And My Friends, I've Returned To Wish You All the Best
Sister Winter had moved into Ponyville, and brought all of her luggage. Pure, white snow drifted downwards from the grey, cloudy sky, piling onto the already substantially deep drifts, making a desert of icy white dunes and plains that swept across the center of town. The oil streetlamps had been snuffed out hours ago, leaving only the gentle bluish glow of snow reflecting the patches of midnight between the clouds. The wind brought a freezing touch along it’s fingers as they swept and dug into every corner and crevice of Ponyville’s streets, as they made loose snowflakes turn into white wisps across the foggy air.
Princess Twilight Sparkle sat alone.
She sat in the only place clear of snow, one that she had made herself, a place that used to be warm and cozy in the wintertime. But the gas mains had been shut off months before, and the only source of warmth and light that she had now was a small, orange glow of a bonfire she had started only an hour or so earlier. She had brought along extra logs and had worn the heaviest scarf and pair of earmuffs she possibly could, but it did little to take the edge off of the ice and snow that encroached upon her former home.
She didn’t really go for the nostalgia, for the pain of losing the most important dwelling of her life, to relive bittersweet memories. She’d done enough of that in the past half a year or so. She had shed tears over the knowledge that was destroyed, she had bemoaned the loss of a homely bed and a humble dwelling, she had cursed her extravagant and pointlessly intricate– if not beautiful and well-constructed for a mostly magical entity– castle, she had half-considered going back to warn Past Twilight of what would happen to her home and had stopped herself short of creating another stable time loop, she had gone through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. It helped that she still owned the land, and had no real reason to sell it, and so the scorched ruin of her home had become almost a shrine to the battle in which it was lost and the friendships that had formed within it’s now-crumbled walls.
And it was now winter. And as the snow fell, Twilight Sparkle simply sat by her fire and did so completely alone.
Alone’s too strong of a word, she thought to herself. This is solitude. This is time spent by one’s self in order to reflect upon one’s current situation. And one’s current situation was that one was sitting alone, without her friends, the only source of warmth dim in the icy cold, barely out of Sister Winter’s grasp and still shivering of cold. One’s current situation was that it was Hearth’s Warmings Eve, scheduled to be the coldest Hearth’s Warmings Eve since nine-hundred and ninety-eight, a consequence of Ponyville using recycled weather clouds that often could be tempermental about the temperature and simple thermodynamics involving the warmer clouds of fall combining their warmer air with the chilly air of winter. And Twilight Sparkle was sitting out in this weather completely alone.
It was odd, she found, and she realized why. It was Hearth’s Warmings Eve. Even if it wasn’t the coldest on record for a long time, it still was Hearth’s Warmings, and she was alone, outside, without family, friends, or anyone else, really. The streets were empty, laden with snow. The doors of every single house was closed and locked to ward off the frozen winds. The streetlamps were out, and her only source of warmth was also her only source of light. She shouldn’t be out here by her old home, be out here with a bonfire, just watching the flames flicker and sputter in the chilly air. She should be home, at the very least, with Spike, laying in bed and hoping that he hadn’t found his Hearth’s Warming’s presents quite yet. But instead, she had left hours before, prepared a bonfire, and sat in solitude. She needed this, for whatever reason. She didn’t know what that reason was, but it was a good reason. She was out here. Alone. By herself. On her lonesome yet not quite lonesome.
Just watching the flames flicker, seeing how her eyes would adjust when she looked away from the dim light of fire, and let her see the lay of the land in dim, bluish light. Solitude, she called it. Much needed, much wanted, much earned. Almost a half-year of rebuilding and she was in the one place that, by her choice, had gone without becoming “new and improved”; the New and Improved Ponyville Library, after all, was just down the street, connected to the bookstore. A wonder the bits the government will give your town’s legislature after the whole place has been almost annihilated by a magic-eating megalomaniac, and how it helped to have a local princess to serve as further motivation to fund the rebuilding efforts.
Twilight sighed, rubbing her temples. Now was not the time for politics. Now was the time for reflection. Solitude. That’s what this was. Pure, simple solitude in the icy cold. She likely inherited it from her father– she could remember many a cold winter’s night where he would sit by the fire with a bottle of fine Griffonian whiskey and a pipe, and the sweet scent of the cherry tobacco he smoked still swept through her nose from time to time. Unhealthy practice, smoking. She’d never consider picking it up. Spike might, dragon lungs were built for dealing with smoke and tar, but he was decades before he’d even think about it, and he wouldn’t go that far to seem sophisticated.
Maybe he would. For Rarity. Unlikely, though. The little drake was maturing before her very eyes. The little drake was before her very eyes, waving a claw in front of her face.
