Trash of the Royal Castle

Twilight Sparkle stood far outside the magical dome that surrounded Ponyville, her magic focused on a small pink flower on the ground, trying to force the small flower to revert to a bud with an age spell.

She gritted her teeth as her horn glowed pink, focusing the advanced magic on the small flower, her eyes glowing with hope as she watched the flower's petals close into each other, reverting to a bud. Only to let out an angry groan of defeat as the spell faded away, the flower returning to its original form.

"Grrrh!" Twilight growled in frustration, her hoof slamming angrily onto the ground. "It's impossible! How could Trixie know such advanced magic? let alone perform it! Without Spike, I can't get a message out to the Princess, and she's busy with the Delegates from Saddle Arabia- So who else do I know that understands strange and powerful magic?" Twilight asked out loud before turning to look at the dark edges of the Everfree Forest that stood in front of her.

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"Mister Zephyr! Over there!" Dinky Doo tapped Zephyr's neck before pointing in a direction, "I think I just spotted Miss Fluttershy!"

"That way? Okay!" Zephyr Breeze turned to fly in the direction pointed at him. "By the way, why are there so many banners of Trixie being hung around? I thought you said her show wasn't that popular."

"I don't know. I was with you the entire time, I'm as clueless as you are," Dinky said.

"You have a point there, Dinks, you have a point..." Zephyr said casually as he continued lazily flying in the direction Dinky pointed him at.

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A ways into the Everfree Forest, Twilight Sparkle was walking in circles as she explained her predicament to a friend.

"Your tale of woe upsets me so," A Zebra by the name of Zecora told her in rhyme, "No wonder you're dour, it's an abuse of power!" Zecora took a sip from her herbal tea, sitting with her hind legs in a lotus position.

"I don't know what to do Zecora," Twilight told her, "I feel like I abandoned my friends, just running away like that, and I can't take her in horn-to-horn."

"If you train with me, So good you'll be," Zecora said in rhyme, "I'll show you the way, to make sure she won't stay~" She placed her tea cup on the table in front of her, clasping her hooves together in mimicry of an old Minotaurian prayer.

"You'll train me in magic?" Twilight ask with a hopeful smile, only to quickly replace it with concern, "But she was doing age spells," She waved her hoof to the right, "weather spells," She waved her hoof to the left, "You name it!" She waved her hoof forward, accidentally hitting the tea cup on the table and spilling it into Zecora's lap.

She was lucky the tea was lukewarm.

"When it comes to magic," Zecora picked up the spilled tea cup, "It would be tragic if some pony licked me-" She placed her hoof on the edge of the tea cup, swirling it around the lip of the cup, watching it refill with fresh tea, "Especially Trixie~"

Twilight looked at the newly refilled cup of tea, watching the soft steam waft from it. "You really think I can beat her?"

"Mh-hm," Zecora nodded with a hum.

"Okay!" Twilight placed both front hooves on the table between her and Zecora, spilling the tea in the process once more. "When do we start?" She asked, only to quickly realize, thanks to Zecora biting her lip and twitching her eye, than the newly refilled cup of tea that she just spilled wasn't lukewarm like the last one.

"I- I'll grab some paper towels," Twilight said with an apologetic smile.

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Inside the Ponyville Town Hall, Many ponies were working under the watchful eyes of a vindictive sorceress.

"You two!" Trixie Lulamoon yelled at the owners of the lucal cake shop, "Hurry up with my throne!" She told them as she watched them drag a throne made out of candies and chocolate through the town hall.

"And you!" She turned to Applejack, a proud smile on her face, her staff levitating beside her, the statue at its top seeming almost like a watchful spirit, the dark red eyes of the tiny Alicorn glaring at all the ponies around it, "How long do I have to wait for my apple-sauce facial?" She asked with a smug smile.

"Forget it, Trixie!" Applejack said as she crossed her front legs over her chest, "I ain't doing nothin' 'til you let Twilight come home!" However, it seemed Applejack's resistance was short-lived as she found herself lifted into the air inside a magical red aura, a pair of feathers popping into place beside her before starting to tickle the Earth Mare, a most horrible form of torture.

"Ah-Oohoohoo! Okay! Okay, I'll do it!" Applejack managed to say through the midst of her uncontrollable laughter, "Make it stop!"

Applejack felt relief as the tickling stopped, only to once again remember why she even tried to rebel against Trixie's authoritarian rule in the first place as she was thrown into a pile of bushels, spilling the apples inside them all around the place.

With Applejack no longer resisting, Trixie turned to the next pony on her list of ire. "I told you to dance!" She told a Pink Earth Pony, a beam of red magic escaping her horn and slamming into Pinkie Pie, who still had no mouth or nose on her face.

Without being able to voice her dissent, Pinkie Pie found her body moving on its own, enveloped in the malevolent red aura of Trixie's new and powerful magic.

Rarity, seeing that Trixie left to throw her ire at other ponies, used the moment to voice her complaints, "Unngh, Trixie's cruel magic is ruining Ponyville- OW!!!" She yelped as a sewing needle poked her hoof, causing it to flare a painful red.

