Winter held Sweet Apple Acres in its grip. It held the farm lovingly, like a favourite plush toy squeezed in the hoof of a sleeping child. The trees were blanketed in duvets of snow and the fields were one, unending world of white, imprinted only with the prints of birds and a few shy deer. From the farthest edges of the Sweet Apple Acres and across the low hills to Golden Harvest’s neighbouring farm, it all lay equally laden in blissful, silent snow.
It was lit with the pre-dawn light, the light that comes from that forgotten hour just before sunrise, when dreams are at their most vivid and fingers of sunlight, moonlight and starlight all brush past and entwine with one another. The fields shone faintly with silvery-blue morning light. The trees were naked and, bared to the world, and so winter had clothed them in its finest weave; they had perfectly perched sleeves of snow on every branch and slender twig. One could not see where wood ended and snow began, but a few powdery heaps here and there attested to the actions of chance, of wind and birds; a few branches of the many hundreds were left bold and naked, but even then it was nearly a perfect sight.
There was nopony awake to see it. Then, and quite abruptly, there was.
Applejack came awake in her bed with sudden clarity. She stared at the ceiling and her first thought was to wonder what had woke her up. Like a snowflake melting on her nose, something had been, touched her consciousness and gone, leaving her open-eyed and alert. The faintly lit room, made up of the blues and silvers of the super late – or early – hour made it seem a different place altogether.
Applejack slid easily from the warm layers of her blankets, wondering what had wakened her. Something had done, she felt certain of that much. She listened. Every soft sound she heard was known to her. Her blankets, her breathing, the creak of the bed and floorboards: she heard it all. None of these were out of the ordinary. She put her hooves to the cool floor slowly, slowly, one at a time and even then the connection sounded clear and distinct.
As she coaxed the ruffled bedding back into a semblance of smoothness, a good-morning yawn came upon her. She tried to stifle it, to keep it quiet and the effect was a sigh of air that sounded like it had come a child much younger than she. Applejack smiled, savoured the moment and finished making her bed. It wasn’t perfect, but the blankets were smooth enough and flat enough so that, when next she came here, they would be.
Applejack eased the door open and shut, and ghosted down the hallway. It was not perfectly darkness – silver-grey fingers of light gentled the air – and even if it had been, she knew the quiet places on the old floorboards by heart. She passed first her sister’s room, then her brother’s, then lastly Granny Smith’s, knowing she had disturbed none of them. Whatever dreams her family were having, Applejack was certain they were good ones. Such moments as this belonged to winter.
She woke none, she knew it, but something had woken her. Snow falling from the roof, perhaps? It was a pleasant mystery she mulled over, one she had no rush to get to the root of.
Applejack took the stairs cautiously. The upper landing she could move quietly across quite easily, but her years of experience had made the creaky stairs only possible, not easy. Each successful step and muffled, drawn out creeaak was an act of thievery; stealing moments of time before the inevitable rousing of the house.
As her hoof touched the floor Applejack stood and listened: silence. She sighed relief. This wonderful little moment before time was not spoiled yet; she was not distracted from her playful little mystery just yet. She held her breath with silly giddiness as she flicked the downstairs light bulb on. It flick-tick’d to stuttering wakefulness, then settled. It was not powerfully bright, but Applejack blinked many times and her eyes watered a little, because she had been accustomed to the dark all this time.
She listened as she waited for her eyes to adjust. Applejack stood there with a hoof covering her eyes for a moment until the electric light was not so overly bright for her. She listened to her own steady breathing and she could hear the light bulb as a constant low droning.
The ethereal morning light retreated to the windows turning them glossy and black, making everything outside invisible to her now. Applejack wondered if Golden Harvest was awake, and if she was, did she stare out her bedroom window right now? To her, she would have seen the windows turn suddenly bright and glittery even as, to Applejack’s perspective, they turned suddenly darker by the very same contrast.
The kitchen chairs were nudged slightly and Winona was a sudden warmth against Applejack’s leg. The dog’s bed was under the kitchen table: an oval of cushions and old blankets covered in the soft, colourless hairs that all dogs seemed to shed in excess. Her tail swished the air into quiet busyness.
