* * *
In the Bleak Midwinter
Jeffrey C. Wells
* * *
I gazed up, satisfied, at the small mountain of presents piled upon the carpet in the center of the Chalcedonic Study.
"Now," I declared, in my best and most confident empress-y tones, "these get wrapped."
Rose Quartz, major-domo of the Crystal Castle and longtime servant of my father's house, gave me a quizzical glance. "Wrapped?"
"Mm hm!" I said, all chipper. "As you know, many of the beautiful crystalline snow-globes and statues and jewels and paperweights and desk sets I've just spent the entire day purchasing are extremely fragile. They need to survive a long and bumpy train ride back to the Heartlands so they can be properly gifted to the Canterlot nobility there." I smiled, beatifically. "To this end, I have brought in a specialist: the single greatest bubble-wrapper in all Equestria."
"Impressive enough, Highness," said Rose. "And certainly your correspondents deserve the very best, but... surely I could have assigned some of the castle servants to the task of wrapping all these up?"
"Thank you, Rose," I said. "I'm sure your staff would have been more than up to the challenge. But the day's been going so well so far, and I am now completely in the zone. As a result, there's a little part of me that's not going to be satisfied with anything less than total optimization and efficiency as we 'wrap up' my first holiday retail experience here in the Restored Empire." I gave a little chuckle. "I am so totally a nerd, except for with shopping instead of knowing about things."
"Yes," said Rose. "Quite."
"Besides, it's already a done deal." I raised my voice to the gleaming hallway outside. "Miss Doo, could you join us here in the Chalcedonic Study, please?"
"Okay, Princess!" said the little gray cross-eyed pegasus to whom I had called. She fluttered crookedly into the room, nearly knocking over a priceless sodalite statue that had probably been a thousand years old before the Empire had vanished for a thousand years. She saluted me with one hoof. "Ready and willing to serve the Restored Empire!"
Rose looked at the pegasus, then at the enormous pile of extremely-fragile gifts, then at me. Then she looked again at the pegasus, once more at the pile of gifts, then once more at the pegasus, and then finally back at me.
"Highness," she said. "A word, please."
"Certainly," I said, offering up my hoof in anticipation of the escort. "Miss Doo, you may begin your work. You'll find bubble wrap and tape and paper in ample supply over there in the corner."
"Oh boy!" said Miss Doo, zooming eagerly over to the packing supplies. To the noise of the pegasus's zealous rustling and crackling, Rose ushered me just outside the door of the study. She looked up at me with a stern little gray-eyed glare.
"Princess," said Rose, "you know I would never directly contradict you in front of the populace."
"I am aware, and I thank you for it. Go on."
Rose gestured warningly with one hoof back into the study, trying for a moment to find words. "Is this wise?" she eventually asked. "This one comes with a certain... reputation. You do recall, I hope, the instance at spring's beginning when she showed up at our doors inquiring as to where we were keeping all our migratory swallows?"
"I recall," I said. "Winter Wrap Up as practiced in the southern lands is not always easy for each and everypony to grasp."
"It was the difference of a thousand miles, and a diametrically-opposed cardinal direction," protested Rose. "And not the first time she'd made the error, to hear tell." My major-domo shivered a little, gazing out through a narrow balistraria at the frigid arctic wasteland that lay just beyond our shell of warmth and light. "Last time, the Empire was not here to offer her cocoa and warm blankets on her arrival."
"And fortunate was she this time that we were," I said, laying a hoof across her small shoulders and holding her close. There is something to be said for being physically larger than most of your subjects: it can turn your presence into a very comforting and maternal thing. Aunty has successfully used this trick to calm agitated ponies under her command for, literally, centuries. I am just now learning it. "Trust me, Rose. I'm not perfect. I make plenty of errors in judgment. This is not one of them."
"If you say so, Highness."
"I do," I said, ushering her back into the study. "See?"
Just as anticipated, my hired professional had already taken a substantial bite out of the immense pile of gifts. In place of the bite was an expertly-laid cordwood-like stack of perfect little individually bubble-wrapped holiday bundles. Even as we watched, two more gifts joined the pile. Rose's jaw fell slack at the sight of it.
