This forest will be the death of me; I have known that much from the start. I fled, not from my fight, but from myself. I came here first with ragged hooves and aching lungs, the bitter earthen tang of pyrotechnics still rich and choking in my throat.

To sleep, and know that all I own is little more than splintered wood. To live, and live free of vicious comfort, free of the soulless everyday existence that for so long held me back.

It is beautiful.

I could leave this forest, but I choose to stay. More than that; I chose to return. I know all too well that the value of art is measured in the artist’s blood, that no unspattered work will last long before shriveling beneath the public eye. However, I had no blood to spill; no soul to pour. I had no hurt inside to draw on, nothing but broken vanities and the dull-white ghosts of lost opportunity; a victim of a comfortable youth.

I had my masks; my lies and boasts, but lies never lie unmasked for long, and boasts ring hollow on all but the most gullible of ears. I had lived so long as a cheap conjuror in a world of magi, capable of illusions and fakery where those around me could split mountains.

I stay here because I can go on no longer.

I did not come here to find myself; I knew that I had no self to find. I came here to be created.

Perhaps one day I will earn my greatness. Perhaps, one day, I might speak of more than the meagre power that I hold.

Chapter One

The Escapist

It is strange how, eventually, even survival can become merely a routine.

Trixie’s eyes cracked open, her pupils made sensitive by the darkness of sleep, and momentarily blinded by the dappled, leaf-cut light. The air chilled her skin as it bit through the frost-blue fur; there could be no denying that the year was rolling onwards. Winter’s fist was closing.

She blearily shifted in place, and felt dead leaves crackle beneath her prone form. The leaves helped to shield her from the bare earth, but still did not do enough to protect her from the dozen aches that every night’s sleep seemed to bring.

“Rosemary…” the name tumbled from her lips, the errant product of a brain still half-asleep.

Edging out from under the makeshift blanket of rushes, the mare, who had once called herself a showmare, climbed to her hooves with a groan, shaking out the stiffness brought on by the biting cold and the hard ground. The winter sun was blinding, and the million sounds of the waking Everfree surrounded her. She tentatively passed a magical tendril over the calf of her left hind leg, ensuring that her reliable, weathered knife was still strapped firmly into place.

You were dreaming about her again, weren’t you?

She’s not easy to forget.

She’s gone, Trixie. Accept it.

Her journal lay open by the side of the rush-bed, one of the few items Trixie had brought into the Everfree with her. The book was ragged and stained now, and the pages crackled with age and wear when turned. It scarcely qualified as a journal; on reflection, it was more a morbid collection of autobiographical snippets and pretentious, self-absorbed reflections, comforting words scribbled in solitude to keep the dark of the night away.

However, it was somehow reassuring to know that, should the forest eventually claim her life, as it had tried to do on so many occasions, she would leave something behind. She would leave something that could be read in the all-too-faint chance that her remains were found by another pony; something that meant that somepony, at some time, might yet remember her name.

It would be easy to call this life an exile, but I prefer to think of it as an education.

Whatever it is, it most certainly is self-imposed. My caravan had been my home, but without it… well, without it, I could still have lived a comfortable life. A few thousand bits in a half-forgotten building society account, combined with the trust fund left by my grandfather, I’m the first to admit that life did not need to be difficult. I could even have started again. Had I felt the urge for more permanent accommodation, I don’t doubt for a second that my parents would have allowed me houseroom back in my native Trottingham, until I found my hooves again.

Trixie stumbled out of the makeshift shelter. The strands of willow above her head, woven to keep the rain out, bent a little as she brushed against them. It was one of the many things she had learned to make for herself during her stay here.

The clearing that had been the unicorn’s home for the last two weeks was much as it had been the previous night. A pile of ashes, contained within a loose circle of stones, marked the centre of the camp. A dented and much used cooking pot, which she had discovered half-buried in another clearing, perhaps a relic of a less fortunate resident who lived out their life beneath these dark, oppressive trees, stood on a rough stand above the heap of ashes. After the sun fell below the horizon, fire was the best chance at keeping the cold and the wildlife away. Even so, the animals would not always stay away, and she had been forced to become accustomed to relocating on a regular basis.

A comfortable escape back to an ordinary life… it was not a course I ever considered. The prospect of such normalcy stuck in my throat. To tell the truth, the exposure of my act for what it was had caused it to shatter beyond any chance of repair, and had broken my mask once and for all. I had no way of hiding from myself. I had never felt more lost than when, sobbing, I ran to lose myself in the Everfree on that first night.

But… in hindsight, they did me a favour. In hindsight, those were the worst times, those times when I fell so deep into the act that I began to believe it. To believe that what I did was anything more than tawdry and worthless. In the end, I found Twilight Sparkle to be a name worthy of my gratitude and respect, not my hatred or jealousy.