Twilight let out a yelp, jumping up to her hooves, and rearing up, batting at the offending claw with her forehooves before gravity and the realization that Spike was laughing his dragon posterior off mere feet from her caused her to get back on all fours and give him a well-meaning but still reprimanding glare. “Spike!” she cried, finding her mouth dry and numb from too little speech. “What the hay are you doing out here?! You should have been in bed hours ago!”
Spike regained control of his laughter as fast as he could, sitting up and still stifling some phantom giggles. “What are you doing out here, Twilight?”
Twilight hummed, the clockwork in her brain slowing significantly. What was she doing out here? Enjoying solitude? If she was, why wasn’t she doing it in the comfort of her own castle, where the thousands of empty, unoccupied rooms made up a million different places for solitude? Why was she away from the warmth and comfort of home and confronting the harshness and the coldness of the world? She couldn’t come up with a decent answer, so she decided to answer with another question.
“I’m not sure. I don’t think I know what I’m doing. I just came out here, I guess.”
Spike raised a scaly eyebrow and crossed his arms. “Twilight, I know you. You don’t just come out someplace.”
Twilight let out an exasperated breath, because it was true. “Spike, it’s just…”
Well, it was something. She was outside. No longer alone, but in a solitude of sorts. It still counted as solitude, didn’t it? Somepony to bounce ideas off of made for Spike simply being a microphone. A microphone, a cell phone, a utility. She didn’t think of Spike as some sort of tool, of course, or at least, not in that way. Spike was her assistant, her loyal comrade-in-arms and compatriot-in-peace, who, while prone to his own fits of dramatics, was a reflection of every element of Harmony and her oldest and most valuable friend. These past six months would have been Tartarus without his support and kindness, without his insomniac nature making him available to bring her tea, without his sharp wit bringing a bit of sardonic joy at the end of diplomatic meetings, without his problems being there to distract Twilight from her own for just a minute or two.
Spike hummed, sitting next to her. “Hey, Twi, mind if I snuggle up?”
“What?”
Spike sighed, gesturing vaguely towards himself. “Cold-blooded, Twilight. I’m wet, cold, and super concerned about you.”
“Oh!” Twilight cried, throwing another log on the fire and wrapping her scarf around Spike’s neck, despite his shouts of surprise. “Ohmigosh! Spike, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize it until now! Oh, gosh, you must have walked through all of that just to see if I was okay! That’s dangerous! You could have just locked up and freezed to death!”
“Frozen,” Spike squeaked past his crushed esophagus, adjusting the scarf around his neck so that it wasn’t suffocating him anymore. “Would have frozen to death.”
“Spike, for the love of Celestia! You could have died! You didn’t need to come out here to check on me!” Twilight said, throwing another log hastily on the fire, and pulling her dragon friend up to her, wrapping him in her forelegs and trying to transfer as much body heat as she could to his ice-cold form.
Spike wheezed, the crushing scarf now a crushing pair of forelegs. “I had to! What if you froze to death out here? I didn’t even know where you were! I just had an idea of where you might have been and… Well...”
Twilight’s forlegs had loosened around him. “You didn’t have to, Spike.”
Spike huffed. “Well, I wanted to. Got a problem with that?”
She smiled. “Not a bit. In fact, you being here might actually benefit my solitude more than shatter it.”
“Soli-what?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Solitude. Derived from the Latersk phrase solus, meaning alone. It’s the state or situation of being alone, often given positive connotations today. Hence, peaceful solitude.”
Spike blinked a few times, then looked up at Twilight with curiosity shining in his eyes. “You came out here to be alone?”
“No! I mean… Kinda, but I mean, it’s not required.”
“I mean, if you have to be alone to have solitude–”
“No! Spike, that’s just the dictionary definition!”
“Yeah, I know, but if you need me to go–”
“You are not going back out there without me, Spike!” Twilight screamed, her voice at such a fever pitch that the flames she had been tending almost seemed to flare up along with her emotions, and Spike winced at it’s harshness and took a step back. Twilight was immediately reproachful, her eyes filled with anxiety now spilling it away as she felt regret welling inside of them instead, her head hanging down a bit and her ears pinning back. She didn’t want to scare him. Not a single bit. He didn’t deserve it. She didn’t deserve a friend who was willing to risk his life just to see if she was okay.
“I’m sorry,” she said, gently as could be.
“It’s fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Spike said, giving her a weak smile. “It’s totally okay, Twi. I understand where you’re coming from.”