Applejack pulled her dog close, nuzzling her forehead to forehead. The smells of dog and furry warmth filled her nose. She whispered, “good morning, you.” Winona whined quietly and licked at Applejack’s face; she artfully avoided the worst of it, nonetheless enjoying the affection.
She opened the fridge out of habit – it lit up and rumbled before her – and then considered herself. After a moment, she slowly closed it again. She didn’t want to start the day just yet. It was silly and sentimental, but she felt bad about turning the light on – about chasing away the light of the very early dawn – and she knew that if she started on her breakfast now, she would forget everything about her own, tiny, quite-likely-non-existent mystery. She knew there was no mystery, not really, but Applejack also believed that by looking for something, sometimes a pony found something, even if it were not at all what she had gone looking for in the first place. If nothing else, she enjoyed the quiet time and her open eyes as a chance to appreciate her home and see it in a different light.
She rubbed Winona behind her ears. The dog sat up eagerly to receive the touch. “You know what? We can leave it for a little while longer.”
Making her decision Applejack flicked out the kitchen light, leaving it even darker to her eyes than it had been before. The dark came rushing back from the windows, but she knew she’d need a moment again to adjust and once more see the silvery threads of light as the world slowly crept into the morning. She felt her way through the hall and to the front door, mindful of tables and knocked-over boots. Applejack left her hat where it hung. She hadn’t even put the tie in her hair this morning, it hung free and forgotten all down the side of her face and neck. She left her boots where they lay.
She was careful with opening the door – the catch came away first with the cl! first, then a delayed instant later, ick!. Cold air spilled in along the ground, tickling her hooves and turning her breath to puffs of crystal. She peeked outside and saw stars still twinkling gaily overhead.
Winona was a fluffy arrow shooting past her. “Hey!” Applejack hissed, more from surprise then reproach, but she was already gone, flying through the snow, a lump of dark speeding through the silvery-blue, churning out a wake high in her tracks as she cavorted about. Then Winona threw herself bodily down, rolling, kicking, growling and whining like a puppy – here and in this instant, she truly was a puppy – nipping at errant flakes and sneezing with her own euphoric, snowy delight. For all her gallivanting she did not bark, and whether for the dog’s good sense or the happenstance of fortune, Applejack was quietly grateful.
A drift of snow was spilled in on the floor. Applejack let it be and stepped fully out onto the porch, easing the door shut behind her with the same cautious cl-ick as before. She felt a child-like thrill as she lowered her weight on the first step into the snow. It was deep. The sensation was a rush of chills and thrills and deepened Applejack’s breathing as her leg went slowly deeper. Just as she thought it could go on forever, sinking into cold softness – like an entire world made out of the other side of the pillow – she touched off the ground.
She climbed down into snow and all but lost her legs in it. Snow brushed her along her underside and clung in patchy clumps to her sides. Winona was already encased in plates of pressed-down snow, they broke apart and fell and clung on again as she moved and rolled and played and yipped. She bounded over the blankets and lunged beneath them only to burst up somewhere else seconds later, a faintly disturbed surface the only sign of the dog’s passage.
The weather team had outdone themselves this year. “Heh heh, heh.” They weren’t words, not quite, but the product of Applejack’s quietly contained excitement and her own huffy little shivers. She spun about and nearly fell over, and, knowing where she was, let herself. The world went poof! and blanketed her in soft powder.
Winona bounded to her side, all concern and puppy-barks, digging under Applejack, pushing at Applejack with her nose, licking needfully at her face as if she were genuinely worried that her pony would be overwhelmed and swallowed up in the snow.
“I’m okay, I’m okay!” she said, fending the too-helpful licks away from her face best she could with a hoof. Applejack wrestled with her dog and she laughed as Winona barked, and it was the full bodied, from the tips of your hooves to the tips of your ears laughter that bubbles up and out of you in those moments of mirthful bliss.
Applejack rolled, free and wild, as Winona had done. Huffing for breath, she struggled to her hooves. She wobbled, giddy with delight, and shook clumps of snow from her mane, and knew at least as much again was still caught up in it.
“Shh!” she urged Winona and also herself, trying not to giggle. “We’ll wake ‘em up.” Even as she said it part of her wanted to. This was the kind of snowfall a pony dreamed of. This was a post-card winter wonderland, ranging out past the frozen pond, the fields and the trees farther than the eye could see.
