The Gift of Giving

Chapters

It's Very Cold
Time for Some Dinner
The Caribou Carnival
Oats and Soup
Too Hot to Handle?
Something to Prove
Ever Northward
It's Warm
Good Morning...

It's Very Cold

Yitterby had better days.

Snow continually blasting on his face, the wind lifting the bangs from his eyes, making his thick and heavy saddle flap in the howling gust. Bitter cold wasn’t creeping up on him: it was attacking him, mercilessly beating the yak down with its icy wickedness numbing his hooves, and that’s despite layers upon layers of hair and fur supposed to shield him from such harsh conditions.

What lay before him, nothing but fog covering almost everything in sight. All he could discern was the next few meters of nothing but snow, snow, snow. A bit of ice here and there, then more snow to trudge through, for his overworked hooves to trudge through against frosty agony.

He never had storms like this before; that much was true. As a gust almost struck his saddle away, Yitterby yearned for home. Back there in Yakyakistan, the chill was manageable, his hair would keep him warm, and there were other yaks to talk to.

It was getting boring having nothing but the snow to smash, anyway. Not even the strength to smash things, too, was in his grasp this wintry day.

How many steps did he take now? He wasn’t sure himself. All the snow, all the ground looked the same, and nothing else was in sight nor in sound—the crunch of snow under his hooves punctuating the wind’s thundering shrieks, continually crashing on his bleak face.

One more step, one more step, one more excruciating step that made his hooves meet the snow, stepping on it and getting more numb by it. He’d gotten tired of yelping out his Ow!’s; he’d had enough pain to get used to it. Still, this step exhausted the yak out of what might’ve been his last bit of energ—

Fell to the ground with a thud!

All his body everywhere: freezing, bitingly cold and frigid by the temperature, by the wind, by the snowy ground where his face was planted on, letting him suffer a jolt of stinging freeze.

Thus, the yak shivered.

He’d never shivered in the cold before.

His warm hat had failed him. His warm horn muffs had failed him. His thick saddle had failed him.

In his bag, he could feel nothing but the tiny crumbs of long-forgotten bread and the sharp remnants of cracked coffee beans. Not a gram nor an ounce to bring him up.

Felt that stinging freeze creeping up on him as he lay there, finding no semblance of rest as the gust only grew, the howling growing into a harrowing scream of the air as snow piled up on his face, piled up on his whole being as that same freeze threatened to overcome him.

His vision blurring, his sight darkening as the cold—

Saw something different in that unclear distance. Something approaching amid the raging storm of arctic death.

A shadow?

His vigor dying, he saw the shadow approach in the gray, unstable dimness.

Thoughts swirled in his diminishing head. A passerby was most likely, perhaps coming from the other way. Or a robber. He thought it good that he had nothing left to lose, nothing left to steal, but then what? There was nothing here but the barren wasteland of snow and ice. Closest settlement he knew was a hundred miles out, and they wouldn’t be fellow yaks. Who would they be?

That escaped him as he suffered brain freeze: even his mouth was becoming caked in the thriving snow; his tongue and teeth made his nerves strike back in misery.

As his eyes fluttered, struggling to stay open and focused despite the frigid pain from without and the rising exhaustion from within, that shadow had become something more tangible, something more discernible to his poor eyes.

In the midst of the snowstorm, a creature, its figure clearing up—and, beyond the fog, he could see colors other than white and gray: the faint green of faraway trees, the brown of a snow-laden lodge....

A lodge? A place to truly rest, to slee—

His eyes shut.

The surrounding snow, the flourishing snow, the snow that was going to bury him before he wakes up. Attended to by the violent brisk gale, giving in to the winter’s demands, Yitterby breathed in one more breath.

He passed out.

But not before he could hear the creature gasp. “What? What happened to you?”

Nothing seen. Only darkness.

But, he felt something, something soft on his back. Sensed his whole body lying down on that soft thing, lying face-up.

Noticed he wasn’t freezing in the cold anymore. Still cold, but not the type of cold that’d endangered him.

He wiggled his hooves. Could feel them, all four of them, without the numbness he’d grown accustomed to during the journey’s last leg.

Caught the smell of mint. That fresh scent stimulated his nose, quickened his eyes to flash open.

Groggy at first, rubbing his blurry eyes. Then, he opened them once more, blinking them twice as he took in his new set of surroundings.

He was inside a bedroom—his back on the bed’s mattress could tell him that. Countless pine trees stood at the far wall, all spruced and tidied up in shiny glitter and streamers. The walls themselves were decorated with strings of bells, stockings, candy canes, and the odd mistletoe, adding in some herby undertones to the atmosphere. Weird colorful boxes wrapped up on the floor, some in neat stacks and bunches, others littered and strewn about from one corner to the other.

Then, his eyes rested upon the door.

By that door stood a creature.

She was watching over him bedside.

Yitterby blinked again, not recognizing her species. With a tired groan and a deep yet weakened voice: “Ugh. Who is strange creature?”

That strange creature blinked back, her smile swelling as she raised her antler-studded head, mane bobbing along. “Ah! Sorry about that! I think it’s very rude of me to introduce myself like this.”

The yak rubbed his slightly aching head, still not recognizing and wondering if this was a very polite monster talking to him. She did look a lot like a deer, though, and he believed deer weren’t monsters.

Yitterby then asked, “What is strange creature’s name?”

The deer-like creature made an O out of her mouth out of a bit of surprise. “Me? Well,” putting a hoof to her apron, letting her pink face shine naturally, “my name’s Bori, and I’m actually a reindeer.” Then, her smile fading, she continued in that chipper voice, “How are you feeling? Are you OK? You feeling sick or ill?”

Yitterby looked up at the ceiling, wondering if he was OK and not sick nor ill. Feeling fine save for the little strain tugging at his head, he nodded, smiling shyly. “Yes. Yitterby OK.”

“So, your name’s Yitterby?” Bori said, leaning in some of the way. “What a wonderful name you got there!”

