Chapter Nine

The Cracks in the Surface

The evening was beginning to wear on, and the chilly, primrose pegasus let out a sigh of relief as the library door swung shut behind her.

“Twilight?” Fluttershy called out as she wiped her hooves on the welcome mat, feeling the warmth of the recently lit fire wash pleasantly over her. She knew perfectly well that it was a public library, but she always felt more than a little uncomfortable about entering a friend’s home unannounced.

The purple unicorn was facing away from her, compulsively re-shelving books with the air of a pony trying to distract herself. She looked deeply concerned about something as she turned to face Fluttershy. Pushing a magically-clutched book back onto the shelf at random, she did her best to smile. “Hey, Fluttershy.”

Without the mental occupation of her books, Twilight seemed to slump a little, as if only the momentum of her chores had been keeping her upright.

“I just came over to—” Fluttershy’s voice broke off in concern. “Twilight, are you okay?”

The unicorn bit her lip, and sniffed loudly. “It’s… it’s Spike,” she replied, her voice a little shaky.

Fluttershy’s eyes widened a little. “What’s wrong?” The words came out high-pitched and fearful.

“Don’t worry, he’s okay,” Twilight clarified, hastily. She motioned for Fluttershy to sit down on the frayed old sofa. The canary pegasus obeyed, and Twilight followed suit, sinking down to sit beside her. “It’s just… well, he’s a dragon. They normally live around volcanoes; they thrive in the heat. The winters aren’t exactly kind to him here, and he always gets a cold.” She shook her head. “This year was just worse than most; yesterday it developed into a full-blown dose of flu. Dragon-flu’s horrible; it kills their fire, and without it… well, they’re technically cold-blooded, aren’t they? They start to freeze.

“He couldn’t so much as make a spark, and I couldn’t do a single thing for him. Neither could the hospital; they’d never even as seen a dragon before. In the end, I asked the Princess to take him back to Canterlot for a while, so he’ll be able to recover. She raised him after he hatched; I know I can trust her to look after him better than I can. She took him away this morning.” She heaved a deep sigh, and Fluttershy noticed the deep bags under her eyes.

“Twilight, I’m so sorry,” Fluttershy whispered. She could hardly have helped; she knew no more about dragon physiology than the ponies at the hospital, but could not help but feel guilty that she had been too busy with Trixie to realize that such a crisis was occurring amongst her other friends. “Thank Celestia he’s alright.”

Twilight nodded, fervently. “I know… he’ll probably have to stay there until the spring, to convalesce.” She half-smiled, despite the fact that she was obviously drained with worry. “I guess it’ll be nice for him to see his old room again. The Princess always loved having him around, back when we both lived in the castle. I… I know he’s in safe hooves, at least.” She looked around at the book-lined walls, a little wistfully. “I’ve promised I’ll visit him at weekends, it’s just… well, the place just seems so empty without him.”

Fluttershy gave a sympathetic sigh. “Do the others know?”

“Rarity helped me pack his things and wave him off, but I don’t know about the rest of the girls.” She giggled, quietly. “Seeing Rarity cheered him up a bit, like you’d expect. You know how she fusses over him.”

Fluttershy smiled, but tutted quietly nevertheless. “She’s going to give him the wrong idea, poor thing.”

The unicorn shrugged. “I don’t think he really believes she’s interested in him; not in that way, anyway. He’s happy if she just pays attention to him, and she finds him so adorable that she does that in spades.” She shook her head amusedly, turning to Fluttershy. “Anyway, he’s safe now. From Rarity and the winter. What’s up?”

The pegasus chewed on her bottom lip. “Twilight… you know I told you a couple of days ago that Trixie had been sneaking around in my garden?”

There was no doubt about it; at the mention of the sapphire mare’s name, Twilight’s ear definitely twitched, flattening itself down against the top of her head. The unicorn gave a quick, nervous grin that was obviously intended to be quite nonchalant, but came across as anything but. “Mhm?”

“Umm…” Fluttershy’s voice trailed off at her friend’s odd behaviour, and a sudden sense of foreboding arose in the pit of her stomach. She was suddenly not entirely convinced that it was a good idea to tell Twilight the truth of what had happened. What if she was afraid of Trixie? Or hostile, and bent on revenge for the Ursa Minor incident?

Don’t be stupid. She’s probably just worried for your sake. Yes, she can be a bit obsessive sometimes, but she’s not a vengeful pony. Besides, she’s your friend; she deserves to know the truth.