Stretching her neck out, the sapphire mare could feel the dusty crack of the dirt which matted her mane and fur. Forcing herself into awareness, she trotted away from the makeshift camp, deciding through force of habit to follow the sound of water splashing over rocks. The gentle tinkling reminded her of her early-morning thirst.

In the beginning, I had no wish to remain in the dank, gloomy forest. I left the Everfree and went out into the world. For a time, I tried to lose myself in the age-old pretension of the wanderer, heading northwards out of the forest to Canterlot, taking out a little money here and there to see me through. I had wandered the streets of Las Pegasus, straying north into the mountain ranges, near the border of the Griffon Territories. I had crossed the unending desert plains; I even ran with the nomadic buffalo for a few wearisome months.

After a short walk, edging from tree to tree and dodging around patches of leaves in a well practiced technique to minimize any attention that she drew, Trixie arrived at one of the Everfree’s treasures.

A glimmering pool, cut into a basin of stone by the unerringly gentle caress of water for uncountable years, stood before her. It was fed by a small waterfall, and two trickling streams flowed away from where the liquid overran the sides of its bowl, serving to keep the water pure and fresh, unlike the other stagnant, dank ponds which dotted this forest. It was the perfect depth for a pony to submerge herself up to the shoulders.

After the local wolves had begun encroaching too closely upon the cave in which she had spent much of the autumn, she had known it was time to take what little she owned, and make a new home elsewhere. This little oasis was the reason she had chosen to make her most recent camp here.

But this place… This forest exerted a pull over me, no matter how far I fled its clutches. This was not where my troubles had begun, but it was where I had, for the first time, seen them with true clarity. I might have called it a dark night of the soul, were I of a spiritual mind.

In the end, I could resist no longer. I put away my money, left behind my wanderings, and returned that spring to the Everfree’s embrace. I knew at the time that it was likely suicide, and yet even now, with December drawing down its blinds, with my scars and pains and hunger, somehow I live on.

With a sigh, she stepped forward into the pool, and sank down into the crystal-clear water, plunging her head beneath the flow of the fall. The water was cold, but that was something to which the unicorn had become accustomed over time. Now, it barely drew a gasp from her lips, and the sensation of the encrusted dirt sloughing from her coat and mane made the icy chill utterly worthwhile.

Humming with a quiet, simplistic pleasure, Trixie dipped her head beneath the surface for the briefest of moments, her mane clouding around her eyes like shimmering, silver-blue waterweed.

As she broke the surface again, and lay back against the rocks of the pool, she wondered what was to become of her. Her immediate survival was becoming more and more of a pressing issue. Winter was well on its way, and food was growing extremely scarce. Only the toughest of berries and roots were still growing in the hard ground. She had stores for maybe three or four more days, but her rations were becoming ever more meagre. The cold was getting worse too; soon the snows would come, and Trixie had to admit that she had no idea what she would do then.

She closed her eyes, feeling the crushing grip of perspective tightening around her again. She realized this was not something from which she could escape. It was not a fact that she could hide away from; she could not hide herself any more thoroughly than she had already done.

In truth, the forest’s peculiar hold over her had weakened as of late. Life here had always been difficult, but the hardship had always felt compensated for by the solitude and experience it gave. However, it now felt as if the forest had given her all it could offer, and her retreat was rapidly becoming her cage.

This is insanity, Trixie, and you know it. You need to leave. What are you trying to prove?

I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m trying to live.

In truth, try as she might, Trixie could not fully say why she had returned to the Everfree. She had, in her life, heard of ponies who had chosen to live in the wilds, but their reasons had always been quite self-evident. They had wished to become closer to nature, or to live as hermits, far from society. Some had wanted to leave behind material possessions, and some had simply wished to challenge their own wits and instincts.

Trixie, on the other hand, had no true understanding of why she chose to live this hard, dangerous life. She had written a hundred airy, florid excuses into her journal, and many of these encroached onto the truth without quite breaching its insubstantial lining. Yet, none of them quite resolved the matter. She could not justly call herself happy or fulfilled here, but then again, comfort was something she had always railed against. The idea of normality terrified her. Maybe she really had come here to be forged anew, to build a personality and a body of experience to replace the Great and Powerful Trixie, who she knew lay broken and dead in Ponyville square. That piece of her life was far beyond salvaging.

She had grown up in a quiet, comfortable house within the suburbs of Trottingham. Her parents were not rich, but they had always been able to give her more than enough to satisfy her needs as a foal; perhaps even spoil her a little. Throughout her adolescence, she never knew want, hunger, loss or genuine fear. She had weathered the thousand petty little grievances that came with every average foalhood, but none of these had ever truly amounted to hardship. Her life had been easy; she had felt superficially happy, yet utterly empty. It was not a life to which she ever wanted to return.