Still, the yak wasn’t all that happy. Being in a stranger’s house with no explanation had done that to him when he realized it. Grunting, he also realized he hadn’t regained the energy to get up from bed. Sighing in this minuscule defeat, he turned to Bori. “Where is yak?”

Bori put on a toothy grin. Gesturing a hoof towards the whole room: “You’re in the Grove.”

Yitterby lowered his brows, despite the bangs making that hard to see for her. “Yak never heard of Grove reindeer speak of.”

This kind host then twirled her hoof around, preparing herself for an answer. “You see, Yitterby, the Grove isn’t exactly on anyone’s map. It’s way out in the Frozen North, which is practically the middle of nowhere since it’s so big,” stretching her forelegs wide, her earring bells jingling a tiny bit.

Bori then furrowed her brows. “By the way… where were you headed again? I didn’t catch that.”

The yak gulped before effecting a somber frown, putting a hoof on his lips. “Destination yak secret.”

She furrowed her brows more, looking like an inquisitive detective while brandishing a smug smile. “Are you on a mission from your leader, by chance?”

Yitterby shook his very hairy head, wearing a neutral face while taking care that his big horns didn’t scratch the bed’s headrest. “Yak neither confirm nor deny.”

Bori took a candy cane and licked it, hoping that would endear herself to him a teeny-tiny bit. “That’s OK. We respect your privacy.”

Yak raised a brow, though the bangs still concealed that from view. “Who we?”

Bori snickered, scratching her head in anxiety. “Did I forget to mention the other two reindeer here?” She grinned once again, though this beam of joy was touched with some embarrassment. “They’re Aurora and Alice—quite a treat if you see them. They’re currently wrapping up presents to give for Hearth’s Warming, and—”

“Wait!”

And the whole room trembled with the yak’s voice. All the bells jingled and jangled, playing a dissonant cacophony of high-pitched rings as the trees shook at their non-existent roots. The shuddering lanterns cast moving lights upon the whole room, giving it an uneasy feel and making Bori tremble a bit in her hooves herself.

Placed a hoof to her chest as her heart quickened its thump, eyes dilated at the sudden shout and its resulting roomquake.

Then, it was over.

All was still as everything stopped shaking, as everything bent and went back to their proper places, back to staying still.

Before anything else, Bori opened the door, poked her head down the hallway, and yelled, “Don’t worry, the two of you! Our guest’s just a little, um… surprised.”

She then closed the door as quietly and as gently as possible so she wouldn't disturb the yak.

Speaking of yaks: Bori glanced at Yitterby who was still lying on the bed. His face gave off an air of unrepentant smirking, but she could tell the yak had some remorse in there. Somewhere.

“... was I going too fast?” Bori asked softly, gazing upon at the slightly ruined decorative strings on the wall. She decided that taking the apologizing route would break the ice between her and this probably highly-strung yak. “I’ll speak slower this time if that’s the case.”

Yitterby shook his head, rubbing his forehooves together to warm himself. “Reindeer speak OK. Yak shocked at… presents.”

“Well, that’s our thing.” She tapped her antlers for emphasis, letting it glow pink as she floated a candy cane by her side. Spreading a forehoof around to gesture towards the room once again, “In this lodge, we’re making presents and gifts to send to as many creatures as we can... which won’t be a lot this year, considering this is our first time doing this. But, we’d like to spread some cheer ‘cause why not?”

She ended it with a joyful tilt of her head, her earring bells jingling again and lighting up the place with their cheerful ringing.

Thus, the yak became gripped by fear. A trembling fear. That happy smile on the reindeer’s face only conjured up images of that fateful day in his mind: when he was given the weighty responsibility of Yakyakistan’s Quester, given by none other than the prince himself—all eyes watching him, all hooves stomping to shower applause upon the lucky yak designated to serve his kingdom in such a special and unique way.

Gritted his teeth, eyes darting wildly at the whole room again. There, under the trees, were the presents he’d noticed before—the gifts. The gifts became, in his mind’s eye, great foreboding and ominous signs: pointing, painted in goofy colors and neatly tied with dainty ribbons, to none other than Bori.

Clutched in this seeping dread, he mustered the courage to clear the bangs off of his face, letting this strange Bori see his brown eyes shivering in terror at the reindeer.

Slowly raised a trembling hoof, pointing at her with it.

All he could manage at that moment for her, in a fluttering voice: “R-Reindeer… th-the chosen one?”

Bori raised her head backwards. She bit her lip at the question. “Wh-What do you mean b-by that?”

The yak slowly got up, lifting his face and keeping his bangs brushed to the side as his eyes widened, comprehending the reindeer standing before him. “Prince Roent right all along!”

Tilting her head in confusion, Bori uttered, “Um… sorry, but what was your prince right about? I really don’t get this ‘chosen one’ stuff, and I don’t know how I, uh, play into all this."

Yitterby gasped as if he’d been slapped on the face by the prince himself. “Reindeer not understand how important she is to yak!”

Then, he hopped out of bed, landing on the timber floor with a crash and a stumbling sprawl onto the carpet. Bori took a step back at this sudden touch down, and then was taken aback when the yak knelt down before her.

The yak got onto his knees and looked fixedly at the reindeer as if he were begging for mercy from the judge.

“Yitterby sent to do prince’s very important orders,” the yak began in his rough accent. “Had great ritual and ceremony and parade to send yak off. But, only yak and prince know real truth behind mission.”

Bori lowered her head more, lending her ears some more to listen to the yak’s story. Still, the mention of princes and rituals and ceremonies and parades had thrown her off. How was she that important to them? The yaks had probably never heard of her. She bet that a few hadn’t even heard of reindeer before.

He cleared his throat and coughed. “Yitterby know yaks best at everything… smashing, planting, eating—instrumentality, too! That is, until prince told yak: yaks not best at everything!”

The reindeer did her best to hide an eye-roll. She kept up the smile, though; she didn’t want to upset this yak anymore than the prince had likely done.