“Well,” she began, “yesterday morning, I was at Applejack’s farm, and…”

As the minutes ticked by, and the fire began to gutter, Twilight sat and listened attentively to Fluttershy’s story. She did not interrupt, but she winced upon hearing about Trixie’s unwitting attack upon her timid friend, eyes darting to the scabbed-over wound on Fluttershy’s temple. At the news that Trixie was now staying at the pegasus’s house, she made an involuntary move forwards in her chair, eyes widening with an emotion that Fluttershy could not place.

The pegasus told Twilight the story of Trixie’s past, and the mystery of her talent. However, she left out their time together on the hilltop, and most certainly left out the heated squirms that churned in the pit of her stomach whenever the sapphire mare touched her, or murmured private, trusting words in her ear.

“…So, she said it was alright if I came to you,” Fluttershy concluded, helplessly. “I mean… I don’t know anything about cutie marks. I always thought they appeared once a pony realized their talent.”

For a few moments, Twilight was silent. Fluttershy expected her to address the matter of Trixie’s talent, but when she finally spoke, it was to voice an entirely different question. “So… you’re taking care of Trixie over the winter?”

Fluttershy nodded, taken aback. “Until she gets back on her hooves, at any rate.” She shrugged. “I think she’s past her travelling days. Maybe she’ll come to live in Ponyville permanently; I mean, she really is different now.”

“Yeah.” Twilight leaned forward in her seat, her brow creased with what looked bizarrely like worry. “Yeah, she… she sounds different.” Then, she shook her head, as if attempting to disabuse herself of some foolish idea. “Who knows?” she muttered, under her breath.

“Twilight…” Fluttershy met her friend’s gaze, tentatively. “Is everything okay? I mean, apart from the worry over Spike, obviously.”

“Oh… yes, I’m fine.” The unicorn’s cheeks coloured ever-so-slightly, and she looked almost fearful. Her left ear flicked compulsively upright. “I just can’t believe she’s changed so much.” She was obviously doing her best to appear pleased at the news, although she was chewing her lower lip as if stirring herself from a train of thought she hoped to avoid. “Anyway, you wanted to know about cutie marks?”

“Yes,” Fluttershy replied, nodding, although she was a little unwilling to press on with a discussion that seemed to be eliciting ever stranger behaviour from her friend. “I… I thought it was all about realization. I thought that when a pony understood what their calling was, that was when the mark would appear.”

The unicorn looked thoughtful. “Actually, I don’t think that’s necessarily the case,” she said, her tone pensive. “It’s a combination of two things; firstly, a pony has to be emotionally mature enough to understand the significance and meaning of a cutie mark. If that’s the case, then the mark will appear when their talent is first exercised.” She smiled at Fluttershy’s confused expression. “Of course, normally, a pony will realize what their special talent is when they first exercise it; ordinarily, the circumstances make it obvious. I mean, say for instance that a foal tried their hoof at baking. If it turned out that baking was their special talent. It’d be more-or-less impossible for them to misinterpret what it meant when a loaf of bread appeared on their flank, and besides, it’d just feel right.”

Fluttershy sighed. “But what about Trixie? Are you saying that if a pony uses their talent without realizing it they can still get their mark?”

Twilight leaned back in her chair, an expression of quiet absorption on her face. Fluttershy was glad that Twilight’s earlier, worrying twitches had dissipated, and with her focus on the problem at hand, there was no longer any hint of the faint psychological unraveling that had caused her so much trouble in the past. The pegasus reflected that her distractibility was, perhaps, fortunate.

“From what you’ve told me, it sounds like everything’s in place for Trixie except for the talent. She wanted to be a great magician, she put on a magic show at school, and was given an obviously-magical cutie mark as a result. Naturally, her talent should be magic or at least related to it, but… well, you’re right. From what I saw, she’s no more magical than any other unicorn. Everything points to a magical talent, except for… well, except for the talent.”

Fluttershy nodded. “That’s what’s so confusing.” Her eyes widened as another thought occurred to her. “Oh, by the way, Twilight, can special talents be hereditary?”

Her friend brightened a little at the prospect of a question that she could easily answer. “They can be,” she explained, “but they don’t need to be. I mean, Rarity’s mother was a costume designer for the Canterlot Playhouse, years ago, so you can see how that’s been passed down… but on the other hoof, look at Pinkie Pie. Four generations of rock farming, and then… well, look at her.”

