Golden Harvest—Carrot Top to her friends—was miserable, upset, annoyed, displeased, and probably a bunch of other synonyms. She had been looking forward to hanging out with all her friends after tonight’s Hearth’s Warming Eve pageant, but that was off the table. Noi was sick, and she had to look after her baby sister.
Why couldn’t mom and dad have hired a foalsitter or somthing? she groused. It’s not like it’s my foal—but their ‘shindig’ was more important than my friends.
At least Noi was quiet now. She’d been sleeping most of the day, which was a pleasant change from the day before, when she was hacking and coughing for hours at a time. It had been alarming how much phlegm she’d been able to produce.
Carrot Top leaned into the icebox and grabbed a bottle of eggnog. If she couldn’t party with her friends, she’d just have a one-mare party. I wonder if a pony has ever gotten a mucus cutie mark? Suddenly, the eggnog didn’t look appealing any more.
She settled instead on chopping a piece off the end of her great-aunt’s hardtack, a family tradition that went all the way back to . . . maybe forever. Much like the so-called fruitcake probably did. Perhaps the early settler ponies had used it as ballast. She tossed it in a bowl of water, hoping that would soften it up some.
While she was waiting for her snack to become edible, she wandered over to the window. The wind was howling across the barren fields, piling snow up against the trees and fences. Her breath condensed on the window, and she had to frequently pause to wipe it clear.
Between gales of snow, she could see the lights of Ponyville twinkling below. As always, her eye was drawn to Sugarcube Corner, where her brother was no doubt serving hot chocolate and cookies to her friends, who were no doubt having fun without her.
Stupid Noi, getting sick right now. She shouldn’t have been playing in the snow so much. She glared at the mocking face of a half-buried snowpony.
“Goldie?”
Carrot Top snapped her head around. Noi was right there in the kitchen—how did she move so quietly?
“Yes, sis?”
“I’m hungry.” Noi looked hopefully at the empty table.
Why don’t you make yourself something, sis? She sighed. “Do you want some fruitcake?”
Noi stuck out her tongue. “Ugh, no. That’s not food. Can you make soup?”
Carrot Top looked at the soggy slice of fruitcake sitting on the counter. Had she really wanted to eat that for dinner?
“Sure, sis. Why don’t you go down to the root cellar and grab some vegetables you’d like? I’ll get the stove going.”
“Okay!” Noi grabbed the ringbolt for the trap in her teeth and began tugging futilely. After opening the dampers on the stove and throwing in a couple of fresh logs, Carrot Top helped her sister drag the heavy trap opened.
“Be careful on the steps,” she advised. “Go slowly—back down if you want.”
“I can do it,” Noi insisted.
Carrot Top smiled as she filled the stockpot with water. She could hear her sister muttering downstairs, commenting on the vegetables in the cellar.
“Hey Goldie? What goes good with turnips?”
“Rutabagas and carrots,” she replied automatically. “Could put some potatoes in, too, if you want.”
“What’s a rootabeg? I forgot.”
“It’s kind of like a turnip. You carved one for Nightmare Night, remember?”
“Oh yeah! Just the root part, right?”
“Unless you want a salad, too. Oh, grab a clove of garlic. It’ll add some flavor. They’re hanging in a bag.”
“I know what garlics are,” Noi muttered.
Carrot Top chuckled. She set the pot on the stove and got out a cutting board and a knife.
• • •
It was, without a doubt, one of the best soups that Carrot Top had prepared. She’d let Noi help put the vegetables in, and even let her stir the soup. Spoon in her mouth, she’d stayed on the chair the whole time the soup was cooking, watching it with the intensity of a barn cat stalking a mouse.
Once it had thickened satisfactorly, Carrot slid the pot off the stove to let it cool. She’d whipped up a batch of cookies, and stuck them in the oven—no sense in wasting the heat.
When the soup was eaten and the dishes were washed, she gave Noi a plate of cookies and a half-glass of eggnog, while she poured a full glass for herself. She deserved it.
Noi sniffed the glass skeptically before taking a sip. “It burns,” she announced.
“It’s good for you,” Carrot Top informed her. “Warms the blood.”
“I guess.” She broke a cookie in half and dipped it in the eggnog. “How come everything that’s good for me tastes funny?”
“I don’t know, sis.”
“Do I hafta take a bath tonight?”
Carrot Top looked over at the woodpile next to the stove. It was getting low—there was more than enough to get them through the night, but if she wanted to heat up some bathwater, she’d have to go outside and get more. She couldn’t ask her sister to take a cold bath; that might make her sicker. “No, but you still have to clean your teeth and brush your mane and tail.”
“Okay.” Noi licked the crumbs off her plate and drank the last of the eggnog. “Will you read me a bedtime story?”
Carrot Top looked longingly out the window. “I can tell you the Hearth’s Warming Eve story.”
“Yay!”
• • •
“Are you comfy?”
Noi nodded. She was huddled on the couch, wrapped up in a thick quilt. Carrot Top sat next to her, a light blanket draped across her back.
“Once upon a time, long before the peaceful rule of Celestia, ponies did not know Harmony. It was a strange and dark time, when ponies were torn apart by hatred.
“During this age, each of the three tribes did not care for the others, but only for their own welfare. The pegasi controlled the weather, but they demanded something in return. Food. Food which could only be grown by Earth Ponies.”
“Earth ponies, that’s us,” Noi commented.
“It is,” Carrot Top said. “The unicorns also demanded food, in return for using their magic to bring forth day and night.”
“What happened before the three tribes were fighting?”
“What do you mean?”
Noi pawed at the comforter uncertainly. “Well, like, it must have been a while before the three tribes were fighting, right?”
“I . . . guess so.”
“So what did they do then?”
“Well, they must have all lived separately. Grazing, if they weren’t earth ponies. I guess the unicorns must have been raising the sun and moon all along. Maybe they didn’t like the dark.”
“Dark is scary. There are monsters in it.”
“Yes! Which is why the unicorns didn’t like it.”
“Maybe you should start the story there,” Noi suggested.
“It’s not—” Carrot Top looked down at the eager eyes of her sister. What had she learned in class about the pre-unification times? There had been a great unicorn stronghold, and of course the pegasi had their cloud cities. . . .
“Okay, well, Princess Platinum lived in a great big castle—almost as big as the one in Canterlot—with all the unicorns. They all gathered in the courtyard to raise the sun.”
“Who built the castle?”
“Unicorns, I suppose.”
“But they’re lousy builders,” Noi said. “What if it was an earth pony castle first, and the unicorns took it from them because they were mean?”
“It . . . could have been, I guess. The story doesn’t say who built it.”
“It should,” Noi insisted. “Maybe you should start with the earth ponies building the castle.”
“Uh . . . okay! A tribe of very smart earth ponies once lived in a distant land, where they—”
“That’s still kind of the middle,” Noi protested. “How did they get there? What was it called? Did they have farms? Houses? You can’t just start with them living in a distant land.”
Carrot Top glared at her sister. “Fine. Where would you like to start?”
Noi considered this carefully. Finally, her eyes lit up. “The beginning. The very beginning.”
“The very beginning?”
“Yup!”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “In the beginning, the earth was formless and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
Author's Note
Prompt: `"Fine. Where would you like to start?"