Twilight sat on her rump, letting out a deep sigh, and throwing another log onto the fire. Spike was too kind. Again, the embodiment of the Elements to her. Loyal to the end, honest as could be, kindness in his heart, generosity right beside it, all laughing all the way. And being a dragon, he had innate magic, so that made it all complete. He had his faults, oh, no doubt about that. He was prone to fits of selfishness and was frighteningly capable at spitting witty comebacks. But nopony was perfect, and the faults and boons of him and all of her friends evened one another out, formed something perfect out of all that imperfection.
Spike was waving his claw in her face again. This time, Twilight didn’t jump. She just spoke.
“I’ve been thinking.”
Spike sat next to her, giving her a wry smile. “I can tell.”
Twilight giggled despite herself. “Is it that obvious?”
“It’s pretty obvious, Twi.”
“Okay, so obviously, I’ve been thinking.”
Spike nodded. “About what?”
“This place.”
He glanced around the ruined shell of the former library, and shivered a bit as echoes of nostalgia clawed up his back. “Hard not to think about it sometimes. The castle’s too cold in some places.”
“Spike, it’s always kept at a consistent sixty-eight degrees.”
He made the gesture from before. “Too cold.”
“I’ll adjust the heat fields for ya. Rarity might complain, but she does that sometimes, and never without good reason.”
Spike sighed. “She’s so riotous when she does it. It’s perfect.”
Twilight coughed into her hoof. Mentioning Rarity was a clear mistake, for Spike was now lost to fantasy, licking his lips and staring into the stars. “Spike.”
“Yes my lo– Twilight. Shoot, sorry, I get like that when ponies talk about–”
“No, no, I understand, Spike! I know what that’s like. I’m prone to flights of fancy myself.”
Spike frowned and gave Twilight a curious eyebrow. “Twilight, if it’s about that monkey guy with the crappy blue hair…”
“Who?”
“Nobody.”
Twilight tilted her head, then decided pursuing this avenue of discussion wasn’t worth it, especially with the peculiar introduction of monkeys into the conversation. She’d never really met one, and one never really came to mind when the phrase “blue hair” was added. Most likely, Spike was referring to a bad dream of his.
“So yeah. This place.”
“What about it?” Spike said.
“I… I dunno. I mean, you know what the past six or so months have been like, right? Since Tirek’s conquest.”
Spike shuddered. “Feels like forever ago. Time turtles by when you’re not having fun.”
“Sometimes we don’t get the privilege of fun, Spike. Remember when we had Cheerilee run classes in the castle while the schoolhouse was being built?”
“Never again.”
Twilight giggled. “You don’t like kids, Spike?”
Spike shuddered. “I don’t like being a personal hoofpainting canvas, thank you very much. I think there’s still bits of melted chocolate between my scales from where Dinky threw a chocolate bar at me. For no reason. Because kids are dumb.”
“Well, you’re a teenage dragon, Spike. So you’re technically a kid.”
He glared at her. “I’m a young adult, thank you very much.”
Twilight laughed, heartily, for the first time in what seemed like hours, and Spike was soon joining in, leaning on his friend for support as he cackled along with her, their laughter pealing out and bouncing back and forth across the frosty air around them. They laughed and laughed, and just as they were about to stop, they started laughing again, the amusement in the air so great it seemed to infect them both and keep them going until they could laugh no more. It got to the point where the both of them were rolling on the floor with delight until it stopped, and instead of looking at the flames, the two of them now looked into Luna’s night sky, expressionless, veiled underneath clouds of gentle snowfall.
They were silent for a while.
“So.”
“Yeah,” Twilight responded.
“This place.”
“Yeah,” Twilight said. “Like I said, got me thinking. We’ve been rebuilding for so long, but I own the deed to this place, so nobody’s rebuilding it until I give the word to, and…I dunno.”
“Why? Don’t you like this place?” Spike said. “I mean, you have a frickin’ sweet castle now and stuff, but don’t you want to bring this back? It’ll be like old times! Books everywhere, ponies coming in like once every three months looking for a read, a cozy place to sit down and have sleepovers and all of that, an observation deck. This could be really great, ya know?”
“I… I dunno, Spike,” Twilight said. “I feel like if we rebuild this place, we’re ignoring what made it so special.”
“It was a tree?”
Twilight snorted and covered her face with a hoof to hide her smile. “Not really that so much. It’s… We have a library, right? We have a home for me and you, we have all that we need. We don’t need to rebuild this place, and what significance it has to me otherwise is…”
She waved her hooves in the air, hoping to capture the right word. “Well, I miss living here, no doubt. But I miss more having a place to live that felt like a home. I miss being on everypony else’s level. I don’t want ponies to come thinking of me as much as a supreme ruler as I am a neighbor and a friend.”