But she wouldn’t. Not yet. Raising each hoof high to tramp purposefully through the snow, Applejack started the move around the side of the house. If there was fallen snow outside her window than the mystery was solved. And if not, then Applejack had still had the joy of tramping up and down and breaking a trail through the snow. Winona had already carved up a mad swath of weaving, intersecting paths, like the very least legible of calligraphic signatures. For all that, though; it clearly read:
Pure Bliss,
-Winona
It was the absolute best kind of hard work to move at any speed through the deep, plump snowfall. Applejack made her way with purpose first to the corner of the house, then around it. She was full of warm anticipation for the morning proper, when her family would be awake and around her. There was not the slightest doubt in Applejack that they would all – even Granny Smith, with her boots, her scarf and woolly hat – spend many hours frolicking here today.
She especially wanted to see Apple Bloom’s face light up. The forecast had promised snow, yes, but nothing like this. The weather team were usually perfect to form, but there must have been a mistake somewhere. The schedule had called for enough snow, but this was fortress-building and toboggan-running snow, this was snowball fights and real igloos snow. The schedule hadn’t called for this, not at all. Well, Applejack promised herself, this just meant that this was the year she’d argue Apple Bloom’s case most ardently with Granny Smith. The case was to let the filly camp out all night in a real igloo of their very own making. She was big enough for it. In fact, Applejack’d argue the case that she had to be there, what with being a responsible older sibling and all; Granny’d have to accept that argument.
Applejack could see it now. She’d camp outside with her little sister, with a blanket thrown down, sleeping bags and a thermos of hot chocolate to share between them. They’d be hidden away in the cozy, warm blue-ice place they’d built together, telling all sorts of stories, stories about brave and clever ponies outsmarting the scary windigo.
They’d listen to the wind at night – Apple Bloom’s imagination would run away with her – “it’s the windigo!” she’d fret, and her big sister would pull her close and stroke her mane and remind her that in all the stories the brave, clever ponies always won, and what ponies were braver or cleverer than them two, and Big Macintosh and Granny Smith and everypony else they knew and loved besides?
Winona was running again, running and bounding and rolling in wide, random, joyous circles. Applejack blinked and remembered herself in the early dawn lit snow. The pink and orange paint-brush hues of morning were coming up in the eastern sky over the trees now.
Loose powder poofed! against her withers. Applejack looked up at her bedroom. A heavy cusp of snow perched on the edge, undisturbed. That was not too surprising in and of itself, but that compounded the fact that there was still a token amount of unsettled snow beneath the window, and it hadn’t fallen from the roof. It looked almost as if somepony had been throwing…snowballs? The plot thickened, but with no tracks to follow from the scene, Applejack wondered what to do next.
Winona barked for Applejack’s attention and went shooting off as if she’d taken it into her head to fetch the sun itself and bring it back lay it at Applejack’s hooves.
Huffing hot-and-cold breaths, blowing crisp snow from her mouth and brushing it quickly from her face (where it clung all the more for Winona’s loving doggy licks) Applejack set out in a half running, half leaping gait after her.
“Winona! Winona, you mad thing, Winona!” She ploughed her way forward through the snow, keeping to Winona’s already half-made trail. How a dog moved so quickly through snow so thickly blanketing the world baffled and delighted her. As Applejack settled into her stride, she found it was easiest to not to push, but to half-hop and buck her way forward, each time carrying her a little further over the snow. The motion was efficient but silly and brought on another attack of the giggles, especially when she imagined how she must look. It was as if she were trying to buck off some tiny rider, perhaps. Getting her laughter in hoof again, she loped forwards, halfway between the house and the first of the trees.
Winona’s barks were excited and urgent: she’d definitely found something she felt it was good to bring to Applejack’s attention. But what Winona thought was important could be anything – a rabbit’s warren, an oddly shaped stick, a regularly shaped stick, anything at all. Still, Applejack was happy to follow and see where the dog’s own excitement lead her. Perhaps Applejack’s mystery snow ball thrower was close, and that thought put an excited, even happy swiftness to her movements.
