//-------------------------------------------------------// Hearth’s Warming eve at Fluffle Puff’s -by Sonble- //-------------------------------------------------------// //-------------------------------------------------------// Chapter 1 //-------------------------------------------------------// Chapter 1 It is a chilly Hearth’s Warming eve and everypony has returned to their homes. Everypony except Fluffle Puff, who is walking in snow towards her home as the sun is setting in the horizon. The pink fluffy pony has a happy look in her eyes and is carrying a wrapped gift with her mouth. The present is covered with a red gift wrap and wrapped around with a stylish green ribbon, that is currently being used for carrying the present. It isn’t a big present though. It is merely a size of a pony’s hoof. What could it be? It is Hearth’s Warming eve after all. Could it be a snow globe? Maybe it is a warm sweater to show Fluffle Puff’s affection for Chrysalis? Now that would create a sweet story! Though, the present is a little bit too small size for it to be something like that… Maybe there’s a small box of chocolate inside? Oh wait. Now where were we? Oh... right! Fluffle Puff is walking towards her home. As Fluffle Puff reaches the door of her warm home, she shakes in excitement for a while before opening the door. Once Fluffle Puff enters the house, she drops the present on the entrance carpet and starts rolling on the carpet, removing the snow from her fur. With care, the present is lifted with her mouth after she is finished with rolling. Fluffle Puff heads to the living room that is decorated in red and green, the colors of Hearth’s Warming. She notices Chrysalis lying on a pink fluffy couch that is set next to the fireplace and walks in front of her with the present hanging from her mouth. Chrysalis notices Fluffle Puff and tilts her head with a blank expression. Fluffle Puff opens her mouth, dropping the present and starts licking her lips. Chrysalis levitates the present near her eyes and notices a small gift note that is attached to the present. She lets out a small, delightful hmph as she sees a drawing of a pink fur ball giving her a gift next to a Hearth’s Warming tree. Using her magic, Chrysalis begins slowly removing the ribbon and gift wrapping. Could it really be the snow globe or the small box of chocolate? Now that I think of it, it could also be pair of hoof socks. What? You want me to continue with the story? Fine. As Chrysalis slowly begins tearing off the gift wrap, it reveals something purplish red. She rips off the rest of the gift wrapping as soon as she sees the small hint of gift’s color. And the gift appears to be... AN ONION!? Why would anypony give an onion as present on Hearth’s Warming eve? It doesn’t make any sense. I am done. I am so done with this story! From this on out I’m reading this story just because I am getting paid for this. So, let us continue. “You gave me an onion?” asks Chrysalis from Fluffle Puff, who has started jumping in place with a pure excitement on her face. Confusion runs through Chrysalis’ face as she rotates the red onion in front of her face. The confusion quickly turns into boredom as she stops inspecting the onion in hope of finding some hidden puzzle. In disappointment, she opens up a window with her magic, throws the onion outside and closes the window in order to keep the house warm. Fluffle Puff instantly starts running after the onion and jumps through the window, breaking it. After a moment, the front door opens and a snowy Fluffle Puff runs back, carrying the onion with her tongue around it. She continues running to the living room and with a proud smile, she drops the onion in front of Chrysalis. The bug queen doesn’t seem to the smile because she’s lying and facing to the back of the couch. Noticing that the melted snow had made her fur wet, Fluffle Puff shakes herself in order to make herself dry. The water starts shooting around the slowly drying fluffy pony, making the onion and Chrysalis wet. Chrysalis doesn’t seem to notice it, as her chitin skin doesn’t feel the wetness nor the temperature of the water. Fluffle Puff begins to lick the wet onion. In a few seconds the pink pony is done, and the onion is dry once again. Right after that, Fluffle Puff’s eyes direct to Chrysalis’s wet tail. She