“Prince said yaks not best at giving gifts. Strange to yak ears!” and Yitterby demonstrated that by turning his ears up. “But, it’s true. Prince told me that snow piles and smashing sticks not best gifts. Prince know,” so, stretching his hoof out: “prince went far and wide, saw ponies give gifts and astounded by pony gifts. So different! So one-of-a-kind! Prince humbled by those gifts but kept it secret; did not want cause chaos and anarchy in dear Yakyakistan.”

The yak sighed, letting out a hint of frustration there. He didn’t notice that Bori had sat down, now more on his kneeling level.

“Yitterby chosen, though yak not know why this yak and not any other yak. Maybe Yitterby like traveling a lot. Maybe true: yak like hikes. But, Yitterby chosen anyway by prince to look for way to give gifts best, but other yaks not know that.”

The burly creature then tapped his forehooves on the floor. “So, Yitterby there, traveling around, going up and up, north and north, until bad weather and no food hurt yak and cannot take more traveling and walking. Yak thought yak failed mission and sorely disappoint prince and all yaks back in Yakyakistan. Yak lost consciousness and faint.” Then, he pointed up at the reindeer, noticing now that she’d been sitting down for some time already. “Reindeer know rest of story. Yak thank reindeer for saving yak’s life.”

After the story and the gratitude was all told, Bori did not know what to say to him. She wasn’t sure how to respond to a yak who’d went this far to look for a method on better gift giving.

So, Bori breathed out a sigh of relief. “If that’s how it is... then you better come down with me,” opening the door with her hoof with her smile only getting bigger yet still genuine. “It’s best you meet Aurora and Alice as well, so you can get the full experience, you know! I’m sure they’d be happy to help you just as I am.”

Yitterby’s eyes lightened up. Inside, he still trembled, dumbfounded that here, in this lodge, was what he’d been searching for all this time—that his journey was finally over. All the time spent in the unforgiving outside, all the suffering under increasingly frigid snowstorms, all the sorrowful and lonesome isolation with just himself and his bag—all of that led up to this, to this lodge and these reindeer.

So, without a word, he stood up and followed Bori out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

The moment Yitterby could see the living room, he was astonished by what he saw.

Heaps of piles of gifts were everywhere, creating stacks and mountains of gifts on the floor and tinier hills on the shelves. Some were in boxes along with other sorts of containers, painted with the holiday colors of red and green. Others had settled for a simple ribbon and knot: over there, a big rock had a ribbon around it, supposedly a gift to someone special.

Pine trees, too, proliferated here, as decorated if not more so as the trees he’d seen in the bedroom, glittering with their sparkly decorations alongside wreaths hanging on the walls.

Above all these gifts and trees and wreaths shone even more lanterns, many colored in green and red, too, along with the standard yellow that illuminated the house. However, he noticed that there was no sunlight coming in. The rattling windows told of the fiercesome weather outside, and that it might as well be twilight with the huge lack of visibility there.

He picked up on the furnace’s cackling by the side, where its fire danced on the burning logs, wafting the scent of warmth to his nose… and, already, he could feel even warmer, which was a joyful comfort after the nasty afternoon he’d had in the snow. A chimney pipe protruded out of the furnace, stretching past the ceiling and certainly to the turbulent elements out the confines of this safe spot.

By the furnace was another reindeer, though this one seemed younger and smaller. Her antlers, too, were smaller since they were like mere wishbones compared to Bori’s.

“Alice?” Bori called out as she made the last step down the stairs, the yak following close behind her. Gesturing to the yak who’d just stepped onto the ground floor, “I want you to meet—”

“‘—Yitterby, the yak we saved from the snowstorm’, right?” Alice said in a cocky voice, tying up a ribbon on a bottle of dragon’s toenail.

“Took the words out of my mouth,” Bori said. Then, in deadpan, her eyes half-closed in irritation: “Again.”

The gift put down, Alice then trotted up to the yak visitor, holding out a hoof and offering a hoofshake. “Pleasure to meet you, Yitterby!”

Yitterby smiled. “Yes, pleasure—”

“‘—to meet small reindeer as well!’” Alice said, attempting to mimic the yak’s voice. Then, smirking at the astounded yak, “And… hey! I’m not small!”

Bori blocked Alice with an extended hoof, barring Alice from further pestering the poor yak. “Please forgive her, uh, chutzpah,” Bori said, taking a step between her fellow reindeer and Yitterby. Now her turn to clear her throat, she then said, “This may be a lot to take in, but Alice here can... see into the future. She hasn’t quite gotten tired of using it too much yet.”

Yitterby blinked, then shook his head to shake out the confusion that’d built up there. He’d had faced strange magic before, but he’d never encountered the magic that saw into future, even if it was just the next ten seconds this time.

Alice blushed. “Heh-heh! Sorry about that.” Then, sitting down on the floor and grabbing the next item to ribbon, “At least you’re not that scared. I know that!”

“How does small reindeer know yak not too scared?” Yitterby inquired, pointing an accusing hoof at his guesser.

Alice shrugged her shoulders then flashed a sly smirk at him. “There you go! I knew you were gonna say that,” pointing a hoof back at him and narrowing her eyes down just to rub it in his face.

Yitterby’s mouth was open agape. He caught himself doing that, though, and promptly closed it. Turning his face to the side, he declared, “Not that special. Yak know small reindeer use deduction skills.”

“Let’s move on, shall we?” Bori said, her grin clearly a nervous front as she trotted past him, signaling to him that he should really move on immediately.

So, leaving Alice be (though she waved them off), they strode across to the other side of the living room. Here, Yitterby had to be careful not to step on any of the gifts of which there were plenty either scattered or organized on the carpets and rugs.

He wasn’t paying attention to Bori talking about how Alice usually chooses what gifts belong to who. Instead, he looked around, espying a bottle of perfume, a pony doll, a bunch of books, and a fancy inkwell—all to be turned into gifts if the nearby scissors, ribbons, and jars of both oil and water paint were of any indication.