Ditzy Doo turned at our arrival. "Hey again, Princess!" she cried, throwing her hooves wide, this time knocking the sodalite statue cleanly off its plinth. A quick shot of unicorn telekinesis from my horn saved it before it hit the floor, as Ditzy chatted obliviously on. "I gotta say, there's some really interesting wrapping challenges in this pile. Like that crystal elephant over there!" She gestured absently at a sleekly hemispherical paper parcel whose top had been folded into an exquisite origami flower. The recipient of such a gift would be excused for thinking that the parcel itself was his present, such was the careful beauty of its wrapping job. "Turned out, I needed to stand that big guy on his end and do a double lotus fold on the top to keep the tusks from intersecting any exterior impact points."
"Well done, Miss Doo," I said.
"Yes, quite," said Rose, recovering her words. "I must say, you are very unexpectedly good at this, Miss Doo."
"It's what my cutie mark is telling me!" said Ditzy Doo, threatening the sodalite statue for the third time today by backing casually into it. Sensing a pattern, I wrapped it in my magic and casually stowed it in a storage closet for the remaining duration of the pegasus's visit. "I'll never forget the day I first wrapped a package up in bubble wrap!" Ditzy affected a caricatured mocking tone. "Everypony else was all, 'You'll never be able to wrap that package, Derpy!' and 'Why don't you just give up now, Derpy?' and 'Help, you literally just set me on fire, Derpy, quick get some water!' But did I listen to them? No, sir, I did not. I just stepped right up and I wrapped that package up in bubble wrap, and that's the day I knew that I was born to be a delivery-pony. And then the whole town burned down, and when my hair finally grew back from being all singed off, I noticed I had earned this little girl right here!" She gestured at the line of bubbles on her flank.
"I see," I said. "I do hope the poor pony who was on fire made it through okay."
"Who?"
"The pony," I clarified. "The one who said you set him on fire."
Ditzy shrugged. "I guess somepony might have said something like that. Like I said, I didn't really listen."
"Well!" I said, not knowing quite what else to. "We'll leave you to your wrapping, Miss Doo. Feel free to retire to the castle kitchens after you're finished. Missus Saltcrust of the Day Kitchen should have some lovely hot crystalberry fritters down there for you to sample."
"Sounds really good, Princess!" said Ditzy Doo, as Rose and I left her to her work. "Bye!"
With that, the two of us slipped out of the Chalcedonic Study, en route to the Cathedral. "You see?" I said. "No need to worry. Say what you will about her, Ditzy Doo is the greatest bubble-wrapping professional in all Equestria."
"Forgive me for having questioned you, Highness," said Rose, bowing her head slightly as we walked. "I am now slightly more confident that your gifts will arrive in good shape and that your apologies will have their desired effect."
"Apologies?" I said, glancing down at Rose as we continued to walk.
"Well, yes," replied Rose. "I can only assume that there must have been some sort of major diplomatic faux pas that necessitated the purchase of all these gifts. I've been worrying about it all day, ever since you began your shopping spree."
I stammered for a moment, and then got control of my tongue. "No, Rose!" I said, trying desperately, on the fly, to mold my sudden startled laugh into something gentle and happy rather than chiding and patronizing. No sound must escape my lips unanalyzed; this is the one of the burdens of princesshood. "No! No diplomatic faux pas...ses. This was my Black Friday holiday shopping. That's all."
Rose shuddered a little. "'Black Friday' is a dreadful name for a holiday," she said. "Forgive me, Highness. It is likely different in the Heartlands where you grew up, but here in the North, we do not celebrate blackness. We fear and shun it."
"It's nothing like that," I said, laughing with perfect control this time. "It's just a silly little name somepony came up with. 'Black Friday' is merely the name for the first Friday after Llamastide is over and done with. We don't have to worry about our pies or our cranberry sauces or our Llamastide breads any more. We can just focus our minds with surgical precision on all our Hearth's Warming gifting."
