A Chonamare Hearth's Warming
A Chonamare Hearth's Warming
Admiral Biscuit
When I was a little filly, I thought it was unfair that all the weatherponies had to work on Hearth's Warming Eve, and me and my sister had to go stay with my granddam. Sometimes Mom would come bring us home really late and other times we wouldn't get to go home until the next morning.
Then I got big enough to fly along with the other ponies and help make snowclouds and I found out how much fun it was to get a good coating of snow on Chonamare for Hearth's Warming. Everypony knew which homes had foals, and those got special attention so that there'd be plenty of new snow for them to play with.
We'd try and not put too much snow on the village green so that nopony had to struggle through it for the feast, and we'd usually keep the snow on the roads thin, too. Then there were a couple of hills that also got extra snow, for anypony who wanted to sled.
It took a lot longer to arrange than a normal snowfall, but nopony minded. Some of the reserve teams worked all day sorting out the clouds and then when we put them all together, we'd have a lot more pegasuses on the clouds than we normally did, so we could keep a good eye on the snowfall.
I was so proud the first year that my little sister came along, too, and me and Mom got to show her how to make a good Hearth's Warming snowfall, and then we all crowded into the pub at the end of the day. It was so full that it was hard to move, even though nopony but us weather pegasuses were allowed in.
This year, I was gonna get to manage a small team of pegasuses—my sister and Seafoam and Heart Bright and Sweet Bolt, and Aurora said that she thought that we were all good enough that we could put clouds over the town, which was really exciting. I was hoping that I was gonna get to be made a team leader this spring, 'cause I was good with feral weather, and so I wanted to do a really good job.
I was smart and had everypony meet up at the lighthouse, 'cause most of the other teams met at the tavern and it was kind of confusing finding who you were supposed to be flying with, plus sometimes ponies would get a drink or some food and then not want to go flying until after they'd finished it.
Me and my sister got there first, and circled around until everypony else arrived, then we flew off together to get our clouds.
We had a little bit of help getting them over town—some of the older pegasuses were helping out with cloud sorting, and since we'd gotten there before anypony else, they helped out which was really nice of them.
There wasn't an exact plan for where everything should go, so we just started setting up the clouds a little bit upwind of where we wanted them to snow, so we'd have time to get everything into position. Normally, we set snowclouds up higher, but for tonight we wanted them low so that the snow would go exactly where we wanted it to.
I didn't like how the sea winds were blowing, and Sweet Bolt noticed it, too. There was a gentle sort of gust from north, like happens before a nor'easter, and I thought about flying out to the point and getting a look at what the ocean was doing, but then I thought I was being a silly pony.
Some mares like to lead their teams by taking a high, central position and there were some advantages to that, but for just putting out normal snowclouds I didn't think it was needed. There wasn't a large area for me to supervise, and the clouds were well-behaved factory clouds. Plus, I thought that my team should have good supervision—Heart Bright had just gotten her cutie mark last spring.
We got our clouds going while it was still a little bit light outside, and the five of us landed on the leading edge of our snowstorm and peered over at the houses spread out beneath us. It was really pretty looking down through the snowflakes at the ground below.
I saw Juniper walking through the snow, and she waved up at us, so we waved back, and then all started laughing as she pranced around catching snowflakes on her tongue.
Even though we could've gone home or to the tavern—which was what Sweet Bolt kinda wanted to do—we were having so much fun that we just stayed up playing on the clouds for a little while longer, then we went over to see if they needed any more help distributing clouds.
Everypony had gotten theirs by then, and the holding area was completely empty, so I thought that we should help out anypony else that wanted it, and I promised Sweet Bolt that they wouldn't run out of food at the tavern before we got there. I said that if we were there too soon, there probably wouldn't be anything to eat, 'cause it wouldn't be cooked yet, and then she'd just have to sit in there and smell all the good food and not have any that she could eat.
I don't think she believed me, but she agreed to stay with us, so we went around town and helped shape clouds and flew down and made sure that snow was falling in the right places. Sometimes it was kinda hard to tell when you were up on top looking down through it.
So it was pretty late when we finally went to the tavern, but it was with everypony and I thought that that was a lot better than going early and just being with ourselves.
A few mares wanted to leave early, 'cause they had foals at home and so we let them eat first and the rest of us just crowded around and gossiped.
Aurora said that she thought that a storm was coming in, and almost everypony else thought so, too. So she asked for six volunteers to supplement the night patrol, and I raised my hoof, but I didn't get picked, which was disappointing.