There, at the other side of the room, swaying on the rocking chair, was yet another reindeer. She was rather elderly, sporting a pair of glasses and a rugged scarf around her neck.

She was also knitting holiday sweaters, letting her magic levitate the needle and the work-in-progress piece of clothing as she did her work, antlers glowing blue and all.

This aged reindeer then looked away from the sweater to greet the yak with a welcoming smile.

Floating the sweater down on the table along with the needle, she said, “Ah, it’s you! Good to see you in tip-top shape after that vile trip you’ve had!”

Yitterby must’ve guessed that she was older than him, so, out of respect, he nodded. “Yes. Yak in tip-top shape. Trip very vile, but yak survived, as old reindeer can see!”

“Mm-hmm!”, nodding her head back at him. “Must’ve been hard to eat coffee beans every half a day or so… that caffeine isn’t always good for you, and you know it!”

Yitterby took a step back, recalling both the alluring scent of coffee and that he’d, indeed, ate coffee beans raw.

“What?” the yak yelled. “How do old reindeer know yak’s eating habits?”

Bori giggled beside him, placing a hoof on his side. “That’s Aurora. She… well, makes sweaters and helps brew some tea once in a while, and she has lots of wisdom, too. But,” and raised a hoof, winking at the intrigued yak, “she’s pretty much the opposite of Alice because, ahem, she can see into the past!”

“Like history tomes?” Yitterby asked.

“Don’t have to read ‘em!” Aurora blathered, getting out of her chair and walking up to the big yak on her thin legs.

Bori chuckled, nudging the yak with her hoof and then with a tap of her antlers. “Yeah. She just knows lots of things that happened in the past... including your past.”

Yitterby’s eyes widened behind his bangs. “That… is scary. Yak not want to hear old reindeer say yak biography.”

“Wait!” Alice yelled from beside the furnace, holding up both of her forehooves and almost knocking over a glass of eggnog. “On the count to three, everybody!”

“Alice,” said Bori in a chiding tone, rubbing her foreleg in impatience, “please don’t show off—”

“One… two… three!”

A huge grumble came from Yitterby’s stomach.

All eyes were on him and his poor, famished stomach.

Yitterby lowered his head in shame, unwilling to say anything that would only make his hunger all the more obvious.

“... OK,” Bori said, putting a hoof to her chin. Facing the yak with a renewed vigor in her eyes, “You must be hungry! I could help you to some of our dinner… on the house! We were going to eat in a few minutes, anyway.”

Yitterby then kept glancing at Alice and then at Aurora, those two foreboding figures who, if Bori was telling the whole truth, had the power to know just about anything in his past and his future. Then, his mind came across Bori herself? Did she see into the present or—

“Come upstairs,” Bori said, interrupting Yitterby’s train of thought as she trotted her way up those stairs. “The dining room’s this way!”

And so, Yitterby went, careful once again to not step on any gifts and following Bori as she walked up, Aurora and Alice following him to the second floor for a hearty meal.

Time for Some Dinner

Thum! and a plate of blueberry pie was laid on the table.

The dining room was a cozy place to be. At the center was a small table fit for four and no one more. The now familiar smell of fresh mint usually filled the air here as well, but since it’s dinner time, it was replaced by the sugary aroma of pastries, baked goods, and more diverse foods on the surface: there, for instance, was a steaming hot bowl of pumpkin soup along with muffins drizzled in chocolate sauce and chocolate powder; there, too, rested strawberry tarts and custard pudding. Among them blended the mesmerizing fragrances of coffee, mocha, cocoa, and eggnog—blended and combined to produce a tantalizing, almost dizzying smorgasbord of a culinary perfume too strong for the yak’s nose to inhale all at once.

Notwithstanding that olfactory danger, Yitterby licked his lips at the sight of the grand meal set before him. He clasped his forehooves on the table, his mouth ready to dig into a delectable buffet of culinary experiences for his taste buds.

“Now, settle down there!” Aurora reproached, sitting to his left and raising a hoof at him—she now had that condescending tone of a grandmother giving her grandchildren a hard time over dining etiquette. “Yak manners may be different from ours, but that’s no excuse to cause a mess on the table, especially after what happened after your last birthday back home.”

Yitterby blushed at the thought of that birthday: past all the debris of destroyed logs and branches, he remembered opening his mouth too wide, taking a bite off of his plate and his table alongside his birthday vanilla cake. He’d also eaten the candle which had been still aflame: that was no pleasant memory.

But, Yitterby turned his blushing into an audible groan. His frown becoming a scowl, “Yak not getting more comfortable by old reindeer.”

Then, Alice scrambled in from the adjacent kitchen, hooves skidding before turning into a normal gallop as she levitated a tray of roasted candy canes; they were even charred at the tips.

“Here you go, Yitterby!” she said as she put the batch down on the table, the bright blue glow on it fading away. “A batch of Bori’s Candy Cane Surprise! I know you’ll love it.”

Yitterby now crossed his forehooves, spooked by the mere suggestion that Alice really knew ahead of time that he would love the candy canes. “Alright. Yak not getting more comfortable by small reindeer.”

Alice countered this by taking a few steps closer to him, trying to butter up to him by making puppy eyes on her face. “Come on! Loosen up! It’s just an educated guess!” having said a lie through that big smile and that adorable face.

A loud sigh exhaled from the kitchen as Bori came trotting into the dining room, mixing in some cake batter with her bowl. Looking at Aurora and Alice, she said in a kind yet stern tone, “Cut it out, you two! This is no time to show off He hasn’t all day.”

Yitterby smiled, knowing safety and order had arrived thanks to the appearance of that timely chef. “Yak agree with pink reindeer,” then, tilting his own head a bit, making sure his horn wouldn’t poke the table, “but, yak have all day to learn.”

Aurora and Bori raised their heads back together in surprise. Alice, however, winked at him, secretly telling him that she knew he was going to say that, though Yitterby adamantly ignored the gesture.

