Chapters The day after Hearth’s Warming, the snow was still pink with morning light when Snowfall Frost looked out from her laboratory window at the quiet town below. Except for a few foals playing in the snow, every other pony was still sleeping off last night’s festivities.
Snowfall chuckled, then let out a full-throated whinny. She felt too good to stay in bed. She had too much to do! Clean the dirty glassware from last night, take the perishable potions out of cold storage, start the dragon’s tears decanting…
The furnace gave her a great deal of trouble. Lighting it was Snow Dash’s job, but Snowfall had given her the day off. By the time Snowfall had realized it wasn’t as simple as it looked, she’d tracked coal dust across the floor, sneezed last night’s ashes about the room, and filled the bottom of the fire pit with enough half-burnt matchsticks that it looked like she was trying to build a model of a burnt-out house. She was trying to calculate whether she had better chances of lighting it successfully, or of cleaning everything up to make it look like she hadn’t tried, when she remembered she was a unicorn, and all this nonsense with matches and newspaper and such was for those silly ponies who weren’t.
She lit the fire with a burst from her horn and giggled. How absurd, not to be a unicorn!
Before long the furnace rocks were glowing, the proper potions were laid out neatly in rows, and the blood-red mixture in the cauldron bubbled and gurgled like a happy baby. Snowfall hummed the tune of a carol she’d learned from Dash the night before as she dropped the four Hearth’s Warming presents in—the scarf Dash had given her, a jar of moisturizer from that white pony with the impractically long red dress, and two pieces of rock candy from that strange grey mare.
She held her breath. The moisturizer might have been more of an insult than a present, but she hoped it would count anyway.
The potion turned a bright glowing green, and Snowfall clapped her hooves together and whinnied. Success!
“Now, hold on, there,” a voice said out of nowhere, echoing about the room. “You sure you wanna go through with this?”
“Oh, yes!” Snowfall said. “Yes, I am!”
A ghostly cowpony hat rose from the middle of the cauldron, followed by the ghostly pony wearing it. Her face was freckled, and her mane done up in those long ponytails that were all the rage lately.
“Well, I’m the Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Past, and you and me have gotta have us...” The Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Past shook her head and blinked. “You again? Didn’t we just do this last night?”
“...Maybe,” Snowfall admitted.
The spirit rose from the cauldron and landed gracefully on the wooden floor in front of Snowfall. “And didn’t them other spirits tell you about the importance of Hearth’s Warming, and how if you cast that spell, the Windigoes will come back, everypony will freeze, and the world will be a big ball o’ snow forever and ever? And you agreed it’d be for the best to dump out that potion, forget that spell, and enjoy the spirit of camaraderie and good cheer that is Hearth’s Warming?”
Snowfall nodded. “Something like that.”
“Uh-huh.” The spirit looked around the room. “Seems to me like you got all those same gizmos and potions out as last night.”
“True,” Snowfall said. She took a step closer to the spirit.
The spirit stirred the pot of green ichor with one hoof. “This looks like the same green gooey stuff you tried to destroy Hearth’s Warming with last night.”
Snowfall trotted up to the spirit’s side and looked around the room with her. “True,” she agreed, and giggled.
The spirit sniffed at a book propped up on a nearby table. “And this here book is open to a page saying ‘A spell to destroy Hearth’s Warming Eve’ at the top.”
“Also true,” Snowfall said, leaning towards the book and brushing up against the spirit.
The spirit took a quick step away from Snowfall. “Uh-huh. Um. You got an explanation for all that? Are you just slow at cleaning up?”
“Well, you see…” Snowfall took a deep breath. “I changed my mind.”
“Come again?”
“I changed my mind,” Snowfall said. “Hearth’s Warming is a silly holiday and I want to do away with it. Again.” She walked around to the front of the spirit, getting right in her face. “Don’t try to stop me.”
“Okay,” the spirit said. She turned around and began walking away.
“Wait!” Snowfall called. “Aren’t you going to try to stop me?”
The spirit stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Not that way again. I already said my piece last night. Ain’t no sense repeating it.”
Snowfall hurried to catch up with the spirit. “I’m a slow learner! I have a terrible memory.” She smiled bashfully. “Sometimes it takes me a few times.”
The spirit narrowed her eyes at Snowfall. “Really. So what do you remember about last night?”
Snowfall stepped up close to the spirit again. “I remember the surge that ran through my body when you walked through me. It was better than the first time I accidentally electrocuted myself.” She shut her eyes and shivered.
“Um, yeah. About that.” The spirit coughed. “You didn’t happen to mention that to the other spirits, did you?”
Snowfall sighed. “It was the most thrilling feeling I’ve ever felt! Nothing comes close to it!”
“Nothing?” the spirit said. “Not even… when you get together with a feller you like, and, uh...”
“The life of a powerful unicorn is very busy,” Snowfall said. She blinked. “Do you mean that… that it feels like that, when…”
“The life of a farmer’s also busy,” the spirit said. “Afterlife, too, for that matter. Rest in peace, my ass.”
“Well.” Snowfall smiled. “It seems we both have some catching up to do.”
“I always have catching up to do,” the spirit said. “With my work .”