* * *
By the next morning, I'd kind of forgotten that there might be a storm, 'cause it was Hearth's Warming, and my sister was hopping up and down on my bed. She said that we should get an early start to get the best stuff and I was a little bit tired from last night, but her enthusiasm was infectious, so I got out of bed and the two of us groomed and preened each other.
She left a note on the table for Mom, in case she got up and was worried that we were gone, and then we flew out of the house and glided down into town.
All of the clouds we'd put up last night had been spent and had drifted away, leaving the whole town glittering below us in a nice fresh blanket of snow.
We weren't the only pegasuses who had decided to get an early start; I saw Mochanut and Tira-Mi-Su flying towards the docks. I think Tira was hoping that somepony would have fresh fish but hardly any boats had gone out yesterday, so I thought she was gonna be disappointed.
Me and my sister went to Gingerbread's house first, and we weren’t disappointed. Gingerbread had made lots of cookies and set them out on trays in the yard for us. Cookies weren't the best thing to have for breakfast, but it was Hearth's Warming, so it was okay. And they were really good—she had butter cookies and cookies with jam and nutmeg cookie balls and it was hard to decide which to pick.
I thought we should fly to the bakery next and get something more substantial, even though Spindrift said she'd be happy eating nothing but cookies. I told her that her stomach wouldn't be happy with that and she thought it was worth the risk, so I said that she could take one more before we left but if she had a tummy ache later I was gonna laugh at her.
The bakery had really good bread set out for us, a really heavy rye and timothy bread that would give us lots of energy for the day, and it was even still warm.
When we flew back up, I saw Mocha and Tira flying back inland, and I wondered if they'd found anything at the docks. Maybe we should have gone there.
But then I got the smell of fresh flowers in my nose and those were really hard to come by in the wintertime, so I nudged my sister with a hoof and pointed to Spring Treat's house. She had some daylilies there and they were kind of small, but that was okay. It was hard to find fresh flowers in the wintertime at all, 'cause the bees went dormant and I guess plants didn't want to make flowers if there weren't any bees to take the pollen.
Spring Treat had a little greenhouse and maybe she had bees in it. I'd never been inside, but whenever I was close, it always smelled like fresh soil and spring around her house, which was nice, and you could see the flowers blooming through all the windows.
Spindrift thought that we should get a flower for Mom, and I thought that was a nice idea, too, so we picked the best one and flew back up to our house.
While she was putting it on the table, I stayed outside and looked at the sky. It was hard to tell, but it looked kind of dark north towards Fillydelphia, and I didn't like it. There weren't supposed to be storms on Hearth's Warming, and when my sister came back outside, I pointed it out to her.
She wasn't sure what to think about it, and she said that she wanted to make some snowponies, 'cause it was still early and that was fun, so we glided back down towards town.
There were a lot more pegasuses in the sky now, and we weren't the first to have the idea of making snowponies.
It was funnest to put snow pegasuses on roofs, and so we spent all morning making them, trying to perch them on ridgepoles as best we could. Getting the balance right was kind of tricky—if the legs weren't made right, they'd slide off before we could start putting the body on and we lost a couple of half-finished snowponies that way.
Mochanut and Tira-Mi-Su came over to help us, and then Heart Bright joined us, too, and that made it a lot easier, 'cause a couple of us could hold onto the legs until everything was stuck together and it couldn't slide off, and we took turns at that, and flying into the woods to find pine fronds to make wings out of. They were mostly stumpy wings, 'cause it wasn't nice to take too many branches from a tree.
By then, ponies in town had started to come out and admire the snow and our hoofwork on their roofs. Pretty soon some of the ground ponies found a fallow field near the bakery that had deep snow in it, and they started organizing teams for a big snowball fight, and my sister wanted to join them, so I said that I didn't mind, and I was gonna fly and see who was on day patrol and what they thought about the storm that might be coming in.
So while she and Heart Bright were picking sides, I flew off to the north of town. There was a big spit of rock there with a little hut on it. Rayito lived there, 'cause when she got too old to be on a fishing boat she wanted to keep her eyes on the ocean, and her house gave her the best view.
All of us weather ponies liked talking to her, 'cause she knew all sorts of stuff about the ocean, and we'd all decided that she was an honorary pegasus.
And I guess I hadn't been the only one who had that idea, 'cause she told me that Aurora had stopped by really early in the morning, and Morning Monarch had come by, too, and we all wanted to know if there was gonna be a storm or not.
She told me that she was sure there was, 'cause of how dark it was to the north, and how the waves were rolling in, and she showed me through her spyglass the waves fighting over the bar and I didn't like the look of that at all. It was good that all the fishing boats were in the harbor, I thought.
Rayito said that she thought it was going to start to get bad in the afternoon.