“Huh?” Bori asked, floating the mixing bowl back in the kitchen. “You… have?”

The yak nodded. He extended a hoof out to prepare his response: “Reindeer know yak journeyed out to find best gift ever and how to best give best gifts ever… ever.” Scratched his chin on that one. Still, he cracked his neck and continued: “Now yak here with gift givers of Grove. Yak now can rest and know best gift and best gift’s ways from gift giver reindeer.”

That prompted the three of them to exchange concerned glances with each other. Alice nodded to the two others with a slick smile, but Bori glared at her and Alice put up a smile that said OK! OK! I’ll keep quiet for now, but I know the outcome of this one!

Bori sighed once more, sitting down at the table and setting her utensils just right before facing the yak seated across. “I know you have this important responsibility for your fellow yaks. That’s good and all... but you must be starving after all you’ve been through in the cold!”

Yitterby stammered, turning his head left and right as his priorities began to crumble before managing, “B-But, what about best gift—”

Bori slowly raised a hoof, telling him to be quiet that way. “I know you want to figure about the best gift ever and how you and every yak would give their gifts well. You and your prince want to liven up your holidays, and that’s nice… but, now,” placing a hoof on the wooden surface, “you’re hungry, and I don’t want to see you hurt yourself like that.”

Instead of accepting this nugget of wisdom, the yak pouted and rested his pouting head on the table. “Pink reindeer now sound like Mom.”

Bori chuckled along with Aurora, their own motherly instincts showing in their posh and restrained laughter. Alice, meanwhile, was already saying “Mm-mm!” at the food without having tasted it yet; perhaps she already knew what it tastes like.

“Anyway,” Bori continued, glancing at Alice and putting her in her place, “it wouldn’t do well to keep yourself hungry, so let’s eat. We can talk about it later when, say,” now glancing at the kitchen, “we’re serving dessert. That OK with you?”

Yitterby nodded, although he was still a bit flustered that his all-important quest was being sidetracked by dinner—delicious dinner, but dinner nonetheless. However, his stomach rumbled some more, and he could do nothing but agree with the pained cries of his ravening tummy.

So, they ate.

It was all quite yummy, though he had to begrudgingly tolerate Aurora’s insistence on using a napkin to wipe his mouth instead of his own leg wrapped in cloth—it was like a built-in hankerchief that way. Despite his discomfort, he had to get over it: these were, in his mind, the chosen ones that Prince Roent had unknowingly sent him to, and it’d be a disservice to not accommodate their whims and fancies if the long-sought-for gift would be obtained that way.

Although he caught Alice wiping her mouth on the bow wrapped around her neck.

The drinks were top-notch, too. He’d drunk coffee before and this brew’s nothing special, but mocha and cocoa were quite novel to his palate. Coffee mixed with chocolate? A chocolate drink? These out-there concepts of a beverage made his head spin at first, until he actually tried them out. And then, there was that sweet, sweet eggnog....

Nevertheless, Yitterby didn’t spend the whole time just eating and drinking.

Aurora had the discipline to restrain herself from spouting out more tidbits of his own life, and Alice kept mum about what he would do in the future, but they kept up a lively conversation with the yak anyway.

Aurora didn’t do much about asking. Just listening to Yitterby’s stories about Yakyakistan life was fine for the elderly reindeer even though she probably knew of all of them. As for Alice, she was all ears, even perking her two ears up, before asking question after question about what Yakyakistan’s like now and then, doing her best not to chuckle as she knew the answers beforehoof anyway.

Bori, however, was the most talkative and the most chatty out of the four at the table. Often holding a cup to warm her forehooves with, she felt free to talk her mind openly: She asked the yak about how her food fared, and the yak replied it was all good, bringing a touch of joy in her heart. She then commented on the inclement weather, expressing the hope that a pegasus would come over; with how far off they were from civilization, she felt doubtful about that prospect. Then, Bori asked Alice if she perhaps put too much sugar into the cocoa, and Alice shook her head—there’s no such a thing as too much sugar, she asserted, much to everyone else’s laughter and to Bori’s relief.

Before the yak knew it, the massive main course was done and gone, and now there was dessert to be had despite the unhealthy amount of sugar and sweets they’d already consumed. Bori went to the kitchen and took out a tray of various chocolates and candies, all with varying measures of mint. Apparently, it was her favorite: the cool and tingling sensation flowing through one’s mouth and nose even in the cold of winter.

Everyone chowed down for dessert, the yak enjoying himself with the array of sweets and more sweets at hoof: mint fudge, mint jawbreakers, mint peanut brittle, mint chocolate, mint caramels, mint mints…. Everything had wound down to lethargic eating as the diners took their time to digest delectable desserts. Alice shone through here, happily chomping down candy after candy and baring her dirty teeth. Bori then gave her a look which Alice understood to be related to brushing teeth.

Then, while Yitterby was chewing on mint licorice, his eyes opened wide. Something hit him mentally, and he suddenly stopped moving his mouth, letting the string of sugar hanging from his lips.

This garnered a couple giggles from all three reindeer.

“Hm?” as Bori raised her brows in curiosity. “Is there something wrong with the licorice?”

“I get it if it’s not your taste,” Alice said, pumping her chest and her bow, closing her eyes as if she owned the place. “I got it from the future. It wouldn’t be invented until about three hundred years later… but, Bori broke her rule of not cooking future food because it sounded too good.”

That’s when Bori caught herself licking her lips at the sight of licorice on the table. Blushing, she turned back to Yitterby, keeping that same concerned and curious smile. “Well, what’s wrong there? Too salty?”

The yak shook his head, and gulped the sweet thing down his throat. Even if it was vomit-inducing, he felt the need to accept all the food they’d given him—the chosen ones and all that, maybe.

Yitterby then raised his hooves, saying “No... yak…” coughed, cleared his throat, rubbed his throat, even put the half-eaten licorice on his throat and rubbed his throat with it because the mint soothed him and perhaps he thought he could transfer that soothing feeling to his throat, so he could just speak—

It took a lot of their strength for the reindeer to not say Yuck! at that.