“I remember how you caught me up with your lariat. And then you carried me off, soaring through the sky…” Snowfall leaned into the spirit and let out a small gasp of pleasure.
“Hey!” the spirit said, jumping back. “What do you take me for, a biophiliac? It was just one time!”
“And you liked it!” Snowfall said. “Like you like this!” She lunged at the spirit and plunged into its middle.
“Whoa! Whoa! You are in my personal space!” The spirit bucked violently, accomplishing nothing at all. Then she dashed about the room trying to get loose of Snowfall, while Snowfall dashed about trying not to be gotten loose of, until the scene ended suddenly with Snowfall bound tightly in a lariat and the spirit glaring at her, both of them panting and shivering. Snowfall had a look of dazed bliss on her face and a line of drool dripping from her mouth.
“Looks like a lively one!” a male voice called. Snowfall looked over and saw a ghostly mare and stallion watching from the other side of the room. The stallion winked at her. “Beg pardon. Heard my girl’s call. Don’t mean to get in the way.”
“Oh, Annie,” the mare said. “It does my heart good to see you takin’ an interest in death agin’.”
Snowfall’s ears picked up. She lifted her head from the floor. “Are these your parents? Hello!” She greeted them by waggling the part of her right foreleg that stuck out past the knot around her legs.
“Ma! Pa! This ain’t what it looks like!” the spirit shouted.
“Don’t you fret, Annie,” the stallion said. “We always knew you was different.”
“Maybe not how different,” the mare added, eyeing Snowfall’s bound figure.
“That’s what I like about her!” Snowfall said.
“Come on, ma, let’s leave these two be,” the stallion said. He winked at Snowfall again, then poked his wife with one hoof. “Did you get that? Lively?” She flattened her ears and ignored him as the pair began to fade away.
“No!” Annie called after them. “You got the wrong idea! I ain’t… This is just my job!”
The fading spirit-ponies exchanged worried glances as they disappeared.
The spirit’s shoulder’s slumped. She turned to Snowfall, who still lay hogtied on the floor. “I swear, I love ‘em, but sometimes, I almost wish they was alive.”
Author's Note
Idea stolen from PresentPerfect.
“I’m going to destroy Hearth’s Warming,” Snowfall threatened again. “I’ll do it this time. I haven’t learned my lesson.”
“You’re bluffing,” the spirit said.
“You can’t afford to take the chance.”
“Chance of what? I can’t get any deader, sugarcube. Can’t get cold, can’t get hurt, heck, I can’t even get fat.”
“What about all the ponies still alive?”
“What about the double hooey still tied around your legs?”
Snowfall rolled and wriggled around until she could face the spirit properly. She lifted her head as high off the floor as she could. “I am a powerful unicorn,” she said, doing her best to glare imperiously at the spirit. It was difficult, because from this angle her hazy substance blended in with the white furnace smoke that crept along the ceiling. She suspected she might be glaring at Annie’s wrong end. “But, alas, while bound in your magical lasso, I am helpless!”
“It’s just a piece of rope.”
“You could do anything to me! Anything! ”
“I guess that includes ignorin’ you, then.” The spirit turned away and began nosing at the potions and relics on the shelves lining the wall. Snowfall twisted her head to watch.
“Oh, that—that blue potion,” she said, as the ghostly mare peered at a crystal bottle with a neon blue potion inside. “You might like that one. It’s a—an—enhancer of hoof-eye coordination. Go ahead, try it. I’ve got plenty!”
“Is it now?” The spirit moved on to the next bottle. “Well, good thing my hoof and eye are already coordinated.”
“Also proof against mumps, rheumatism, ague, and bad breath.”
“So’s being dead. I never heard of a hoof-eye coordination potion. More likely ‘n not it’s a afro—afro—a love potion.”
“Well! Such a suspicious pony!” Snowfall pointed her nose up indignantly. It was only a potion of heightened senses. Sadly, it was the most-seductive elixir she had on hoof. If only she hadn’t scoffed at the aphrodisiac business! If only she hadn’t given that bottle of dragon nails to Snow Dash!
“Oh!” she called out in alarm, as the spirit bent over a small animal’s skull. “Don’t touch that! Did you touch it?”
“I don’t know!” Annie said, jumping back. “I can’t hardly tell what I touch no more!”
“Are you wearing anything cotton? If you touched it, you must take off anything you’re wearing made of cotton immediately! ”
“My dress!” Annie yelped. “My petticoat!” She bent over and began tugging the ghostly garments over her head.
Snowfall rolled a little closer and propped her head up on a book that was lying on the floor to watch.
The spirit stopped, her head a smoke ring behind the translucent layers of dress and petticoat folded around it. A bright white apple mark shone on her flank.
She popped her head back out from the layers of material and turned a dark eye towards Snowfall, who smiled back appreciatively.
“Now, wait just a minute,” Annie said.
“I’ll wait as long as you want,” Snowfall sighed.
Annie shrugged her dress back on roughly and stomped over to Snowfall. “Listen, you,” she said. “I’m just doin’ my job here. I don’t want no romantic entanglements.”