The pegasus smiled. “That’s what I said to Trixie,” she remarked. Then, she bit her lip, a little worried at how much of a dead end they had struck. “So, you’ve got no idea what might explain Trixie’s mark?”

The unicorn shook her head. “I honestly don’t know what to tell you, Fluttershy; I never studied cutie mark theory in any great detail, I just learned the rudiments. Feel free to get some books out, though.” Her eyes suddenly widened slightly, and for an instant she looked almost calculating. “Can… can I meet her?” she asked, and although the words sounded quite innocent, an inkling of suspicion rose in the back of Fluttershy’s mind. “I mean, if I can talk to her, maybe I can get a clearer idea of—”

“Not yet,” Fluttershy cut firmly across her, unsure as to the source of her sudden bout of assertion. “She’s still very weak. She says she’d like to apologize to everypony and just do her best to reconcile, but she doesn’t feel up to it just yet.”

A flash of what could have been anger glinted momentarily in Twilight’s eyes, but once again it was gone so rapidly that it could just as easily have been a trick of the firelight. When she spoke again, her voice was calm and measured. “Well then, let’s try to find you a few books on the subject.”

She got to her hooves, trotting over to one of the room’s many bookshelves with a practiced certainty, and Fluttershy stood to trot along in her wake. The pegasus noticed that the circular table in the middle of the room was strewn with a sparse covering of magazine and newspaper cuttings. Pausing, as Twilight began perusing the shelf, Fluttershy glanced surreptitiously down at the table.

With a small and insuppressible gasp of surprise, she realized that all of the clippings pertained to a single mare. The Great and Powerful Trixie’s face was sneering up at her from almost every scrap of paper. Some were scathing reviews of her shows cut from local magazines, whilst others mentioned the mare only in passing for one petty reason or another. Most, however, were glossy-magazine speculations as to why the showmare had retreated into obscurity a year previously.

At a glance, they seemed for the most part to be idle, speculative gossip. Few made any mention of Ponyville, and only one mentioned the involvement of a monster, although it appeared under the impression that the creature was a hydra, and that Trixie had been killed in the struggle. The town’s absence was not a surprise, considering that Trixie had wandered the world for almost another year before returning to the Everfree. One cutting seemed convinced that Trixie had been forced into hiding by the unearthing of her links to a widespread kidney harvesting scam, and yet another opined that the showmare had changed her identity entirely, and was now making a comfortable living as a fortune teller in Las Pegasus, well away from the public eye.

All in all, Fluttershy could hardly see why Twilight had gone to the trouble of collecting such dross, but she reflected that Trixie had never exactly been famous, and that it would be highly unlikely to find her as the subject of any serious piece of journalism.

“You’ve been busy,” Fluttershy remarked, gesturing down at the cuttings.

Twilight turned, three books magically hovering around her head, and nodded. “I’ve kept an eye out these last two years, but this is all I’ve been able to find. To tell the truth, I’d almost given up. I only got this stuff out again now because she’d turned up again, and I had to see if I’d missed anything.” She let out a low groan. “I just wanted to know that she wasn’t dead; I’d have felt completely responsible.”

Fluttershy gave her a searching look. “Well, she isn’t dead,” she replied, reassuringly. “If you want to know what happened over those two years, then I’m sure you can ask her yourself, as soon as she’s ready. I’ve… I’ve not gone into detail with her about it.” She pawed at the floorboards, breaking eye contact. “I don’t think they were good years.”

The unicorn nodded, suddenly eyeing her friend a little suspiciously, the three weighty volumes still orbiting her head. “Are you sure it’s healthy for you to keep her shut up like this?”

Fluttershy felt a stab of annoyance at the question. “What do you mean by that?” Had she not been of such a timid disposition, the words would doubtless have sounded hostile. “I… I mean, we spent most of this afternoon taking a walk together, and considering how cold it is, I don’t think too much time outside would do her any good at all. She’s still very weak.”

“So you keep telling me,” Twilight raised an eyebrow, her tone slightly disbelieving. “Why aren’t you letting anypony visit her?”

Fluttershy was extremely taken aback by this sudden aggression, and infuriated at being all but accused of lying about Trixie’s health, but a combination of shyness and patience kept her voice from rising. “I’ve told you,” she explained doggedly, through gritted teeth. “I’m not keeping her from seeing anypony. If she told me she wanted to make a speech to the entire town tomorrow, then I’d be more than happy to help her with her notes. The only reason I’m not letting anypony see her is because she doesn’t want to be seen yet.”