A dreadful silence came from my major-domo.
"Pardon, Highness," said Rose Quartz, "but what is 'Hearth's Warming'?"
I blinked.
"Oh, dear."
* * *
One half-hour and two mugs of hot mulled crystalberry nectar later, we had yet to achieve a complete understanding.
"Hearth's Warming," I said, lounging deeply into the velvet cushion protecting my soft pony hide from the sharp crystalline angles of the Cathedra, the throne of the Empire. "It's a very important holiday in the Heartlands. My mind is actively being boggled, as we speak, that nopony here has heard of it by now. Through word-of-mouth, at least!"
Rose shrugged apologetically from the base of my throne. I had practically begged her to consider having this little drink-and-talk in one of the castle's many comfortable conversation pits, but the overfamiliarity quickly got to her and she ended up sort of spasmodically shoving us both here to the Cathedral where we could talk on a level "more befitting our customary stations." She took a timid sip of her nectar. "The Frozen North is very isolated," she said. "Additionally, Highness, please do recall that we have only been back in existence for a matter of months."
"Still, though," I said. "Hearth's Warming! It's an ancient festival. Easily older than the thousand years your people were lost."
"I am sorry, Highness. We have never celebrated it."
"I still can hardly believe it," I said. "Perhaps under a different name? It's the story of the Settlement, you know, when all three tribes of pony learned to live and work in harmony?"
"All three tribes?"
"Yes," I said. "Pegasi, unicorns and... earth ponies, and..."
My major-domo stared up at me, her crystalline eyes sparkling and her mouth small.
"...yes," I said. "Our people weren't actually included in that event, were we?"
"Some theorize that we are a post-Settlement offshoot of the earth tribe," Rose offered, helpfully. "But genealogy does not support this. Most consider that the crystal ponies arrived on this continent through a separate settlement event entirely, many hundreds of years before the southern tribes occupied the Heartlands."
"So all this time while I've been hanging snowflakes from the balustrades and laying sparkly white foam cloth over everything..." I winced a little. "...What exactly did it look like I was doing?"
Rose shuffled her hooves and gazed down at the carpet runner. "There were three prevailing theories amongst the staff. First, it was thought that you might be raising tributes to your father the Snow King, Epona bless his soul." She raised one hoof to the opposing shoulder in a ritual gesture. "We were uncertain why you had chosen to construct sacred patronial icons of cheap tinsel and carnival glass, but felt it was not our position to question. Secondly, it was proposed that you were cryptically warning us against succumbing once more to hatred and suspicion, reminding us of the cold and icy death that awaits our people should we ever fall once again into disunion. We searched our souls assiduously, Highness, and removed any impediment to our love and unity, but still you did not lift your dire glyphs and symbols. This worried us."
I rubbed at my poll with a hoof. "And the third theory?"
"That you had gone completely crackers, Highness," said Rose. "Forgive us, again, but madness does run in your line; and in your father particularly." Once again, she touched at her shoulder.
"Madness?" I asked, looking up, my gut sinking a little.
"Indeed," said Rose. "Your father was convinced that he was being stalked night and day by vicious shape-shifting insects who could impersonate other ponies at will."
"I may have been on the receiving end of a similar threat," I said, trying to blot out the dark memories of my wedding day and the dread specter of what might have been.
"Yes, quite," said Rose. "Only this was well before Changelings were known in the Frozen North, or anywhere, as far as we can tell."
I tried to summon up a bit of proper filial respect for the sire I never knew. "I suppose a little caution is a healthy thing?"
"Pardon, Highness," said Rose, sipping at her nectar, "but your father once outlawed all pets except sheep on the grounds that only sheep could be properly interrogated. The Snow King's fear proved contagious to his people, weakening the bonds of love and unity that had kept us safe for generations. It was your father who first let the snow in, Highness. Dread Sombra struck the blow that felled your house, but its foundations had been crumbling for years."
I sighed. "Don't your—I mean our—people feel the need to celebrate something in these short, cold days? To lift their spirits at least?"