“Oh, neither do I,” Snowfall said. She waved a rear hoof at the spirit. “Could you retie this? I got a little too excited, and it came loose.”
Author's Note
Gotta run. I'll write the Exciting Conclusion after lunch.
“Now, listen up,” Annie said, after she'd untied Snowfall over the other pony's objections and they'd eyed each other across the room for a while, one suspiciously, the other lasciviously. “I thought it over, and I’ve got a plan I think is mutually satisfactory.”
“Wonderful!” Snowfall said, clapping her front hooves together. “So come on over here. And,” she added in a husky voice, “bring your lasso.”
“No, mutually satisfactory.”
“That means satisfactory to me. And only one thing can satisfy me.” Snowfall ran her eyes over the spirit’s un-body and licked her lips.
The spirit took a few steps further back. “What I mean to say is, I’m not exactly the right pony for your kind of, um, needs .”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Snowfall said.
“But I know somepony who is.”
Snowfall looked confused. Then her eyes lit up. “Oh! Is Professor Flintheart a spirit now?” Her excitement faded at Annie’s look of non-recognition.
“Uh… I don’t know, but I’ve already made the call, and it’s not the kind you can take back.”
Something in Annie’s manner made Snowfall catch her breath. When she let it out, a mist appeared before her. The room, she realized, had grown colder.
Annie glanced around nervously. “I’ll be, ah, leaving now. So long. Have… fun.” She smiled awkwardly on the last word before trotting out through the window and into the sky.
Snowfall looked out the window. Was it her imagination, or was the sky darker?
No… not the sky. The room . Not quite mist or haze, but a spreading darkness, a kind of anti-light, was rolling slowly across her laboratory. The glow of the furnace, just halfway across the room, was muffled in layers of black until its oranges and yellows were crimped to a distant monochromatic gray. The sunny light coming through the window thought twice about it and decided to shine somewhere else.
Her fur stood on end of its own accord, and Snowfall became aware of a tall, hooded figure, all in black, looming over her.
“Hello again, my little pony,” the figure said in a kind alto voice. “As you may recall, I am the spirit of Hearth’s Warming future.”
The figure bent down slowly, seeming to descend on Snowfall from a great height, and without realizing it Snowfall crouched down lower and lower until she found herself lying on the floor. She felt the whiskers of the spirit’s night-blue muzzle, just a blur on the edge of Snowfall’s vision, brushing the inside of her left ear.
“I hear you are a slow learner,” the spirit whispered. Each word she spoke breath sent a pulse of warmth down the side of Snowfall’s face. Then the spirit shook her head sadly.
Snowfall’s left hind leg began to twitch involuntarily.
“Fortunately for you, I am a very patient teacher.” The sharp edge of a cold hoof ran slowly up the inside of one of Snowfall’s forelegs, made a few lingering brushes within the sensitive, thin-haired leg pits, then ran across the front of her chest and down the other leg, before settling on her flank to absent-mindedly trace out the four-points of Snowfall’s special snowflake.
“Will… will you sing for me again?” Snowfall asked.
The spirit laughed. “No, my dear. This time you will sing for me .”
The day after the day after Hearth’s Warming, Snow Dash came into her employer’s laboratory early in the morning, walked over to the furnace, and was starting to shovel out the old ashes when she noticed a large, dark sack lying between the workbench and the potions shelves. She had finished clearing out the ashes and was shovelling in new coal when the sack fell over and made a thump. She had just lit the fire and closed the grill when the sack groaned in the voice of Snowfall Frost.
Dash sprinted across the room. The sack was a pony, now lying on its side with all four legs spread wide apart, presenting its—her—underside to the ceiling.
She was dressed from head to toe—encased might be a better word—in a tough, slick black fabric Dash had never seen before, with only a few strategically placed holes. Her head was covered by a close-fitting mask of the same material, and her mouth was propped open by a black rubber ball, tied there by a cord going through a hole in the ball and around her neck. Each front hoof was tied to its matching rear hoof, and the rear hooves and legs were splayed far apart, lashed to opposite ends of a long, black iron bar.
Dash struggled with the knots holding the rubber ball in before she finally ran to get a knife. She ran back, cut the knots away, and sent the ball bouncing off into a corner of the room. The mask was held on by an elaborate system of laces and hooks, which Dash was eventually able to undo. She cast the thing to the floor, revealing the face of Snowfall Frost. Her fur was wet and matted, and smelled like sweat. Her eyes were closed.
“Snowfall! What happened? Who did this to you?”
The lavender mare’s eyes opened. She blinked several times before focusing on the blue pony before her. She still had a dazed, faraway look.
“Dash,” she said.
Dash cradled Snowfall’s head in her forelegs. “Yes, Snowfall.”
“Dash—” Snowfall coughed. Flecks of spit spattered Dash’s chin.
Dash began to cry. “I can hear you, Snowfall.”
Snowfall raised her head suddenly to stare up into Dash’s eyes with the ferocious intensity of a religious zealot.
“Dash—I love Hearth’s Warming.”
She glared at Dash as if daring her to deny it. Then her head fell back heavily into Dash’s hooves and she began to snore.