"Ooh- Somepony has to help us!" Rarity cried.

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"I think we're lost..." Zephyr Breeze said as he stared at the red barn that stood before him.

"I thought I saw Fluttershy go here..." Dinky Doo said quietly before she turned to look at a nearby Stallion, "Excuse us, Mister Big Mac, did you see Miss Fluttershy come by here?"

The large red Earth Pony shook his head, "Nope." He told them, a depressive tone to his voice as he returned to picking more apples to send to whatever Trixie was planning.

"Okay, now this is getting weird." Zephyr clicked his tongue as he sat down on the ground, Dinky Doo climbing off of his back, "First, Fluttershy flies ahead to see Trixie's show, now Trixie has banners all over the town, Fluttershy seems to always be going somewhere, and whenever we go to where she was, she's manages to be gone by the time we get there." Zephyr clicked his tongue. "I know we've been flying slow, but it's still faster than regular walking speed, and I know Fluttershy would never avoid me like this. Something really weird is going on in this town today..."

"Yeah, and none of that is even mentioning the giant dome above us." Dinky pointed out too, crossing her front hooves and letting out an inquisitive hum as she readied her thinking face.

"Yep~" Big Mac added as he sat down beside the two ponies, his hooves moving to rub at his legs as he gave himself a massage.

"I'm sure will figure it out soon, Mister Zephyr," Dinky Doo said in an attempt to reassure the Pegasus.

"I know you're right, Dinks, but maybe we should just stop trying to find Fluttershy," Zephyr said as he crossed his legs behind his head, staring at the cloudy sky above the magical glass dome.

"Wha- You mean we should stop searching for her?!" Dinky exclaimed, "But- but what about the last two hours?! We searched everywhere! You want to just give up?!"

"Not give up, stop trying, there's a difference~" Zephyr told her, "This is something that a lot of ponies don't tell you, especially when you're young. They always say that you can do anything you put your cute little mind into, but then you try to do what you want to do, but you don't really make it, you fail horribly, and it's awful. But they tell you, Hey, if first you don't succeed, try and try again! So you try again and again, and you keep trying, because your parents said that's what you have to do to suceed, but after enough times you manage to learn by yourself that you're not going to succeed, and it wouldn't matter how many times you keep trying, because you just wouldn't make it." Zephyr said.

"Wha- That's... That's a bummer way to look at life." Dinky told him.

"Yep~" Big Mac nodded in agreement, listening in to the conversation.

"Don't interrupt me yet, I'm not finished-" Zephyr told the two before he continued, "So you fail, right? And you don't want to keep trying that same thing now because you know you're going to fail again," Zephyr licked his lips to moisturize them. "So you move on to something else, and you try it, and you fail, and you try a couple more times, and then you fail again and again, no matter what you do, you just keep failing-"

"I still fail to see how this is any different from giving up..." Dinky told Zephyr.

"Because giving up means to stop trying everything and just do nothing." Zephyr explained, "Here, instead of giving up on trying, you just stop trying the thing you keep failing at and start trying the next thing, and the next thing, and also the thing after that thing, and you keep trying, once, twice, ten times even, and you keep trying all these different things, until you find it."

"Find what?" Dinky asked.

"Well, here's another thing that a lot of adults don't tell you: No matter what you try to do, there are a million ponies who are better at it than you. So you keep trying different things until you find the one thing where you are part of the million ponies who are better than the others," Zephyr said simply.

"So... You want to stop trying to find Fluttershy, because whenever we do try to find Fluttershy, we just can't manage to find her, we fail," Dinky Doo tried to find a meaning in the story Zephyr told her, "But if we just go do something else, along the way, we'll find the thing that we were looking for, which in this case is finding Fluttershy! Wow! I never thought about it like that!" Dinky looked at Zephyr with eyes wide with wonder.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I mean~" Zephyr said with a smile, not sure what exactly he did to elicit that reaction but still happy that he was getting credit for something.

"You're not as lame as you act!" Zephyr's smile shattered as the filly's words hit his ears and broke his heart.

"Yep~" Big Mac added thoughtfully before standing up, "I better get back to work, Good luck in finding Fluttershy-" He told the two before he paused, "Oh, and can you please pass this here over to Applejack, whenever I can't find her I just assume she's at the Library or Sugar Cube Corner." Big Mac passed a bushel of apples towards the two Ponies.

"Sure thing, Mister Big Mac!" Dinky Doo said with a smile as she pushed Zephyr into a standing position before climbing back up onto his back, "And tell Apple Bloom I said hi!"

"Okay~" Big Mac said before finally going back to work. Letting Zephyr pick up the bushel of apples by biting the handle and lifting it with his mouth.

"The Golden Oaks library is closer, we should go there first!" Dinky Doo said as she pat the older Pegasus's back.

"Y'know," Zephyr managed to say with the bushel's handle still in his mouth, "I don't even remember why we're searching for Fluttershy, but at this point, I think we're too deep to back down." And with a flap of his wings, Zephyr Breeze and Dinky Doo, together with a bushel full of apples courtesy of Big Mac, lazily made their way back into Ponyville.

All at the speed of a calm spring breeze.