Yitterby didn’t care. He threw the half-done licorice at the garbage bucket, cleared his throat with a resounding Ahem!, and then, looking at them all, in a voice neither too loud nor too quiet:

“Best gift.”

Silence.

A chilly silence as the words echoed in their minds. The lanterns illuminated the room in a yellow glow, making the plates shine and their eyes reflect, but this did nothing to mitigate the silence’s chill.

Aurora and Alice looked to Bori, silently asking what she’s going to do.

Drawing in breath in one long gulp for air, Bori locked eyes with his and loosened her stiff head. “Oh. Is that so?”

The yak nodded, maintaining that firm rigidity that must’ve been taught to him in his homeland. “Yak apologize for ruining dinner, but yak need best gift and how give gifts best.”

“Oh, no, no, no! You didn’t ruin dinner!” Bori blurted out as if to backtrack what he’d just said, flailing her forehooves in the air. Calming down and sitting upright once more, “I w-was hoping you’d enjoy it all… and you did,” motioning a hoof towards the yak’s empty stained plate, “which is good. That’s very good.”

“But, of course,” Aurora said, fixing the glasses on the bridge of her snout, “we must grant you your request. You did come here after so many trials that not many would be willing to endure just for a gift.”

“And don’t forget to ask away!” Alice added, hopping on her chair in glee. “No matter how you swing it, it’s going to end—” and covered her mouth, blushing once again. “Oops! I can’t just give you how it ends, right?”

Yitterby made a short and soft bout of laughter, his tight lips melting a bit into a smile. “Very weird if yak know all yak say and all reindeer say before saying begins.”

Alice nodded, blushing more fiercely now, wishing the embarrassment would go away already.

Bori then placed her forehooves on the table, leaving her mint fudge cool. Focused on the yak’s eyes again, realizing that he’d parted his bangs so they’d be visible. In those eyes, Bori felt she could sense that responsibility on that one single yak. Being chosen to go on a quest for his own nation was an awfully heavy burden in any case. She really didn’t want to mess this up.

“OK,” Bori began, doing her best to keep her eyes focused, but they were already looking here and there for inspiration. “Let’s take this one step at a time. We don’t want to waste your time here since your fellow yaks are waiting for you.” Glanced to the side first, and then: “Do you feel the whole weight of Yakyakistan on your shoulders? Because I think you do, and we want to get this out of the way. So,” mellowing it out with a smile, “what exactly do you want?”

The question repeated in his head. The yak scratched said head, his very hairy head, as he let his bangs fall back and cover his eyes again.

In no-nonsense fashion, he told them, “Yak want best gift ever.”

The three reindeer exchanged glances with each other again, anxious and not knowing what to do as the winter’s freeze seeped into the room. Maybe Alice knew, but she at least made the same concerned face as the other two. Didn’t want to give it away and let Yitterby just ask her, to end it there and then.

Bori faked a cough, made the yak look straight at her. Keeping her forehooves clasped, glancing down at her stained apron, she then said, “So… uh, is that all? You did mention something about the best way to give gifts, no?”

Yitterby couldn’t believe it. Here were two reindeer who could see into opposite directions of time and glean its secrets, both held together by who’s supposedly the leader of the trio of majestic and enigmatic gift givers living in the middle of nowhere, and nowhere was tucked behind uncontrollable snowstorms and a teetering path of tiring length.

And the leader was acting quite chill about it.

It was enough for his mouth to yawn open, scratching the tip of his chin as he racked his brain, dumbfounded by this casualness. “Um… yak thought yak need to perform things for gift giver reindeer.” In his own anxiety, he tapped on the table with his hoof. “Like… um, test of patience… or test of goodwill.”

Bori rocked her head back, almost hitting her chair’s headrest. Needless to say, she was amused by the yak’s suggestion of giving out tests of character: “Well, uh, we’re… we’re not like that. We don’t want you to do things for us to get the best gift ever. We’re… um, gift givers, and gifts are free.”

The yak raised his head, incredulity written all over his face as his mouth still yawned open in disbelief. “Not even chores and washing dishes?” he further asked.

Bori rolled her eyes, giggling, and so did Alice. “If you’re really insistent on it,” Bori went on, “then you could help me wash the dishes before you go.” Upon finishing her words, she pointed at the kitchen where the ingredients of the cake still laid on the counter.

The yak nodded fast, saying, “Yes! Yak wash dishes!” Perhaps he said it with too much enthusiasm.

Aurora chuckled at that, leaning back on her chair and tugging at her old scarf. Scrutinizing Yitterby’s features: “Hmm. You’re quite different from the average yak. I wouldn’t think it’d be easy to get a yak to wash our dishes.”

Yitterby shook his head and raised his dirty plate to show he was serious about his upcoming engagement with the kitchen sink... and also to make a point. “Yak not too different from other yaks. Yak do anything to fulfill yak duty to other yaks because that yak’s job. Yitterby only doing yak’s job.”

Bori mulled those words over, brows knitting and furrowing as she looked upon her own plate for ideas. Then, it struck her.

She looked at him once more. With a more relaxed pose, “So, you’d be willing to fulfill your duty, bring home a really great gift, and teach others how to give gifts best,” and leaned forward on the table. “Wouldn’t that be your best gift ever to your fellow yaks?”

It took a while for Yitterby to get that.

When he did, he let out a wild and deep gasp, his mouth widening and cheeks stretching at that revelation. After recomposing himself, brushing his shoulders off though no dust was on them, he babbled, “Reindeer already helping lots!” and nodded more wildly, as if nodding faster would give him more points with them.

Alice nodded, too, and hopped on her chair accordingly, imitating the yak’s fast nods barely seconds ago. “Glad we can and will help!”

Thus, Yitterby helped himself to more smiles and more nodding, glad that everything was rolling around and that he’d get what he’d come here for at the cost of washing some dishes.