I didn't like that, but there wasn't much that could be done about feral storms. They came when they wanted to, regardless of what we wanted.
* * *
By the time I got back to town, there was already talk among the weatherponies about if there was gonna be a storm and if it was going to make landfall and if we should do anything about it and while there was some grumbling we couldn't just let a storm come in and not do anything about it even if it was Hearth's Warming.
There weren't any teams scheduled at all, not even a patrol team, but Morning Monarch wasn't having any trouble finding volunteers, and we all thought that that was the best way. Some mares just wanted to be home with their foals and none of us wanted to take that away from them. It was kind of weird, 'cause even without ever having a real plan, a lot of us sort of started clumping together in little groups and sort of picking our own partners and wingmares and by lunchtime when the clouds were obvious to anypony who wasn't blind we had an advance patrol headed out to sea, led by Sky Flower.
I'd volunteered, and I went out in the third group, which Aurora was leading. The wind had picked up and it was kind of sad to see our snow getting blown off trees and roofs by the feral storm.
Princisgrass and Zucche weren't deterred by the incoming storm, I'd noticed, and were still setting up tables outside in the green for the feast, but I was thinking by the way the wind was blowing and the first snow from the storm was lashing down that nopony was going to want to have an outside feast today, even if it was traditional.
But then I thought that we had a lot of pegasuses in the air, and if we could push the storm far enough offshore, it might not get so bad in Chonamare, and everypony could enjoy their Hearth's Warming.
We flew northeast, to try and head it off as much as we could. Probably we should have got out there sooner, 'cause then we could have set up a good counterwind that would have really helped. I think maybe Aurora was hoping that the weatherponies in Fillydelphia could have got it further offshore and maybe they'd tried and it had hooked back in, or maybe they just hadn't been able to muster enough weatherponies to fight it. It didn't matter, 'cause the storm was here now, and we had to deal with it.
I could hear a little bit of grumbling from some of the other ponies, but it was good-natured. Aurora's ears were down just the same; I think she was also wondering if maybe she could have had a smaller team set a counterstorm last night and then we wouldn't have had to go out today—I think she probably felt bad about that.
So I got up a little bit more speed so that I could get closer to the front, 'cause I was going to try and cheer her up some, but Bright Seas beat me to it. She got up next to Aurora and reached into her saddlebags and stuck a set of felt antlers on Aurora and said that now she could be Santa Hooves. Aurora said that they were silly and would probably blow off in the storm, but she didn't take them off.
We'd been joking around earlier, but as we got into position everypony got serious, and we all clustered together with Aurora at the center and she said how she wanted to line everypony up, and told us to keep close to our wingmares and keep an eye on each other and if things got nasty to fall back because the houses in town all had strong roofs and the boats were all in the harbor and we all said that we'd be careful, and Bright Seas said that we'd have this thing knocked out in plenty of time for the feast.
So then we split into our lines and began fighting, and it wasn't too long before I wasn't thinking of Hearth's Warming at all, just the clouds in front of my hooves and I was twisting and rolling with the wind, always trying not to spend too much energy fighting it when it wouldn't do any good, and pushing back whenever there was an opportunity as the winds gusted. That was the key; feral storms were really hard to stop in their tracks and sometimes they couldn't be stopped no matter how many pegasuses were in the air, but there were always soft spots and as long as they could be found, the storm could be moved.
Sometimes we lost sight of land and the ocean below but that didn't last too long. Ponies were shouting above the storm and we were all keeping a good eye on each other and how our lines were formed to make sure that we stayed strong.
The storm would slack off a little bit as clouds passed, and then it would strengthen again, and I don't think we were having too much of an effect on it, 'cause it didn't feel like it was weakening at all, but we were keeping it off land, which was good. A few clouds did get over us, but we were keeping the bulk of it out at sea.
Every now and then, I'd take a look behind me to make sure that I knew where I was in relation to Chonamare, and during a break in the squall, I thought I saw a sail near the mouth of the harbor.
Well, I was sure that I was seeing things; nopony would be crazy enough to go out in seas like this, so I rubbed my eyes, and I wasn't imagining it. The Merry Ambree was struggling into the wind, trying to get across the breakers at the harbor mouth, with a single trysail set high on her mast.
There wasn't a lot of time for gossip when we were fighting the storm, but everypony noticed the ship and we all wondered what Captain Disko was thinking.
Whenever we had a moment, we looked back at her ship, and pretty soon it got past the breakwater, and then she had room to set her sails a little bit better and to use the wind to her advantage, and then she was fighting through swells the size of houses up towards the headlands north of town.