Snorting with sudden anger, she hauled her body out of the pool and shook herself dry, sending a misty rainbow spray of water arcing up into the weak, dappled winter sunlight. The air around her was cold, and her damp winter coat, though growing thicker, could not keep out the chill. Her stomach rumbled warningly, and she sighed. Although the fur of her coat made her appear well-fed, in truth she was becoming emaciated and she would often go to sleep hungry.

“You need to make a decision,” she told herself in a low voice. “Starving to death won’t make you any stronger. You need to get out of here and get your head straight, Trixie.”

Edging slowly between the trees, she made her way back to her makeshift camp. The only nearby town was Ponyville; any longer journey would require food supplies that she did not have. She had no money, and her years on the road had taught her to never count on the kindness of strangers. Yet, although Ponyville was where she could get the food she needed, she had no great wish to return to the town. It had been the town where her act was finally broken, and aside from the memories of the place, she knew that she could not go unrecognized there for long. She understood now that she owed Twilight Sparkle, and those two young fools, a debt of thanks for pulling her out of the crippling downward spiral that her life had become. Yet, she doubted that the citizens of Ponyville would be the least bit welcoming to her now.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that if she returned to the town, it would be to steal food before sloping unseen back to the forest. She knew that she could rightfully expect no charity from a town upon which her boasts had brought down a monster, and she had no hope of anonymity. Small towns had keen eyes and long memories; she knew that all too well.

However, to be caught stealing on top of all she had already done would surely be the final straw for the townsponies. Horrible visions of pitchforks and lynchings flashed before her eyes, and once again she cursed her inexplicable attraction to this forest for getting her into this mess.

Collapsing down on her blanket of reeds with a groan, her composition and hard-won survivalist’s strength suddenly crumbled away to nothing, and she began to cry silently.

These mood swings were another fact of life that she had been forced to grow accustomed to lately. Barely ten minutes ago, she had felt quite contented with her lot, too engrossed in the rituals of checking her camp and bathing to contemplate the reality of her situation. But now, the tears no longer surprised her. It did not take much to make the blackness descend on her fragile psyche these days.

Truth be told, it was the first time she had really stopped to think about the encroaching winter, and now that she was, she realized that she had never been in a more dire situation. She was trapped in an inhospitable forest, facing starvation, and the only place she could escape to was a town that would probably, and quite rightly, be equally inhospitable. Sadly, it was a dose of perspective that had come far too late.

You stupid bucking fool, Trixie. Your life’s just been one pretence after another, hasn’t it? An empty, mollycoddled foalhood, all those years trying to pretend that a taste for the theatrical equaled magical ability, all the hidden jealousy, all that time you tried to convince yourself you were great and powerful. But it was never really you, was it?

Maybe that was why you could never call yourself “I” when you were on stage. The Great and Powerful Trixie was never really you; she was somepony you created to hide your own inadequacies, and you knew it. Even towards the end, even when you actually started believing in your own boasts, you knew it could never last. And look at you now.

Her thoughts were full of self-disgust.

Just look at you now. When your mask broke in Ponyville, it didn’t leave you with nothing. It did more than that; it showed you that you had nothing all along. So you can tell yourself that you came back here to make the soul you never had by facing hardships, but that’s not true, is it? You came here to hide away from yourself, and forget that you ever wanted to be more. You wanted to forget your ‘greatness’, and forget your ‘power’, forget that you’d ever deluded yourself that you might amount to more than the average pony.

Deep down, you wanted to die here, quietly, and be forgotten, be buried by the trees and the leaves and the snow, and end a life of smoke and mirrors with one last vanishing act.

All was silent. Even the wind had fallen still, as if holding its breath.

Tell me, Trixie. Have you ever done anything you’re proud of? Have you ever done anything in your life that you can look back on, and feel that it was worthwhile?

Her eyes flickered open. Somehow, inexplicably, the thought gave her a weak surge of hope.

Once, she thought to herself, simply. I did once. Then she stood, forcing back the weakness, the self-loathing, and the anger. This, she decided, was not going to be the end of her.

A plan began to form in her mind, forcing back the clouds of crushing depression. She had outstayed her welcome here. It was time to go.

I’ll start stockpiling as much food as I can, from Ponyville if need be. There are bound to be unattended vegetable gardens and stores. I’ll stock up, and head out for Trottingham.

What’s this? Another ‘new life’? Are you going to ‘start over’ again? This pattern seems all too familiar. The nagging voice in the back of her mind was as cynical as ever.