She saw the object of Winona’s fixation in the slowly growing light of dawn. The dog had already left a half-moon impressed upon the snow as she barked and went back and forth around the thing with every intent to corral it. That the thing – this ladder, from Applejack’s own barn – was inanimate and would never be corralled no matter how eagerly Winona tried mattered not one whit to her. She barked. The ladder did not oblige her.
Applejack caught up and laid a hoof over the dog’s side. “Easy, girl. Relax,” she said softly, staring thoughtfully at the ladder as she did so. It was undoubtedly her own, and it was undoubtedly erected against the side of this tree. Rectangles of snow on every rung said that it had been standing her undisturbed since at least last night. The only trails in the snow were their own, so whoever had put it here had done so before the heaviest snowfall, or done so without leaving tracks. And it was, Applejack recalled, an exceptionally special snowfall. She tucked this second observation into the back pocket of her memory and went closer.
“Well, I’ll be.” She still spoke softly, despite being well enough away from the house now to not risk waking anypony up. If anypony was awake now, their earlier play had already done caused it. Even so, she spoke softly, as if to be a good guest in winter’s house and not impose on the her host’s restful silence.
She had no idea why the ladder would be set up. Nopony had done any pruning lately that she knew of. Even if they had done, everpony knew well enough to put the tools away when they were done. The metal was shockingly cold to her touch, but then, it would be. Any errant tongues here would be very foolish ones.
A loop of string poked out from beneath the snow at eye-level. Applejack almost hadn’t noticed it, but she was only a nose away and the morning light was adding colours to the world. Brushing the snow aside and murmuring more quiet assurances to her dog, Applejack pulled at the string. She recognized the coarse, tough twine they often used about the farm. There were scraps and short, useful lengths of it practically everywhere. It arrived often and was rarely thrown out; it was just so darned handy.
A piece of cardboard came sliding free. Someone had scissor’d it into card shape, but they hadn’t done a very exacting job of it. She could see the knick where the scissors had swerved and had needed to try again. The corners weren’t quite flush. A pin-hole punched through the corner kept it tied to the ladder. The knot wasn’t pretty. In fact it was half a dozen or more knots, all piled on atop the other in a mess of twine.
Whoever had put this here, really, really hadn’t wanted it to fall down or blow away.
Applejack held the cardboard card, blowing her misting, crystallizing breath slowly over it until it thawed a little bit. The trails of pencil lead glinted as she turned the card about, trying to catch the faint light.
Applejack could just make out the words. There were only two, and each letter had been cut out in patchy squares from a newspaper.
“Climb me,” she mused. Her voice was a little louder than necessary now, her suspicions and smile coming to the fore in slow, steady tandem. Clues and more clues. What had started as a mystery of her own fancy was readily becoming the very real thing. She glanced about without being obvious about it. “What do you think, Winona?”
Winona for her part was rolling and tumbling again in the snow, maddened with her own puppyish delight.
“Yeah, me too. Why not?”
Applejack gave the ladder a firm shake. Snow plopped down and left an orderly little row of tiny hills beneath it. The rungs were bitterly cold, but thankfully free of ice. Applejack gave one more glance about. There were still no other trails she could see save their own, hers and Winona’s. The trees were each as undisturbed as the next, and only the last few, spent clouds from last night’s snowfall floated like shadows overhead, patches of softer grey in a sky becoming more and more inflamed with pink and orange by the minute. The stars were disappearing for the day, winking out quietly as if settling peacefully into sleep.
There was a rush up here, even if it was only a few hooves off the ground. Applejack couldn’t recall ever having gone up a tree so late – or so early – in the day, least of all in the blanketed throes of winter. Why would she? She put out a hoof onto a frozen-stiff tree limb to steady herself, sending a little cascade of powder to fall down over Winona.
The dog snapped at the flakes, baring her teeth and licking them as powder fell on her tongue.
If Winona was relaxed then Applejack saw no reason not to be. Her smile had a confused, wry slant to it, but it was a smile just as well.
At the very top of the ladder she found another cardboard card, again tied with lots of knots. It was tied to the very top, and feeding through the same loop of twine was a wire. A few inches along the wire, well within her reach there was a switch.
The card read: Flick Me.