walks to the tail and starts sucking it, in order to make it dry too. Chrysalis winces and quickly turns her head towards her tail. Her eyes open up wide as she notices Fluffle Puff sucking her tail and then lifts her tail up, pulling the poofy pony into the air. She starts looking Fluffle Puff into the eyes with an expression that just screams that she has had enough. Fluffle Puff stops sucking the tail and drops on the couch as the result. “Hmph. Stay here and let me show you how a proper gift is made,” says Chrysalis as she gets up off the couch and heads to the kitchen with a smirk on her lips. While Chrysalis is in the kitchen, Fluffle Puff’s ears start shaking from a loud noise that is coming from the fireplace chimney. Being curious, she bounces off the couch and gets closer to the fireplace. Suddenly, a gray pony with a red festive coat drops down from the chimney, producing a heavy thump as she hits the ground. The gray pony appears to be Derpy, but Fluffle Puff doesn’t seem to recognize her. Fluffle Puff rushes in front of her and starts jumping in place with a super excited expression, waiting for Hearth’s Warming presents. She stops jumping as she notices that the gray pony isn’t moving. Derpy’s yellow eyes keep constantly rolling on her face and her butt with a cutie mark of bubbles is pointing upwards. It was clear even to Fluffle Puff that the fallen pony wasn’t in the best shape of her life. Fluffle Puff quickly tries to make her come to her senses by hugging her, but it doesn’t seem to work as well as she expected. After ending the hug, she places her hoof on Derpy’s face and shivers a little, as she is feeling a chill running up her hoof. Fluffle Puff pull her hoof back and places it on her chin, as if she was thinking. Fluffle Puff then gasps with a happy look on her face and runs to the other side of the room, in front of a table with a burning candle in. Fluffle Puff stares at the candle’s flame for a few seconds like it had hypnotized her. Fluffle Puff lets her tongue out of her mouth and then grabs the candle with it. She returns to Derpy and drops the candle next to her in order to make her warmer. After giving a quick series of licks to the candle, she joins next to the still unconscious pony. “Pbrfftrfbrfbff-” Fluffle Puff starts blowing warm air to the gray pony’s exposed hind legs, so she would get warmer faster. Some of Fluffle Puff’s spit gets on Derpy’s legs and it starts slowly running along them, towards her crotch. With a concentrated expression, Chrysalis is levitating a small gingerbread version of herself above a gingerbread house that looks like a throne room. Just as she is about to place the gingerbread bug queen, her concentration is broken with a smell of smoke. Her levitation spell breaks, as she hears Fluffle Puff’s hysteric scream coming from the living room. After noticing her spell break, she gives out a sigh and looks towards the living room. Chrysalis starts walking quickly to the living room as she notices black smoke lingering towards her along the ceiling. She enters the living room and sees Fluffle Puff running in circles, screaming while a small part of Derpy’s festive clothes are smoldering with an dim light, releasing a thick trail of black smoke towards the ceiling. As Chrysalis notices the candle next to the gray pony, she facehooves, slowly shakes her head and takes a deep breath. Walking calmly past the panicking and constantly screaming pink pony, she reaches Derpy, levitates her and takes off the slowly smoldering coat. Chrysalis throws the coat towards the fireplace, and drops the unconscious pony on her stomach on a round, bright red carpet that lies in the center of the room. On the carpet, there are some crumbs of gingerbread cookies that somepony had eaten earlier. As the smoldering Hearth’s Warming coat hits the red bricks on the bottom of the fireplace, it instantly catches on blazing flames. Like nothing happened, Chrysalis adds in some firewood into the fireplace in order to keep the fire going. With a blank face, she walks to the ever screaming Fluffle Puff. “Stop,” she orders. