life to Maud for talking her out of it.

Which brought her head back to her current dilemma, how to decide between two mares she loved so much and had done so much for her? Was it fair to them? No, it wasn't but she did love them both. Now she had to choose who's heart she was going to break. She only hoped that her letter would reach its destination soon and then maybe she'd get the answers she needed.