I don’t know what I’ll do, she thought, curtly.She looked around at the forest, and shivered. I’ve wasted a year of my life in this place. I don’t need to be great, I don’t need to be able to perform incredible feats of magic. I don’t need to build a new persona for myself. Because now I’ve seen enough of the world; I’ve gathered up and lived all of my precious experiences and hardships. Maybe I can move on from all of that.

She felt a little better now that she had formed a plan, even one so tenuous that it relied on simple hope and petty theft. For the moment, it was enough to keep her going and stem off her tears. She had time. She had enough food stored to stay alive for the immediate future; a stack of oyster mushrooms, dandelions and even some hardier crab apples that had survived into the winter. If she came across some kind of windfall to set her up for the journey to Trottingham, she might not even have to resort to stealing.

With renewed energy, Trixie stood, and began to sweep aside the ashes of last night’s fire, a small smile on her lips.

Maybe she would never have to see that town again after all, assuming nothing went wrong.

Of course, simplicity is a rare and precious thing.

“Bastards!”

It was two days later, and everything had gone wrong. The angry, despairing cry cut through the air of the chill winter’s morning. A flock of birds took flight at the sudden sound and rose, screeching and clattering, into the sky above the forest. It really was remarkable how even the flimsiest, vaguest of plans could collapse so easily and with such devastating consequences.

Several crisp, clear inches of snow lay upon the ground now, but that was not the only source of Trixie’s infuriation as she stood, snorting, ankle-deep in the chill whiteness, looking around for the horrible little thieves. She picked up a stone with her magic, and sent it shooting after what she imagined to be a flash of grey between the trees, but it was more a petulant, futile gesture than any meaningful attempt to recover what she had lost.

It had not been a pleasant morning. The entirety of the previous day had been spent fruitlessly combing the nearby forest for food, a search which yielded nothing but a few icy roots, scarcely enough for a single meal. To make matters worse, the exhausted and irritable Trixie had been rudely awoken by half of her makeshift willow shelter collapsing on top of her under the sudden weight of snow.

With teeth chattering and a murderous gleam in her eyes, she dragged herself out from beneath the mass of snow and sticks. Turning to reach for the damp, icy journal that still lay under what was left of her shelter, she came face-to-face with an exceptionally guilty-looking rabbit. The rabbit wiggled his nose insolently at Trixie, and fled away into the shadowy trees.

If the tracks covering the fresh snow were anything to go by, this was only one of many that had visited during the night.

It was easy to see the source of its guilt; every last scrap of Trixie’s food was gone, but for a few crabapples that lay pathetically ignored within the half-covered pit in which she stored her food supplies.

Rabbits. Trixie could have dealt with being defeated by some worthy foe, perhaps a dragon or an ursa, (neither of which she had, thankfully, encountered thus far during her time in the forest) but to be scuppered so thoroughly by rabbits, of all things, was simply an indignity.

The unicorn collapsed to the snowy ground, mind numb. Her anger morphed swiftly into resignation. This was it; the combination of the sudden snow and the loss of her food presented her with a stark choice: Steal food and try to live through the winter in the forest, or die of starvation and exposure. Hot tears rose in her eyes again, but she blinked them back. There was no time for weakness now.

Even if she took the time to stockpile food at this point, the weather was so bad that any chance of attempting a long trek to Trottingham or Canterlot was utterly quashed. At least here she had some semblance of shelter and would most likely avoid freezing to death. Whether she liked it or not, for the time being, the forest would still be still her home.

She knew one thing about herself, though. Trixie was, as of today, no longer a mare who made plans; her every failure in life had seemed to stem from an irreverent need to reinvent herself. The cosseted youth, then the showpony’s life, then the traveler’s life, and finally the exile’s life. Now, she supposed, she was sliding swiftly from exile to full-blown criminal, a descent that fitted all too depressingly well into the pattern of her life. Every reinvention, every ‘new life’ she had chosen had ultimately greeted her with the exact same nagging sense of incompleteness, and each one had, in the end, made her life a little worse.

The truth was, she no longer knew what she wanted, she was no longer even capable of analyzing her own motives in life. Every self-contradictory explanation for her actions plunged her a little deeper, made her trust herself a little less. Maybe, she reflected, there was no explanation. Maybe she was simply a loose cannon by now, capable only of ricocheting from place to place, from life to life, on the back of meaningless whims as her mind gradually unraveled.

Maybe she would think about all this one day. Perhaps when the winter passed, she would head into Trottingham, extract her savings, and try her best to find a therapist who liked a challenge. She had told herself a million times over the years that she could not go on like this, but she had never seen quite so clearly, as she did now, just how true that was, mentally and physically. For the moment, though, the greatest issue was food.

Her stomach grumbled, and she sighed. “Well,” she muttered to herself, looking balefully between the trees in the direction of the trail she knew led to Ponyville. A twinge of guilt and fear contracted sharply in her chest. “No time like the present.”