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-prfftf.” Fluffle Puff’s mouth shuts and she keeps staring into Chrysalis’s eyes. “Look, she is still alive,” says Chrysalis as she directs her attention to Derpy. She pulls her head back once her eyes lay on gray pony’s soaking wet hindquarters. “AND WHAT WERE YOU DOING WITH THAT LOWLY PONY?” “Prbftf pfrffrfbrt,” answers Fluffle Puff. “You say you were warming her up? I am done!” shouts Chrysalis as walks back to the kitchen with heavy hoofsteps and her head up. In confusion, Fluffle Puff stares at Chrysalis as she walks away. “Wha- what happened?” asks Derpy with her eyes still slowly spinning in her head. Fluffle Puff notices the Hearth’s Warming pony trying to get up and inhales rapidly in sheer excitement. Letting muffled sounds from her floof covered hooves, she quickly goes to meet her hero of the Hearth’s Warming eve. But then Fluffle Puff’s short attention is drawn to the small crumbs of gingerbread that are scattered around Derpy, that is now trying to get up and sit. Fluffle Puff’s pupils dilate and her tongue starts licking the air like she was already trying to taste the sweetness of those small, sweet crumbs. Letting out loud and wet sounds of licking and using her tongue, she starts gathering all of the small sugary bits around the troubled gray pony. By beginning from the left side of Derpy and going clockwise, she is able to fill her mouth by the backside of the other pony. Fluffle Puff stops to lick her own lips while keeping her eyes close to the next crumb. Chrysalis walks angrily back to her gingerbread throne room. She starts staring at her creation with eyes full of disappointment, sadness and anger. The throne room has a crowd of ponies bowing in front of the ruler’s seat. There are lines of pillars on the both sides of the bowing ponies. The pillars are decorated with sugary coating and candies with a green and red color scheme, giving it an impression that the creator of this piece is very skillful. Between the pillars, there are hanging festive ribbons that were made of a colorful mixture of melted candies. The throne room looked astonishing so far, but it was still missing something: the ruler. Next to the throne, there was currently only a pink pile of cotton candy that appeared to have a red tongue sticking out of it. After glaring the pink cotton candy for a moment, Chrysalis’s face started to slowly soften. “Hmph. It must have been another misunderstanding,” said Chrysalis, shrugging. She levitates the missing piece of the puzzle, the gingerbread pony that represented the creator herself, and dipped the bottom part of it into already burnt melted sugar. After that, the bug queen of the bowing ponies was gracefully placed on its throne. Chrysalis stepped back and let her eyes embrace the finished gingerbread throne room. With gentle smile on her face, Chrysalis lifts up the beautiful creation of hers using her levitation magic and heads towards the living room. As she enters the room, her eyes instantly lock to Fluffle Puff, who is leaning down to the visiting pony’s rear. Chrysalis’s ears wiggle a little as she hears loud licking noises coming from behind the gray pony that is moaning out of pain. Out of shock, the Chrysalis’s jaw drops and her face quickly becomes flushed. In the silence, she drops the tasteful piece of art, that upon touching the floor shatters into small crunchy pieces. Fluffle Puff raises her head up as the loud noise of the festive sweet’s destruction travels to her ears. She looks at Chrysalis with slightly dilated eyes, munching the small crumbs she had managed to get into her mouth a while ago. Fluffle Puff’s expression grows confused when she notices Chrysalis’s shocked face. “Pbrrftfb,” says Fluffle Puff, accidentally spitting small pieces of gingerbread around her. Chrysalis notices the flying brown crumbs and the small crumbs on the carpet. Her face relaxes a bit, as she realizes that it’s just another misunderstanding. Fluffle Puff’s confusion quickly turns into a gasp of happiness as her eyes are directed to the parts of the shattered gingerbread throne room. She jumps over slowly rising up Derpy and rushes for the sugary goods, releasing soft hoof sounds on her way. Running with a fast speed, she reaches Chrysalis faster than she thought. Fluffle Puff collides with her, creating a ball of ponies that rolls into the kitchen. The pony ball hits a kitchen counter at the back of the room, making Fluffle Puff and Chrysalis to have a small bounce off the wall, which