Spike looked at her. “They still think of you that way, Twi. Being a princess doesn’t change that.”
“But being a princess who defeated an ancient evil does. And I’ve done that four times.”
Spike shrugged. “You’ve got a few hundred thousand years. You might catch up with Celestia and Luna in that time.”
“I don’t want to!”
“I never said you did.”
Twilight harumphed and rolled onto her side, her tail between her legs, letting her idly stroke it. “I just… I dunno, Spike. I feel like if I build over it, or if we try to plant a new tree here, or just… mess with it at all… it’s like raiding a crypt and taking the bodies out, y’know?”
Spike shuddered, though not from the cold. “Twilight, it’s Hearth’s Warming, not Nightmare Night.”
“Sorry,” Twilight said. “But I mean… I guess I’m just thinking of what’s coming up tomorrow, and it’s been on my mind all day, and it’s got me thinking of this place, and of everywhere I’ve lived, I guess, and all the Hearth’s Warmings’ I’ve had, and everything. I remember the first one I had with you and I got you a chewtoy and my mom got me Starswirl the Bearded’s Standard Theorem of Magical Matter Transubstitution, and the textbook was almost as tall as I was, and I read it all day, from cover to cover, until I was exhausted. And I remember that last Hearth’s Warmings Eve I had in the castle as the Princess’s personal student, and you were there for that, I got you this really big gem, and you gave me this beautiful mane brush and I didn’t know where you got it, until Princess Celestia asked me where her mane brush was. And I remember two years ago, where we starred in the pageant and everything and our friends almost broke up the gang and we all came together and resolved our tribal and special differences and it was the most tense twenty minutes I’ve ever been through, and I remember just today you begging me for an extra few bits because you wanted to buy Rarity some Goddessiva chocolates and you had been saving up for weeks, and now…”
She was out of breath, panting. Spike rolled on his side to look her in the eye.
“Now?”
“Well… I mean, every single time I left some place behind, I always thought of Hearth’s Warmings Eve at every one. And… I almost don’t want to have it in the castle, because I know that if I have to leave it someday, I’ll have all those Hearth’s Warmings Eves in the back of my mind, and I’ll just be awash with bittersweet nostagia and everything.”
“Bittersweet what?”
Twilight bit her lip. “Basically I said I’d feel bad, because I’d feel like, and I feel like, I’m leaving a part of me behind every single year that passes where I’m having a Hearth’s Warming someplace.”
Spike hummed, and rolled back onto his back, and Twilight followed suite. The snow was letting up. The clouds were starting to clear, and the world was suddenly growing much brighter. Luna’s sky was lit up with stars, forming seemingly random patterns that, if seen the right way and with the right knowledge, made groups and clusters of wonders that were hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of years away, and yet were so absolutely, astoundingly beautiful from so far.
Twilight suddenly felt very small, but not in a bad way. She felt almost affirmed by it. She was small, yes, but the love that she had for her friends, and the love that she had for the dragon beside her, was as bright and beautiful as those faraway giants. And maybe, on some tiny planet besides one of those tiny stars, there was someone else who could look up into the slowly-clearing night sky, and who could say that they were happy with their place in the universe.
“Is that bad?” Spike asked.
“Is what bad?”
“Leaving a part of yourself behind.”
Twilight glanced at the stars, and felt them smile down on her.
“Not sure. I don’t think it is, at least.”
Spike nodded. “Me neither, I guess.”
Twilight shivered. The bonfire was dying, the world around her was growing brighter, and the snow was no longer falling. She was surrounded by powdery drifts, and as the fire crackled, she decided to roll over and get on all fours. “Here, Spike. Lemme give you a ride home.”
“Thanks, Twi,” Spike yawned, slowly getting to his feet and stretching out, then, gently as he could given his position, he crawled onto Twilight’s back, holding her gently around her neck, and promptly fell asleep, snoring. His body was warm against her, and Twilight felt a little twinge in her heart. So long as she had friends and family around her, and so long as she showed love to her fellow pony, Twilight’s Hearth’s Warmings would never be bad.
And as Sister Winter relented and finally fell asleep as well, Twilight began to trudge through the snow, making the first hoofprints from the remains of her old home and towards her newer one. She trotted out through the starlit streets, the snow twinkling gently as the stars sparkled, and soon disappeared into the darkness and the gentle wisps of fog, leaving behind a pile of burned logs. And the next day promised great joys, from the great people that she loved, and inside her heart Twilight felt peace and goodwill towards all.
Author's Note
Happy Holidays, fellas. Onwards, to a new year with hopefully more ponyfic from me. ~~I promise more clop~~
