For Mothers Everywhere, Including My Own
“We’re here, Spike.” Twilight raised her hoof, pausing to adjust her saddlebags, then knocked on what was once her front door.
She heard muffled voices through the wood, then approaching hoofsteps before the door swung open.
“Twilight!” Night Light cried out, grinning as he threw his forelegs around his daughter. “So glad you could make it this time. Your mother has been dying to see you.”
Twilight smiled, nuzzling her father before pulling out of the hug. “Hey, Dad. It’s good to see you too.”
Her father chuckled, reaching out a hoof and messing up Twilight’s hair. “Mom’s in the kitchen. And hey, Spike, the manliest dragon I know! How’s it going there, champ?” His horn glowed, and he levitated Spike down from where he had been sleeping on Twilight’s back.
Spike yawned, stretching. “Hey,” he said, raising a fist and bumping it against Night Light’s raised hoof. “Did you see the scores for last week’s hoofball game?”
“Sure did. Let me tell you, that was one heck of a game!”
Twilight rolled her eyes, smiling as the pair made their way into the house without her, already engrossed in their sports talk. She really needed to bring Spike home more often.
Levitating her bags onto a nearby table, Twilight made her way through her familiar childhood home to the kitchen, where her mother was busy preparing some food on the counter.
“Hi, sweetie,” Twilight Velvet said, not turning around. “Can you peel some carrots for me?”
Twilight sighed, then made her way over to the counter, kissing her mother on the cheek and nuzzling her briefly. “Happy Mother’s Day,” she said, already levitating the bundle of carrots and the peeler.
“Thanks, dear,” her mother said, dumping her pile of recently diced potatoes into a pot, then immediately moving on to some other form of prep work.
“Shouldn’t you be relaxing?” Twilight asked, cheating a little as she used her magic to shave the carrots without out the peeler. “It’s not fair for you to be doing all the work on a day that’s meant to be celebrating you.”
“Being a mother is about celebrating your children,” Twilight Velvet said matter of factly. “And I choose to do so on a day that’s about me. Besides, who else is going to do this, your father? Please. Your brother will be here any minute, and with the baby things will get chaotic fast.”
Twilight nodded, then glanced towards the door, as if she expected it to open just then. Since her niece Skyla had been born several months ago, her brother and her sister-in-law had been run ragged with all the usual trials of new parenthood, though it certainly made those rare times when the family could get together all the more rewarding.
“I think that one’s peeled enough, don’t you, honey?”
Twilight snapped out of a daydream involving all the amazing things she was going to teach her niece as she grew up, and stared at the nub of carrot left floating before her. “Uh, whoops. Sorry.”
Her mother chuckled, taking it from her and tossing it into the trash. “No worries, dear. Just be more careful. It’s so like you, though. I remember when you were just a filly and would simply stop talking to us in the middle of a conversation, your mind wandering as you tried to solve one problem or another.”
“I grew out of that… mostly,” Twilight said, blushing slightly. “Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I’ve gotten better at solving problems while still focusing on the world around me.”
“Whatever you say, dear.”
The first thing she heard was the crying, followed by hoofsteps, before the door was slammed open and Cadance and Shining Armor walked in, the wailing foal levitating between them.
“Hey, Shiny,” Twilight said, turning around. “Hey Ca— oh, wow, yeesh.”
Her sister-in-law had incredibly dark circles under her eyes, her mane was frazzled, and she generally looked more like a walking corpse than a living pony. With a lazy display of blue magic, the screaming Skyla was floated across the kitchen and into the telekinetic grasp of her mother.
“Grandma will take care of you for now, Skyla,” Cadance droned, her voice an exhausted monotone. “Mommy’s going to take a nap,” she said as she shuffled off towards the guest bedroom. “Wake me up never.”
“Hello there, sweetheart,” Twilight Velvet cooed, her smile wide as she looked down at her granddaughter. “Grandma’s got you. Yeah, it’s okay, shh. Are you hungry? Is that it, hmm? Twilight, take over on the celery, would you?”
Twilight expanded her telekinesis to take over more of the kitchen. WIth her magical talents, adding few more objects was child’s play. Once she knew she had everything in hoof, she made sure to wave at her niece, smiling. “Hiya, Skyla. It’s Auntie Twilight!”
Skyla kept screaming of course, uninterested in her, and Twilight couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed as she continued to peel and mince vegetables.
“Hey Mom, hey Sis,” Shining Armor said, yawning as he made his way into the kitchen, stopping to nuzzle Twilight briefly. He looked just as exhausted as his wife, but at least seemed to be capable of functioning at the moment.
“If you’re going to be be standing around in the kitchen, sweetheart,” Twilight Velvet said, rocking the baby back and forth through the air, humming a familiar lullaby, “get me out a bottle of formula from the fridge, would you? I’ve got them prepared.”
Shining Armor nodded. “She ate not too long ago, but she spit most of it up in the carriage, so she might be hungry again.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow, grinning. “I guess that’s what that gunk in your mane is, huh?”
“Huh?” Shining Armor cocked his head, staring at Twilight blankly for several moments before shaking his head rapidly. “Oh. Heh, yeah, I guess. I don’t really notice it much anymore.”
Twilight Velvet frowned, raising Skyla higher in the air and then sniffing. “Ah, there we go. Can’t have that near the food, now.” She levitated Skyla past Twilight to the nearby door, calling out, “Darling! Skyla wants to see you, and she brought a present.”
There was a brief lull before her father stuck his head in the doorway, taking Skyla into his magic. “Did I hear that someone needs Grandpa’s Poopy Diaper Patrol? Hey there, Skyla, don’t worry. Old Granddaddy will get you taken care of lickety-split!”