She sighed, hoping that Twilight would get the message. “She knows that she owes us all an apology, but to tell the truth, I think she’s a little afraid that everypony will… I don’t know, run her out of town, or at least give her a hard time about it. She wants to meet you, and the others, but she needs to be a little stronger first because, let’s face it, some ponies like Rainbow Dash might be kind of a hard sell. You do understand, Twilight, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Twilight replied. Her tone was conciliatory, but she avoided Fluttershy’s eyes. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Fluttershy smiled at her, although she was still a little worried by her friend’s bizarre and hostile behaviour. Twilight dropped the books onto the table, and Fluttershy looked down at the covers. The book atop the pile was heavy and leather-bound, entitled ‘Making a Mark: A Study Into Equine Aptitude Determinism’.

The pegasus slipped them carefully into her saddlebags, fully expecting the books to be nigh-indecipherable, and most likely of no help whatsoever. At that moment, however, she would take whatever she could get. “I’d better be getting back now. Thanks for the books, Twilight.” She turned to leave the library. “Give my love to Spike when you visit,” she called back over her shoulder. “I hope he’s okay.”

“Fluttershy?” The pegasus halted, turning back to face Twilight. The lavender mare met her gaze, looking a little shamefaced. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she sounded sincere. “I’m just on edge about Spike, and everything…” She sighed. “I’ll be alright.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Fluttershy replied, quietly, trotting back over to her friend. “But…” she paused, but could not let it go; it needed to be said. “Is there something else going on? I mean, whenever I mention Trixie, you just…” Her voice was almost inaudible by now; she needed to confront her concerns head-on. “Twilight, you don’t want revenge, do you?”

The unicorn’s mouth had fallen open a little, and her eyes were wide. “Revenge?” she barely mouthed the word. For a few long moments, she was silent. “Why would I want revenge?”

Fluttershy felt the colour rise in her cheeks. “I… I just thought, maybe… I mean, she nearly did so much damage…”

“I don’t want revenge,” Twilight stated, a little coolly. “If she really is as different as you say, then I… I’m not sure I know what I want anymore.”

“Twilight, what do you mean?” asked the pegasus, a little exasperated, and more than a little concerned. “What did you want, then?”

“I… I want…” Twilight’s voice trailed off. “I want to think,” she muttered at length, turning away.

Fluttershy took the hint. She could not fathom why Trixie’s presence in the town engendered this morose, impulsive attitude in the librarian. The pegasus had seen that look in Twilight’s eyes before, but this time, there was no Spike to summon the princess, should things spiral out of control. She wanted to stay and talk to Twilight, but she did not want to force her presence onto her friend if she was not wanted, and in truth, the unicorn was beginning to scare her a little.

Don’t be a stranger, Twilight.

As she turned to leave, she felt as if she were weighed down by far more than the books in her saddlebag.

The cottage’s windows were an impenetrable, wintry black; the three weighty tomes were stacked on the coffee table, and two tired mares reclined beneath a blanket on the soft sofa. Fluttershy had been pleasantly surprised to find that Trixie, presumably drawing on skills developed in the Everfree, had built an immaculate fire in her absence, and the room was filled with a wonderful, soporific warmth. Two empty cocoa mugs and a half-finished game of draughts stood beside the books. The air was full of the soothing smells of the chocolate and the fire.

“This is my fault.”

Fluttershy looked up at Trixie’s words. She had just finished describing Twilight’s strange behaviour at the library, and the sapphire mare had lapsed into a long silence, which she had only now broken.

“She’s afraid for you,” Trixie continued. Her lower lip was still covered by the protective gauze, rendering her words a little indistinct. “You told me she seemed disbelieving when you told her I’d changed… She thinks I’m using you.”

Fluttershy shook her head, meeting Trixie’s eyes firmly. “It wasn’t that,” she promised. “If anything, she blamed me. She seemed to think I was trying to…” She struggled to find the right words, feeling a hot flush creep up her neck. “…Trying to keep you all to myself, or something like that.”

“What?” Trixie’s eyebrows shot skywards. “But I’m the one who asked—”

“I know,” Fluttershy groaned. “I told her it was you who wanted to be left alone.” She sighed. Whatever Twilight’s problem was, it would surely pass. The unicorn had never coped well with change, and losing Spike combined with Trixie’s reappearance had probably thrown her ordered world far enough off its axis to render her uptight and irritable. It would doubtlessly pass, once she adjusted, as long as her friends made sure to visit her regularly, and do their best to curtail her loneliness.