Nopony could figure out what she was trying to do, but she was making pretty good progress. I think she was half seapony and half pegasus, the way she could sense the wind and the waves and use them to her advantage.
I could see some of the weatherponies flying down to her ship and pretty soon we found out that she'd brought some of the Hearth's Warming feast out to us, and pegasuses were taking advantages of lulls in the weather to fly down and get some food to eat and to warm up a little bit in the cabin on the ship.
We all knew she'd be safer if she stayed in the lee of the headland, 'cause she was out of the biggest waves and some of the wind, so we started shifting the teams north to give everypony a chance to land on the ship and get something to eat and drink.
It was finally my turn, and I went down along with Bright Seas and Seafoam. It was a little bit tricky getting past the rigging but we'd all done it before, so we knew to watch the waves and how the ship was gonna roll and pitch, and where it was clear of the stays and halyards, and we knew to time it so the ship was rising as we were going down.
Some of the ship pegasuses were really good and knew how to let the ship come up under their hooves and I wasn't that graceful, but I only stumbled a little bit when my hooves hit the deck and I kept my wings partway out for balance because the deck of the ship wasn't as steady as a cloud.
The food had gone cold and it was covered with salt spray even though they'd kept it inside the deckhouse, and it was the most delicious Hearth's Warming feast I'd ever had. The three of us ate our dinner as the snow and ice melted off of us, and she'd thought to bring some casks of nog aboard, too.
After we'd eaten our food we went back out on deck and took off one after another to get back to our positions and give the other weatherponies a chance at the food. Taking off was easier than landing, 'cause all I had to do was wait until I felt the deck stop moving for a moment at the peak of a wave, and then I jumped up as the boat dropped out from under me, and by the time I'd cleared the railings, I was already a couple ponylengths in the air, and before too long, the three of us were back in position against the storm.
Our team hadn't all finished eating when I heard some shouts and after I'd taken a quick look to make sure my wingmares were still where they ought to be, I looked down at the ocean, and I saw that the Merry Ambree had drifted into the bigger waves and stronger winds, and it was really rolling. Sailorponies were rushing around on the decks trying to get the sails set right again, and I saw somepony in the stern throwing a sea anchor out but it was too late. The wind caught the trysail and the boat heeled over and then we could hear the crack even from up in the clouds where we were, and the top of the mast snapped right off and was swept into the sea in a tangle of rigging.
We didn't have to be told; my flight dropped down out of the clouds to go give them whatever help we could.
As we got closer, I could see that the mainstays were still intact—the mast had broken just above them. The crew was raising a storm jib, and as I watched, the three other pegasuses who had been eating their dinner aboard the ship flew out together with a length of rope to drag the broken top of the mast clear of the ship—there was a chance that it could come down on a wave and put a hole through the hull.
Windy Wisp, who was on the crew of the Merry Ambree, flew up to the top of the mast to see how bad the damage was. Captain Disko would have better control of her boat if she could rig the mainsail, although it would have to be heavily reefed for the wind. If there was too much damage, though, she ran the risk of carrying away the rest of the mast, and then she'd almost certainly go sideways to the waves and capsize.
It turned out that she'd been lucky, and after Windy had tied a rope around the broken top of the mast to keep it from splintering any more and ran a temporary topping lift, she could get the mainsail up.
We thought that she was gonna run for the harbor, but she didn't—she said that not everypony had gotten their dinner yet, and she was going to stay out until they had, even if she only had half a mast now.
So once we got back up to the clouds, we worked even harder to fight the storm, continuing to move slowly north to keep the Merry Ambree as much in the lee of the headlands as possible.
It was starting to get dark when the northernmost flights began coming back our way, 'cause the storm was passing, and we'd kept it mostly out to sea.
As everypony started coming down, we all gathered around the Merry Ambree and circled around it, and I think we might have had enough pegasuses to carry the ship back to harbor if we'd had to.
There were enough of us that we could really help out with the wind, although there wasn't anything we could do about the waves. The ocean's just too big for that.
A cheer went up from everypony as she crossed the harbor entrance, and there was no shortage of volunteers on the docks to handle the mooring lines when she got to her berth.
I could see more than a few eyes looking up at the splintered top of her mast, and for some of the crew it was the first chance they'd gotten to really study the damage.
Lazy Jack was down on the dock, too, and I saw him looking critically at the damage. Captain Disko saw him, too, and after she'd gotten a good chance to look over her ship and make sure that all of her crew was really uninjured she shouted out some orders and then climbed off to talk to him.