But, a thought cut short his internal celebration, cutting it so short and abrupt that his smiles snapped back into worrisome frowns.

Before any of the reindeer could say anything about it, Yitterby said, “But... perhaps... yaks deserve more than gift.”

Bori felt the gaze of Alice and Aurora upon her once again. She blinked twice, trying to get her mind ready. “Like how, sometimes, the best gifts aren’t things at all?”

Yitterby cocked his head and raised his hoof at that. “Ah! Gift wisdom! Yak not understand yet, but yak willing to listen to learn!”

Knowing this conversation would go a long way before finishing, she pushed her plate aside. “Well, I want to hear from you first. What do you think the yaks back in Yakyakistan deserve other than a surprise gift, a better way of giving, and… well, returning to your friends and family, Yitterby?”

The yak scrunched up his face, showing them that he was giving this question a lot of thought. Lots of it. Brows brought together like a tightly wound chain of hair, even a bead of sweat rolling down his face against the icy atmosphere.

Then, an answer having arrived, he lifted his head and declared in a low voice: “Legends.”

“...legends?” Bori muttered quickly, just loud enough for the yak to catch the word.

“Yak not explain self much,” he said, before putting a hoof to his cheek and downing the cup of coffee he’d allowed to go cold. Effecting a storytelling voice (a rough yet formal tone it had): “Prince Roent saw pony holiday called Hearth’s Warming. Pony holiday much like yak holiday: ponies give gifts and have fun. But, unlike yak holiday, ponies tell many stories. Stories of chimneys, of sleighs, of fat bearded pony giving gifts when ponies in bed. Little colts and fillies excited by stories! More excited than yaks who smile but not smile lots.”

Bori then tilted her head, noticing Aurora’s and Alice’s anxious expressions aimed at her, as if they were bottling up something inside. Turning back to the yak once more: “So… you want us to make a story for you? Is that what you want?”

The yak adamantly shook his head, his thick head hair flowing and flapping before settling down. “No. Reindeer give yak gift, and reindeer give gifts to more than yaks.” Placing a solid hoof on the table, as an air of yak earnestness came up, “What yak want is not only gift and how now. Yak want real story… from real reindeer.”

And placed the other hoof firmly on the table, surrounding his dirty plate as the ensuing silence fell upon everyone.

Bori stared at the yak with an uneasy stare, one of uncertainty. To correct that, she glanced at Alice, secretly berating herself for taking the easy way out by consulting their neighborly oracle.

Alice didn’t need to hear Bori say anything. She just nodded.

That was all Bori needed.

She looked at the yak again, eyes growing placid. “I was going to do this anyway without Alice telling me...” and then closed her eyes. She breathed in, and—

“I will be the one tell it,” Aurora said, raising her hoof and pulling her chair closer to the table. “I’m the one with all the powers of the past and what have you, so I oughta’ tell it.”

Bori snorted sadly at that, somewhat shocked at the sudden outburst. “But, Aurora—”

“You got a cake to bake, Bori,” Aurora told her, waving her off with an uncaring foreleg. “I’ll handle this one… for a while at least.”

That brought Bori back to looking at her plate again. A few seconds had to elapse before she spoke up again: “OK. Thank you, Aurora.”

The old reindeer smiled, her craggy and wrinkled face giving it a heartfelt quality.

“Alice?” Bori said, looking at the reindeer in question. “Please help me with the cake. Yitterby’s going to need some privacy for this.” Averting her gaze, “All—”

“‘—of us, actually,” Alice finished before receiving a little glare from Bori.

Then, Bori having forgiven the offense, the two took off to the kitchen, disappearing behind the walls.

The door to it closed in a pink glow.

Yitterby raised an unseen eyebrow and immediately cast a glance upon Aurora. “What that about?”

Aurora replied with a blank stare at the mess of a table, most of the plates and glasses now empty and dirty and in need of washing.

At that lonely table, they could hear the shuffling of hoofsteps, of clinks and clanks from the kitchen—the sounds of Bori and Alice making their cake. Alice would say something, and then Bori would say another thing back. There was a kindness to it, but Yitterby could feel that it was forced.

“It’s… great,” Aurora began, the frailty of her voice becoming apparent to him now and capturing his attention. “It is great... a great relief that—” shook her head and put her hoof on her cheek like she’d disapproved of what she’d just said. “But, first... will you be willing to listen to anything we’ll say?”

The yak bowed his head down in respect, although not low enough to smack his face with the plate. “Yak willing to get story to give fellow yaks good day.”

Aurora got out another chuckle, this one shorter and carefree. With her hindlegs, she pulled her chair and herself some inches away from the table, then turned it around so she could face Yitterby without turning her head around.

She gave her head a little exercise regiment: a turn’s crack here, a turn’s crack there, and it was over. After that, she fixed her glasses once more, putting them back to the bottom of her snout’s bridge. Looked up at her mature antlers, checking if there was anything stuck on them.

Delighted that she was ready to tell the tale, Aurora started: “Well, I know about Hearth’s Warming. That’s where we got the inspiration for those gifts down below... but do you, perhaps, know why the stories got to your prince?”

It was Yitterby now who leaned forward, moving her chair as well to get a better hearing. “Why?”

“Because,” and here, her smile broke out into a stirring grin, “they help make Hearth’s Warming a bit more magical. That ‘fat bearded pony’ you mentioned? Saddle Clumps or Kimble Kringle?” Brought her knee to the table, pushing her plate to the side so that there’d be nothing between her and the yak. “Every pony but the youngest know they aren’t real... but they keep it up anyway. No one would be able to go across all Equestria and drop gifts to every foal, knowing they’d be the perfect fit for them... but, that myth, that legend, lives on and gives the holiday some of its charm.”

Yitterby nodded, hoof on his chin to appear that he was listening. He was. “So… reindeer willing to tell real story? Yak not want to give false report to yaks.”