"Short days are long nights," said Rose. "And the cold is the king of the wastes without, ever hungry, ever greedy to claim our tiny island of warmth and light. We do not celebrate in the dark and cold. We huddle together, crying out to the howling void and praying that it will avert its jaws from us for one more day." Rose took a little sip from her mug.
"Santa Hooves!" I practically shouted. "We can celebrate with Santa Hooves! You know, the mythical jolly red-suited reindeer who flies from house to house and hops down the chimney to fill the hoof-stockings of all good fillies and colts with presents!"
"The chimney can indeed serve as an access point to one's home," said Rose, staring mournfully into her nectar as though she were wishing there were more of it. "We certainly learned that well enough when Dread Sombra's diabolic Schattenpolizei were on the prowl, slinking from shadow to shadow and breaking into our houses to rearrange our furniture and change out our tea for different kinds of tea. We who supported the Freedom Call referred to it as the Zersetzung, the Decomposition, a subtle form of psychological harassment that was meant to destabilize the public mental health on a grand scale and prevent us from mounting effective resistance to his cruel regime."
"But," I said, my voice cracking, "it got better, right? I mean, surely, there has to be some kind of historical... thing from that period we could commemorate in order to actually celebrate the winter?"
"I am sorry, Princess."
"What about your eventual liberation?" I said, grasping at the idea like a drowning pony scrabbling for a cracked edge of ice. "We could celebrate that! How Queen Arborvitae heeded your call and dispatched Aunty Celestia and Aun—Princess Luna to liberate you?"
"All I remember is a light," murmured Rose. "A terrible brightness and a terrible darkness intermingling; and then nothing at all, as the great oblivion claimed us like the end of all days."
The silence in the Cathedral was complete.
Rose took another sip of nectar.
* * *
Close to two hours later, I was lying submerged up to my muzzle in a swirling hot and soapy bath. My eyes were closed, my ears were fully underwater, and all my senses could gather was a warm and roaring darkness that smelled faintly of lavender. The water of my bath was doing wonders to soothe the aching muscles of a hard day spent holiday shopping; it was doing nothing whatsoever to soothe the aching ego of a pretty little imported Canterlot princess who had no right whatsoever to be standing at the head of a battered people made strong and virtuous through a suffering that she couldn't possibly comprehend.
"I," I said, to the ceiling above me, "am a complete impostor."
Hot breath tickled the tiny hairs at the edge of my muzzle and a familiar smell filled my nostrils: the thick aroma of sweat and musk and armor-polish and the faintest suspicion of dandelion and peppermint.
I smiled, despite myself, and received a kiss on the tip of my nose for my trouble.
"If you are an imposter," said my kiss-or, as I lifted myself out of the water to greet him, "—and mind you, I am in no way agreeing to this statement, but if you are one—you are the single most beautiful impostor I have ever seen."
"Shiny," I said. I will never sound like anything but a little filly when I say it like that, and I do not mind one bit.
"You were in here for a while," he said. "I wanted to check up and make sure you weren't planning on falling asleep. Plus, I keep hitting my horn on the chandeliers, and as you know, low ceilings in this house means unhappy wifehorse."
"You're such a worrier," I said, once again mildly cursing my position as Fisher Queen of a profoundly magical empire. The Crystal Castle where I live shifts and changes according to the whims, desires, and personality of the mare occupying its throne, and while this certainly has its upsides—for instance, the full Pegasopolian spa-bath I was now sitting in that appeared quite out of nowhere one day—it does write my mood swings inconveniently large. "I thought nagging was my job."
"You're right," said my big, beautiful lunk of a husband. "It is your job. My job is the same as it's always been: keeping you happy and protecting you from yourself."
"Pooh," I said. "And before you start lecturing me on the condition of my wings with all this soap, I don't want to hear it. I will be quite responsibly re-oiling my plumage all evening, thank you very much."
"I wasn't going to say a word," said Shiny. "So long as you let me help."
I permitted myself a happy little shiver, but it was a short-lived one. I sunk mostly back beneath the surface of my bath. "If I sit here like this," I said, "I can pretend that I am the only pony in the world."
