Euphoria, Robbed
Chapter 1: Living a Different Life
'Ooh, one more. I can turn a mare into a stallion.'
Twilight Sparkle would never know just how much those words meant. She would have no idea why those words be the one to drive Trixie to snatch the false amulet of power from around Twilight Sparkle's neck. Trixie did not want to be young. She had no need to play ten instruments at once - and to be fair, magic could cultivate those skills with practice. Trixie did not need to be old or wise.
But Trixie could say she wanted to rule Equestria. Every little princess rules Equestria, or so Trixie was told for years. Every variation of princess-y things was told to Trixie when she was younger, and being a princess was a good excuse as any. Corruption had known that too, known what 'princess' meant to Trixie Lulamoon.
Twilight Sparkle would not ever need to know that either.
...
Twilight Sparkle got to be born perfect. Trixie Lulamoon knew this because she paid attention to the papers more than most ponies after Twilight's rushed coronation. In fact, Trixie even knew that Twilight Sparkle's coronation was a rush because she had been a little filly when Princess Mi Amore Cadenza was announced. She had not even been a princess first; Trixie was able to remember when Princess Mi Amore Cadenza was given her coronation because it was after she had been in Canterlot for some time first.
The pictures published in Canterlot's newspapers became a ripple effect of a plague. Every other paper in Equestria wanted to republish them. A smiling little unicorn filly not-quite swaddled in pink was nothing worthy of national attention. However, the image right next to it was garnering an uproar of excitement and shock of every kind. Ponies did not just grow wings, horns, or whatever produced a lesser alicorn. Trixie certainly would not know how that Sparkle had done things.
So many whispers called it an effortless transformation, and that was a thorn in Trixie's heart. An effortless transformation? She had to show how little that bothered her. All Twilight Sparkle had done was get taller and nerdier. Trixie had to hear about how she was swaddled in blue as a baby because it was her favorite color every time she went home for visits. That was how they explained it.
The gown Twilight Sparkle wore had too long of a train. It even made her look fat. When Princess Mi Amore Cadenza had her coronation, there was a royalty approved line of dresses. Each was made to look just like the one the younger princess wore, and filly's boutiques across Equestria stocked them. Yes, they had paste instead of many of the more expensive stones and things the original had.
None of that stopped Trixie from splurging all of her allowance and birthday money on one. What had stopped was some of Trixie's caution; she was barely old enough to start school and excited. She had no idea that her parents would catch her in a too-big dress. Or the amount of questions they had.
In the end, they still loved Trixie and promised to always love her forever and ever. No matter what Trixie did. That was the start of when Trixie began to feel halfway okay with things for the first time, and the few gray years she had before as the start of her life became something else nopony ever had to know about.
How could Twilight Sparkle feel like she was a whole new mare when all she got was a pair of new wings? Did she not realize how lucky she was?
...
Trixie Lulamoon never expected a doctor to give her a name for why she was afraid of mirrors. Of course, Trixie always knew kind of why she loathed them so, mirrors were nasty liars. Her cheekbones could not be so big, so rough. Nor could Trixie's jaw show so much of a shadow of her father's at her age. What was less expected was why that name was the same name for why Trixie was afraid to use the same restroom as the other little fillies at her school - what if somepony thought she was using it wrong?
Twilight Sparkle never had to worry about something like that. She would never have to look at her father and fear that his appearance was a terrifying omen of what her future could be, and then consider if she should hate herself for thinking something like that. Twilight Sparkle got to want to be at every one of her birthdays and would not try to live in a school uniform with a long checkered skirt for days at a time, if she ever even had a uniform. Trixie would have died of embarrassment without one, and then begged the gods to at least make poor little Beatrice Lulamoon look pretty at her funeral and have something witty on her tombstone. All the greatest ponies had something witty on their tombstones.
...
When Twilight Sparkle looked in the mirror, what would she see? Did she get a good look at her dorky billboard bangs first? Or, was she the kind of mare that needed to tame purple tangles with a brush first? Personally, Trixie thought that Twilight Sparkle woke up with beastly, ugly purple knots and the stinkiest morning breath in the whole world. The first thing she saw were probably her huge wings that her dragon servant had to crank down into place with some stupid secret princess compartment hidden in her ugly flank.
Everything about Twilight Sparkle was tiny and frustratingly toy-like. She was round and purple all over like the perfect little filly's doll, except for that she was Twilight Sparkle, and Twilight Sparkle could not be perfect. Trixie would not be surprised if the coronation of a second little alicorn would mean that she would have to start seeing dolls in Twilight Sparkle's likeness stocked in stores all across Equestria. When Princess Mi Amore Cadenza had her coronation and pink imaged drained to black and white by every newspaper image of her plastered everywhere in the following week, she had no idea what she had been getting into. Princess Celestia had encouraged her to allow other things than newspaper stories to be given to the wider public, and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza paper dolls had reached toy stores.
Trixie remembered having one. It was one of the first few birthday presents she really remembered liking, and she took great care in dressing up the doll in as many dainty, fun clothes combos and making the little paper limbs dance gleefully with a variety of fun magic tricks. There were still some mildly embarrassing pictures her parents made the family photographer take that showed a little filly holding up the doll excitedly, beaming with her braces bared.
Trixie used to spend hours staring at dolls, looking at the pretty things they got to wear as inspiration for things she wanted from her parents. There were no other siblings to rudely usurp attention from Trixie, who could concede that she was well-adored and spoiled. She loved their features, from their soft eyelashes, to their thin legs, and everything that was just off in young Trixie, before she was allowed to have the medicine that would make her better...
...and the surgeries. Magic was a major part of the process in everything she went through, but spells only did so much, and there was magic in medicines too. Her bones could be convinced, however painstakingly to grow a different way, but they still needed to be exposed for the process and halted from growing in all the wrong ways for some time first. Nopony would let a young filly have surgeries like that until she was old enough, and that meant Trixie was stuck with a waiting game and the first few years of pills and pretty things that were admittedly more on the mundane than magical side.
Most mornings, Trixie was fine with mirrors. Nowadays, she had little reason to loathe them. Some days, she even loved them when they were kind enough to show the best, most Trixie-ish Trixie that Trixie could be. But there were still days when Trixie still looked in the mirror and saw every part of her wrong template that she had started from, the stallion that could have drowned out the mare, and all that had been taken away to make the mare she was now. And nopony knew just how much that hurt. To know the almosts, the would-haves, and the might-have-beens that were just a few bits of bone this and Trixie-and-gods-both-dread-that to make a world of difference.
Nevertheless, Trixie Lulamoon still would sometimes have a dream where she could stare down at herself and all over without needing to look so long, with memory supplementing everything that had once been, and everything in between. If any amulet in the world could have taken all those feelings and processes from never being, making the outer Trixie match the inner Trixie she had been born from the very beginning, then who knows just what she would have done.
Author's Notes:
Not sure how much of a content warning gender dysphoria on its own warrants, but if someone thinks I should have added one somewhere lemme know.
And, uh, for anyone wants something that's not Trixie being sad and trans, there's this story where Trixie is happy and trans.
Here it is again, but linked fancier because the link blends in with the text above.