Even so, Fluttershy’s stomach clenched with anger when she recalled Twilight’s passive-aggressive accusations, and the way she had so coldly dismissed one of her best friends. “Don’t blame yourself for this,” she said, still squarely meeting Trixie’s gaze. “It’s her problem.”

Trixie stared at her for a few moments, opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I don’t want to come between you and your friends,” she eventually said, in a quiet, meek voice.

Fluttershy smiled at her, the sudden spike of anger bubbling away. “You won’t,” she replied, reassuringly. “They’re better than that.” She glanced for a moment out of the gloss-black window pane, watching the night press in on them. “Anyway,” she added, “Twilight didn’t have much to tell me, apart from confirming a lot of what we thought already.”

The unicorn nodded. “She wasn’t a complete dead end, though. At least we know there’s nothing wrong with me; it is possible to earn a cutie mark without knowing what it’s for.”

“I’ll have a look through these books over the next few days,” Fluttershy promised. “I mean… I’m not sure how helpful they’ll be, to tell the truth. It’s not the mechanics of the mark that are the problem, it’s more like… the circumstances. What we really need is somepony else who’s had the same problem with their talent as you have, but as Twilight said, it’s not going to be a very common difficulty, is it? Talents usually make themselves pretty obvious.” She sighed, glancing over at the thick volumes. “There might be something in there, though, and if there’s a chance that it’ll help, it’s worthwhile.”

“Fluttershy…” Trixie was still looking at her, apparently trying to find the best way in which to phrase the thoughts running through her mind. “Look,” she said suddenly, in a rush, “everything’s gone so fast since you brought me here. I still can’t believe that I was still living in the Everfree yesterday morning, and with everything that’s happened… I stole from you, I followed you, I hurt you…”

“Trixie, I don’t want—” Fluttershy began, but the unicorn cut across her.

“I’m not going to apologize; I know you don’t want me to. Please let me say this.” Trixie sighed, looking at the floor. “You gave me food, you came after me… you saved my life, and you took me in. Before now, hope just meant finding some new way to keep running; some new way to avoid looking back. You made me stop; you made me look at myself. I’ve got a chance now, and I know you don’t want me to feel like I owe you, but I want to say it, just once. Properly.” She met Fluttershy’s eyes, shyly. “Thank you,” she choked out the words, her voice suddenly laced with tears. “Thank you for everything, Fluttershy.”

At that moment, it took every last ounce of Fluttershy’s resolve to not lean across the sofa and embrace the unicorn, but she already felt as if she were on shaky turf considering her actions earlier. She had promised herself that she would rein in her gestures of affection, knowing that this mare was dependent upon her care and comfort, and that it would be utterly wrong to use that fact to her own advantage.

Yet, somehow, that resolution had crumbled into dust, up on the hilltop overlooking Ponyville. She had been unable to regret taking enjoyment in her actions as she had curled up in Trixie’s warm, tight embrace, but looking back now, the matter preyed mercilessly on her mind.

Her thoughts clouded with annoyance for a moment at the realization that, as always, she was denying her own desires for the sake of others. Would it be so very wrong of her to do something selfish, for once in her life?

Then, the pulse of anger was gone, leaving behind only a vague and untraceable sense of guilt and frustration. She reached out to cradle Trixie’s hoof between her own, under the blanket. The contact sent a warm shiver of electricity along her spine. “It’s my pleasure,” she murmured, answering Trixie’s timid smile with one of her own.

Even so, she reflected as they resumed their game of draughts over refilled mugs of cocoa, it had hardly been a perfect end to the day.

She could not ignore her own growing frustrations for much longer; so much as brushing up against the showmare made her stomach feel as if it had plummeted from a great height. She was afraid that, without some kind of outlet, she would end up doing something horribly rash, and alienating the vulnerable unicorn altogether.

Superimposed over these concerns, however, was the more pressing matter of Twilight. The look that had flashed from time to time in the unicorn’s eyes had scared her, as had her skittish, erratic bursts of anger and despondency. It was a pattern that Fluttershy recognized, but this time, its precise source was far harder to pin down.

It seemed as if tensions of one sort or another were mounting wherever she looked. It was surely only a matter of time before something snapped.