"I'm going to assume that this all has to do with the Rose Quartz situation this afternoon," said Shiny. There came a rustling of paper. "I am supposed to let you know that she 'begs your forgiveness' and apologizes 'profusely' for upsetting you in your 'joyous holiday time,' or at least that's what this extensive letter of regret says." Another rustling of paper. "I also have here a proposal from the Committee for Agreeable Solstice Observance, something I wasn't aware that we had. I'm actually pretty sure it was just convened for the first time within the last hour. The proposal calls for, and I quote, 'an annual Snow Day where all citizens of the Empire will put aside their deeply-ingrained fears and celebrate all the ways that snow can be fun (and not at all a harbinger of annihilation and oblivion).' That last little part is in really small type."
I groaned as Shiny neatly rolled the little scroll back up and sealed it with a band. "It awaits only your signature, H.R.H. Cadance the First of the Restored Empire," he said, with a little flourish.
"They're doing all this just to make me happy, Shiny," I said. "Those silly, wonderful ponies are reordering their entire society so that I can have a stupid little winter celebration."
"That may be," said Shiny, "but on the other hoof, snow is fun. C'mon, Cadance! They're giving you your own winter holiday as a winter holiday present! All recursiveness aside, this has gotta be the snazziest Hearth's Warming gift ever. As the Prince Consort of the Restored Empire, I'd recommend you putting your signature to this."
I sighed. "Very well," I said. "Just as soon as I'm out of the bath." I shook my head, then, making little splashing noises. "I absolutely cannot believe they're doing this. Just so I'll feel at home and can go shopping and glue glitter on things and hang tinsel and put presents under the... tree?" I frowned. "Did they tell you if we have trees with this new thing they're proposing?"
"It's only been an hour. Let's give the Snow Day traditions a little bit to work themselves out."
"I don't deserve this, Shiny. These are a good and noble people who have suffered terribly under terrible leaders, one of whom apparently was my own father. They deserve a better empress than me."
"And yet," said Shiny. "And yet, they want you. We saved them, Hon. You, and me, and my sister's cool little dragon familiar. We saved them from falling back into that cycle of terrible leaders. And it isn't just what you did for them; they love you, Cadance. They love the way that you calm their fears. They love the way you learn all their names and remember what they're doing with their lives. They love the joy and vitality that you've brought back to this wounded city. These are your people, Cady. Being their princess is in your blood."
"They don't feel like my people," I said. "They feel so strange, sometimes."
"You've been out of sync with them for the last thousand years," said Shiny, kissing me on the tip of my rose-pink horn. "Give yourself some time."
"Mm," I said, stretching out in my beautiful hot bathtub. "Okay. I'll give myself some time. And I'll have you know that the very first time I'm going to give myself is an extra fifteen minutes here in the spa-bath."
"Just be mindful," said Shiny. "Keep track of your heart rate, and don't overheat. And promise me you'll get plenty to drink afterward. Not nectar. Something hydrating."
"Nag."
"Never," said Shiny. "I am, and will ever be, your humble knight-protector." He kissed me again and turned to go.
At the door, he turned around. "And don't let the bath fool you," he said. "No matter how much you pretend, you will never be the only pony in this world. It is your destiny never to be alone, Mi Amore Cadenza. You will always have ponies looking to you to lead and inspire them. Whether this is a blessing or a curse is entirely up to you."
"Tell me you'll always be with me," I said.
Shiny clip-clopped back over to my bath. He leaned in close and whispered into my ear.
"So long as I have life and strength," he said, "I will."
"Thank you," I said. He kissed me once more on the lips, and then he was gone.
I settled down into the swirling waters of my bath, letting the hot, rushing water surround me until all the coldness of the bleak midwinter fell far away and was lost to distant memory.
"Happy Snow Day," I whispered to myself.
Author's Note
Just a quick little idea I got after seeing an offhand line that Katie Cook dropped in the Luna micro-series comic. Happy holidays, all.