finally leads to them both lying on the floor, facing each other unconsciously. “Pbrrfbrtfrfbfrftbrf-.” Fluffle Puff keeps buzzing unconsciously, as Chrysalis begins slowly opening her own eyes. After a split second, she decides to close them in order to protect her eyes from the bits of gingerbread that are flying at her face. Shaking her head a little and making a bored expression, Chrysalis gets up into a sitting position and opens her eyes. In front of her she sees Derpy, who she had saved from the upcoming flames of fate. There is a small spot of fur missing and burnt skin on the lower part of Derpy’s left flank. The gray pony slowly walks a little closer towards the queen of bugs and flashes of pained face each time she steps forward with left hind leg. Once she is just a few hoofsteps away from Chrysalis, she gives her a little scared, yet awkward smile. “H-hi. I have no idea what happened to me. I remember going around Ponyville and sharing presents in Hearth’s Warming outfit. I can’t find my outfit anywhere. Do you know what happened to it?” asked Derpy while giving a few glances around the room, like she was trying to avoid eye contact. Chrysalis moves her head to a bit her right and looks over the little pony to the fireplace that is still in its glory. Derpy turns around and with her unnatural eyes, she looks at the fireplace, then back to Chrysalis, and then again to the fireplace, growing a little bit of more worry on her face each time she set her eyes to her coat’s final destination. “You- you burned it?” asks Derpy with a weary look on her face. “No. I just found better use for it than burning you alive with it. Even though it would have suited a worthless pony like you rather well,” replies Chrysalis with a small hint of contempt in her eyes. “That… wasn’t kindly said… Wait. Burn me alive?“ asks Derpy as she turns back towards Chrysalis. As a reply, she receives just a roll of eyes. “Yes. Anything else?” asks Chrysalis, tapping her hoof impatiently. Derpy grows a mix of confused and concerned look on her face and slowly turns her head towards her butt. “No?” asks Chrysalis with a hurrying tone in her voice. “Well.. Why is m-” said Derpy, until she was interrupted by Chrysalis’s authoritative voice. “So NOTHING it is then! Well in that case it is getting late and...” Chrysalis lifts Derpy with her levitation magic and starts walking towards the front door with the gray pony floating above her. “Wait! Why is m-” “...AND it is time for you to leave,” finishes Chrysalis, raising her voice in order to interrupt the gray pony. “But!” said Derpy, trying to get her moment to speak. “Yes, it is time for your little pony butt to go warm up to your own home.” As Chrysalis finishes with her talking, she had already opened the door and dropped Derpy from her levitation field into the snow. Derpy looks into Chrysalis’s eyes with a cheerless look in her eyes, pleading to wait for a moment. Unfortunately Chrysalis doesn’t agree with her wish and instead humphs at her and shuts the door, leaving the visiting pony outside. “Hearth’s Warming pony… right. That foolish pony didn’t even have a bag of gifts with her. Whatever she was going to give as a present. Hugs? Hmph, ponies.” mutters Chrysalis while walking towards the kitchen. At the kitchen door she notices that Fluffle Puff had recovered from the hit. Chrysalis walks to the poofy pony that is licking a bowl that was used in making gingerbread dough. “Hey,” she says, trying to get the pony’s attention. Fluffle Puff turns around and looks into Chrysalis’s eyes while still licking the air with her small pink tongue. “Follow me. I have something for you to do,” says Chrysalis as she turns and starts walking to the door that leads to the living room. The closer she gets to the door, the more relaxed her face becomes. She stops upon entering the living room, and Fluffle Puff stops by her side, waiting for what her beloved bug queen has to say. “Now clean up this mess,” says Chrysalis to her pink pony friend with a gentle smile and points towards the mess that was left from the magnificent gingerbread throne room of hers. Fluffle Puff gasps in delight and her tongue gets out in preparation for those small pieces of happiness. Driven by the thrill of hunt, Fluffle Puff jumps and dives to the pointed direction. “Pbrfrft!”