Twilight wrinkled her nose as the foul odor wafted past her. “Ugh, I don’t know how anypony can stand that.”
“You get used to it, dear,” Twilight Velvet said, washing her hooves in the sink. “Just ask your brother.”
Shining Armor shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t really have a sense of smell anymore. I kind of miss flowers, but eh.”
“Woah!” she heard Spike call out from the other room. “Oh wow, that is so disgusting! How can such a little thing make that big of a mess?”
“I know, right?” Night Light said, chuckling. “She’s certainly a little spitfire. Still, this is nothing compared to Twilight when she was young. Let me tell, you, she...”
Twilight immediately stopped listening, her ears burning. “Right, well, that’s killing my appetite.”
“In that case,” Twilight Velvet said, taking the load of vegetables back from Twilight. “Can you two go get the grill started? Your father will be cooking up his usual fare, but as you can see, his hooves are a little tied up at the moment.”
“Sure thing, Mom.” Twilight walked with Shining Armor through their house and out to the back patio. “How are you holding up?”
“Oh, you know,” Shining Armor said, yawning again. “Life. Being a dad. Running a country. Keeps me busy.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s what’s been bugging me. You’re the leaders of a nation, shouldn’t you have a team of nannies big enough to raise a small village worth of babies?”
Shining Armor shook his head, chuckling. “Nah. Cadance doesn’t want anyone but family taking care of her. She doesn’t think it's right. Makes things a bit harder, I guess, but its probably for the best.”
“And the country?”
“That’s the part she is comfortable delegating,” Shining Armor said, grinning, “but it’s fine, no worries. We’re still managing.”
Twilight bit her lip, parsing her brother’s words as she lit the grill with a spark from her horn before covering it up. “If you say so.”
Shining Armor shrugged. “I mean, we’re not entirely on our own; Mom’s been visiting a whole bunch and helping us out when we need it.”
“Wait, seriously? That’s like a three hour train ride. How often is she heading up North?”
“Hmm.” Shining Armor raised a hoof, tapping it against the wall several times, “Three, maybe four days out of the week, I guess.”
Twilight sighed, making her way back inside. “And what about Mom’s job?”
Shining Armor rolled his eyes. “Don’t look at me. Mom likes being Grandma, that’s all there is to it, I think. Besides, she’s an editor; I think she does a lot of her work on the train.”
They made their way back to the kitchen and found Night Light passing on a happy Skyla and a bottle to his wife. “We’ve got a clean and fresh little filly here, ready for Grandma!”
“Thanks darling,” Twilight Velvet said, kissing her husband on the cheek as she rocked Skyla back and forth, the foal sucking on the bottle. “Twilight, get out the large stone pot for me, would you?”
“Hey Spike,” Night Light called out, grabbing a pack of tofu dogs from the fridge. “Wanna learn how to grill?”
“Oh, I already know a bit,” Spike said, running past them and towards the back of the house. “Twilight has this book about cooking with dragonfire, and…”
Twilight stared at the kitchen cabinets, trying to recall where that particular pot was kept, finally remembering, and levitating the heavy cookware onto the stove.
“I think I’m going to go find my wife,” Shining Armor said, shuffling off.
Alone with her mother and her niece, Twilight fidgeted slightly. “Babies are a lot of work, huh?”
“Lots of things are a lot of work, dear,” her mother said, levitating several bottles out of the spice rack. “If it wasn’t hard, it probably wouldn’t be worth doing. Here, hold her.”
Twilight nearly fumbled, but caught little Skyla with her telekinesis as the filly was thrust on her, still suckling on her bottle, giggling at the sudden motion.
Skyla cooed softly, her big blue eyes staring up at Twilight with childlike innocence and curiosity.
“H-hey,” Twilight said, swallowing a lump in her throat. “You and your Auntie Twilight are going to have so much fun together some day, you know that?”
Skyla giggled in response, then burped.
Her mother’s telekinetic field engulfed her own, and adjusted the position of the baby. “You need to support her neck when you hold her, sweetie. And like this when you’re feeding her.”
“O-oh,” Twilight stammered. “Sorry, I didn’t—”
“It’s fine,” her mother said, opening the oven and pulling out a large casserole.
Twilight continued to rock and feed the baby in silence for a full minute before she finally spoke up again. “Um, hey, Mom?”
“Yes, dear?”
“You did all of this kind of stuff for me and Shiny when we were little, right?”
“Your father and I, that’s right.”
Twilight scratched at the floor with her hooves. “And now you’re working hard again for Skyla.”
Twilight Velvet grinned. “She’s the best granddaughter I’ve got, after all. Just consider yourself lucky I’m not harassing you to get one, too.”
“That’s not…” Twilight muttered, her face growing beet red. The change in her coloration seemed to amuse Skyla, who squirmed in her grasp, making baby noises.
“Was there anything else, dear?”
Twilight sighed. “It’s just… you’re a pretty amazing mom, that’s all.”
Her mother turned to her, hey eyes sincere for a brief moment before they sparkled with mischief again. “I know.”
Twilight rolled her eyes, then made her way over to her mother, throwing her forelegs around her in a tight hug. “I’m serious. Thanks for everything. You’re the best mom, and grandmom, a mare could ask for.”
Twilight Velvet returned the hug, adjusted Skyla’s position and posture as she started slipping.and stirred the pot on the stove in the process. “Happy Mother’s Day, Twilight.”
“Happy Mother’s Day.”
Author's Note
Something short and sweet, written as a present for my own mother, as well as my brother and sister in law.
Happy Mother's Day.
Thanks to Kalan, Not_A_Hat, Dubs_Rewatcher, and Soge for editing.
Coverart by HelloEternity, used with permission.