Applejack tried to track the wire through the tree far as it could go, but distance and poor light took it further than she could see. Well, nothing for it she thought and flipped the switch, holding her breathe all the while.
Applejack became like the sun, surrounded in all directions by twinkling stars. A hundred or a thousand fairy lights lit up all around her, some under the snow and some poking free of it, shining in all colours of yellow and white.
“Oh sweet goodness,” she heard herself say, looking with wide eyes slowly in all directions from her perch in the heart of lights. Tenderly she brushed the snow away from one where it was buried to the branch, freeing its light to join the others.
And they didn’t stop with this one tree.
A trail ran out into the snow, into an open place between the trees, where somepony had carefully, painstakingly laid the wire out over the snow in a great circle big enough to fit a small house into.
And there, embossed in the snow with grace and flourishes as only a truly expert flyer could have written:
Happy Hearths Warming Applejack
Love RD
“Hey,” came the voice, a shivery-hot puff of breath near Applejack’s ear.
“Rainbow Dash…”
“I know, I know. Hearths Warming was last week, except you went away for that and I thought ‘there goes my chance’, but I figured, nah, Rainbow Dash doesn’t get stopped; only delayed a little, and only sometimes.” She hesitated. “I almost decided to leave it to next year, but I was still thinking about doing it… still wanted to do it, so…you know…”
Applejack turned, mindful of the snow and ice. Rainbow Dash hovered in place next to her, the light of a hundred softly glowing lights lighting her up against the darkness. For a second she could only take the sight in. Then she said, “You did all this? The extra snow, the strings of lights?”
Dash winced, smiling and blushing, every hint of colour and motion lit up by the cloud of encircling lights. “You like it?”
“It’s amazing. It’s incredible. Rainbow Dash, it’s-”
The distant knock of the farmhouse door caught them both off guard. Big Macintosh’s call of Hello? boomed across the space to reach them faintly. Winona up and bolted back that way, swerving in and out of her own already broken trail, bouncing and gliding over the snow, barking excitedly all the while.
Their perfect moment was breaking up like ice beneath their hooves. A flash of panic crossed Dash’s features and she flitted towards her lights-enshrined message in the snow.
“I have to kill it.”
“Wait, RD” She caught a blue hoof and pulled the pegasus back. Dash tugged to get away, but her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted to be contradicted, Applejack realized. “What’d’ya mean, you gotta kill it?”
“Look, all that stuff I said about why this is whole thing is, like, so belated isn’t exactly the main reason it’s so belated. It’s part of it, yeah, but the real reason is…” she trailed off, then stared into Applejack’s eyes. Applejack had never seen such a deep sincerity, such a show of vulnerability from Dash before. Another of Big Mac’s questioning calls – this time accompanied by Apple Bloom’s – reached them and the pegasus flinched. She rushed on in her telling, and because she was no longer fighting Applejack’s hold on her, Applejack let her go. The words spilled out her mouth, with the sincerity of them lit up by a hundred little lights in her eyes.
“The reason I took so long is because I was scared. Like, super scared. Me, scared,” Dash chuckled grimly and slicked back her mane nervously down her neck, “I’m still really, really scared to... to tell you out loud…”
“I can barely tell you, you, that I… you!.” Her hooves were flying through her mane, sending the many-coloured strands into a tizzy. “I can’t handle your family, too!”
The thought did occur to Applejack that if Rainbow Dash had wanted this to be a one-to-one sort of gesture, then using a hundred tonnes of premium snow to make a winter wonderland of her entire farm and several hundred metres of fairy lights in viewing distance of the farmhouse was going about it the wrong way.
What Applejack really thought though, the thought that came from deeper than that was this: I know what she’s telling me. That thought wanted to play over and over again in her head, but seeing Rainbow Dash’s mounting panic made Applejack put that thought on hold, for the moment. Big Macintosh and Apple Bloom were going to be here any second. She dared a glance their way: Three silhouettes: big, medium and small, plus a fast, bouncing darting one. The whole family.
Applejack had an idea, one thought up with a frantic speed borrowed from anxious Rainbow Dash. “How quick could you add a word?”
“Really fast. This is me,” she said with a touch of affronted pride.
“Alrighty then.” She told Rainbow Dash her plan.