It wasn't really any of my business, but I felt like it should have been, so I circled around just a little bit before flying back to town, and I saw him shaking his head and I thought that probably he was telling her that he couldn't fix it right away, and that just didn't seem fair. She shouldn't have come out to sea with us, not in a nor'easter.
But then when I flew back into town I got a really big surprise—I think we all did. Instead of the last parts of the Hearth's Warming feast in the village green, there were lumberjacks and shipwrights and carpenters working on a new mast, and they weren't working alone. Some of the younger pegasuses like my sister were hanging up lanterns and then nearly everypony who could use a plane or an adze was helping to smooth the mast under the watchful eyes of the master carpenters. Across town, I could see that the rope-yard was lit, too.
Everypony wanted to help, and there were almost too many hooves for the task but it seemed like no matter what somepony would find something else useful to do, and all of a sudden a bunch of ponies started cheering, ‘cause Bodger had just got his cutie mark, and it turned out that he wasn’t the first foal to get one—Riven Ash had gotten one out in the grove while they were topping and felling the tree.
All the beautiful snow we'd brought last night was trampled down and covered in wood shavings and bark but nopony minded that, and as the stars came out we started singing Hearth's Warming songs as we worked, and when the moon above the headlands it was finally time to carry the mast down to the docks and fit it to the Merry Ambree.
Plenty of ponies had been working down there, too, and they'd unrigged the old mast and brought it down and laid it along the pier. There were a bunch more measurements and adjustments that had to be made before we could step the new mast, and those of us who didn't really know how to build stuff just did our best to stay out of the way as the carpenters made measurements and marked out the new mast.
Normally, they'd have had to rig up some tackles to set it in place, but everypony was still eager to help, so they rigged up some ropes and all of us pegasuses grabbed hold and once the foot of the mast was in position, we started to lift it upright and held it there as the halyards and stays were flown up and tied off.
We worked through the night. Every home along the docks had its doors open and Princisgrass and Zucche kept the tavern open all night long, bringing down wagons of hot soup and mulled wine. There was a constant parade of ponies coming to the harbor with ropes for the rigging and other supplies, and much to our surprise Aurora and Morning Monarch triumphantly brought the trysail. The lighthouse keeper had spotted it in the sweep of light, and they'd gone out to get it, rescuing it before it could be torn up by rocks on the shore.
By the time dawn broke, the mast was rigged, and even though none of us had gotten any more than little naps through the night, nopony was tired at all. The whole town was out on the docks as Captain Disko got back aboard the Merry Ambree, and as the mooring lines were cast free, there was a thunder of hoofstomps so loud it was like an earthquake.
Even with everypony in town working together, there hadn't been enough time to get all the work done, and there was a boatswain up in the mast in a bosun's chair with a paint brush in her mouth.
Nopony else cast off their lines until the Merry Ambree was in the center of the harbor, and then all the fishing boats lined up behind her and made their way out into the ocean, and another cheer went up as she cleared the breakwater.
Maybe we were silly for thinking it, but it felt like it must have felt when everypony got together and fought off the Windegos like the pageant says.
There was a lot of work that still needed to be done in town, and so everypony helped clean up the village green and the carpenters sorted out their tools and brought them back to their workshops and then Aurora said that now that everything was cleaned up we ought to bring in some fresh snow for the village green so it'd be pretty again, and since we'd used up all our clouds on Hearth's Warming Eve, we had to make new ones, but nopony minded.
Morning Monarch said that we weren't supposed to do that, so we all decided that we weren't going to tell Baltimare, 'cause they didn't really need to know, and since we got most of the clouds off the tail end of the nor'easter, we didn't think anypony would complain.
By the afternoon, everypony in town except for the foals were kind of tired from all the work we'd done, and I think that there were a few mothers in town who were happy that we'd brought a bunch of new snow for their foals to play in, 'cause that gave them a chance to relax.
I fell asleep on a cloud until my sister decided it would be funny to drag my cloud down to the ground only she got it stuck on the tops of some trees and she was still struggling to get it free when I woke up. I pretended to still be asleep and while she wasn't looking I started to cut the front part of the cloud off and then when she was tugging at it it finally came apart and Spindrift went tumbling almost to the ground and that was really funny.
We went back to Gingerbread's house and got some more cookies which were the perfect thing for after a nap, and then raced around the harbor for a while, until we spotted sails off in the distance. Pretty soon, all the fishing boats were coming back into harbor and they were all riding low in the water, 'cause the storm must have driven the fish inland, and their holds were full.
So even though it was a day late, we had a proper feast on the village green, with all the fish that anypony could want, and everypony in town agreed that it had been the best Hearth's Warming ever.
Author's Note
Link to the story notes!