Rainbow Dash flashed the bright grin of new hope inflamed. “Applejack, you’re awesome, you’re-”
“Go!” She urged the pegasus. “Unless you’re fixin’ to be caught in the act!”
“Er, right! Yeah! Going!”
“Come back in a bit,” Applejack shouted after her quickly. “I’ll settle the family down a mite. And I’m gonna wrangle us all into making igloos!”
Their eyes met again quickly. “Igloos,” Dash repeated. “Sounds awesome.”
“Sure does.”
Rainbow Dash was true to her word, swooping with hoof and wing-tip, finishing her snow-ligrahy quickly and darting away between the morning-lit trees with a last, fading shout of “bye!”
Maybe a minute passed, probably more like half of one, and Applejack’s family came up the trodden trail through the snow. Applejack was only just back on the ground now, puffing breath onto her metal-chilled hooves.
“Oh hey y’all. Pretty, ain’t it?”
“Eeyup.”
“You’re up early.”
“Oh, you know. Woke up.” Applejack crossed her hooves and leaned on the tree, feeling quite proud of herself. “Wait till you see the rest of it. Come on then.”
She lead them over to the edge of the big, beautifully curving words.
Happy Hearths Warming Applejack family
Love RD
Granny whistled. “That’s something.”
Apple Bloom hopped up onto her brother’s back, like a kid. “Oh hey! Lookit that. And it sure is. And it’s real pretty.”
“Eeyup.”
Applejack relaxed. It was a wonderful, crazy, huge, amazing, doubly wonderful gift. For her, and – this was the best part – also the family. No lie be written here, no siree. Applejack smiled. She whistled.
Granny Smith’s voice crackled like an old radio. “Happy Hearths Warming,” she read with deliberate slowness. “Applejack family. Love, RD.” She gave extra, drawn out emphasis to the L word, finishing lightly on the two syllables of initials.
“How do y’all feel about igloos, later? I reckon right here with these lights would be a mighty magical spot to do.”
Apple Bloom was of course all for spending a night out here. Granny Smith was against that, but not so sternly that she couldn’t be convinced otherwise. Applejack was ready for that, suggesting it’d be a nice way for her big brother and her little sister to share some quality time together. They asked about what she’d do.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll ask a friend or two to come along. We’ll see who shows.”
Then a snowball went poof! against the side of her head, Big Mac met her with an angelic innocence and surprise as if to say, who, me? and snowy Apple war was declared.
Applejack didn’t even start breakfast for another two hours, the snow was so perfect, alluring and deep. The family went inside when they were dog-tired from play, and even Granny was panting and giggling like a pony half her age. She’d not only conceded to the igloo idea, now she insisted having one of her own as well.
Granny fell into her seat by the fire and huffed a sigh of pleasant fatigue. Applejack coaxed last night’s embers to life in the fireplace. “I was just thinkin’ it’s funny,” Granny started, “that she wrote the message lopsided like that. Applejack Family. She gone and forgot the apostrophe, and the ess what should be there. What do you make of that, Applejack?”
Granny Smith had the sort of smile you could hear, when she wanted you to, and she was grinning. This one was absolutely mischievous. Big Mac too looked like he was enjoying himself, whistling under his breath and looking at everything save Applejack.
Applejack fed kindling to the fire, nursing the spark to a flame. She found herself relaxing and laughing. These twists and turns, she realized, had not spoiled the magic of her silent, perfect winter morning. In fact, they had been what made it perfect. Let her family make of the message in the snow and the ring of fairy lights what they would. It wasn’t hard to figure out; they’d understand. Applejack knew what it was. Dash did too. She was just a little slower getting there than most, in some things.
“I expect she just forgot that to put that grammar in,” Applejack said honestly. “You know how Dash rushes.” There was surely a bottle or two of special reserve cider she could pull up from the cellar for tonight. A thank-you to be shared between ponies that, words said or not, knew they cared fondly about one another.
“I think what she gave us was absolutely perfect all the same, little errors like that an’ all.” Everypony looked at her and nopony contradicted her sentiment. Applejack smiled. “Happy Hearths Warming, everypony. Belated, a’course, But still, I’d call this morning just about perfect.”