“You don’t have to give them a false report,” Aurora replied, shaking her hoof and dissuading him from telling tall tales. “You told us about real stories, yes? I’ve got no problem with that. Do you want to know why?”

The yak was about to answer, but Aurora opened her mouth before he did. Yitterby, having seen that, remained silent, ears lent to her as she said in that cold, lonely dining room at the cluttered table, wafting out a disorganized and faint smell of food—there, she said:

“Because... we’ll tell you our story.”

The Caribou Carnival

The village of Rennefer busied itself with its holiday festivities.

Resting on top of a snowy hill and surrounded by pine tree after leafless pine tree, Rennefer was having a restlessly fun night out in the friendly cold. Past the city walls, reindeer of all shapes and sizes and colors trotted around on the snow-laden paths, greeting each other a good Caribou Carnival evening under shielded lanterns lighting up the streets and making the snow there glisten, creating tips of fading white flares on the ground. The noise of greetings and farewells and just casual talk rippled through the air, accompanied by jingling bells rattling by the antlers of hooves of professional bell-jinglers.

On the frosty front yards of their wooden cabins lay piles of random items, although the residents wouldn’t call them that. These present piles, so called, contained a variety of desirable things: baked pies still piping hot, scrolls of poetry hastily written hours before, paintings done of various spots around in town, instruments like bongos and guitars—even a ring garnished with a diamond the size of a sizable brooch. At least, over there, this cabin’s owner had her antlers decorated with shiny rings, sputtering out her abundance of Thank you!’s to her lover who was grateful that they somehow appeared in the market.

There were also reindeer pulling sleighs, catching the falling snow and their relatives: the snowflakes. These snow sweepers kept the village’s paths from being snowed in, instead throwing them off to the front yards and the facades of homes and shops and market stalls for the calves to play with and for the grown-up reindeer—the bulls and cows (not bucks and does)—to use for more functional or more artful purposes, like carving big snow sculptures. There was even a snow sculpture contest being held nearby, complete with a judges’ table and an uppity host who was way too fond with the mode of speech known as shouting. Still, the sculptures were pretty to feast one’s eyes on: here, this one tried to mimic a chair; there, that one was a perfect depiction of what it would look like if a fifty-hoof tall snowflake landed on the ground.

Near the center of the town lay the market where a good majority of the reindeer were perusing the stalls. Buyer and vendor were happily chatting with each other, talking it up as they shared stories of family, friends, and personal happenings, too. The young ones and the slightly older youngsters trotted past the stands, awed and amazed by this year’s offerings. They all had the winter merchant caravans to thank for: toys and tomes from the Earth ponies of not-so-far-away Equestria, exotic spices and condiments from the zebras of the mysterious Quagga, smooth-tasting vanilla from the yaks of shivery Yakyakistan, precious gems from the dragons of the menacing Dragon Lands....

From the marketplace, they could behold the centerpiece of the village, this town’s crowning achievement: the public’s hall. Lavishly adorned with heraldry-riddled banners, it was an enormous establishment of timber, multiple stories high. Armored guards dotted the place, prepared with sharpened and bladed antlers like they had mini-swords hanging from the forks on those antlers. However, despite their imposing figures and their stoic faces, a steady stream of conversational civilians were entering the hall with no qualms attached, some following the tempting scent of exquisite food.

Inside, one long hallway was cut in the middle by a very, very, very long table, stretching from one end of the building to the other, bypassing dozens of doors, a couple of paintings, and two sporadic lines of more guards who’d been promised a trooper’s dinner later that night. Instead of chairs, the common reindeer sat on two benches, maximizing seating capacity and minimizing personal space. However, the reindeer enjoyed it: there, everyone (or roughly half of them) were on the same bench together, individual chairs unable to hold them back from freely speaking their minds and thoughts to one another, filling the hall with reindeer camaraderie. At the table itself, a line of waiters and outgoing cooks served a seemingly endless supply of dinner consisting mainly of thinbread sandwiches with jam and cabbages, pasties filled with cheese, and seasoned nettle soup with chunks of thick pasta.

At the far end of the table sat an elderly old bull. He wore glasses, had a white beard; his antlers were spruced up with jewels and gold rings, as if a crown had been exploded and its debris was considered wearable. But, he wasn’t eating like the rest of them. Instead, he was offering calves the chance to be in a painting with him, complete with a painter who’d claimed to paint a good image in five minutes tops... and he did, and so the line of happy calves chugged along under the watch of their parents who were more than proud to have their kids have a picture with the monarch.

In the midst of it all was Aurora, seated before her fresh meal. She was quite enjoying herself, keeping in touch with one of her sons, Thern, over several crispy loaves of salty bread.

“... and I then had to bring Austral to the barber shop,” Thern told with a tinge of panic in his voice before groaning. “Even paid to trim her antlers at the barber’s like a queen.”

In true grandmotherly fashion, she clucked her tongue at her grown-up son, shaking her head in filial displeasure. “That’s what they do to you if you’re like that, spoiling your calves around like you’re their uncle. You give ‘em an inch, they’ll take a kilometer!... or however they say it these days.”

“A mile, ma’,” Thern said, turning his head and his antlers away from her face and towards his food, hoping that that’d be enough to change the topic. “It’s a mile, not a kilometer.”

“I’m learning, I’m learning!” she replied fast, ending with a stifling laugh and a slap on her knee.

Before Thern could relish in this victory with a spoonful of soup, he heard a gracious ring of bells he was certain he’d heard before.

He and Aurora looked behind themselves and saw Bori trotting to them, levitating a couple plates of baked goods onto the table, their offerings still hot from the oven and the stove.

“Bori!” greeted Aurora, smiling at her and shaking her hoof. “How’s things going so far?”

Bori wiped her forehead with a floating rag, getting sweat off of her face. “You know!... the usual when it comes to the Caribou Carnival: so many things to do, making sure there’d be no spills unlike last time with unlucky Randus.”

Thern then gave Bori a wide-eyed gaze. “Randus is still alright... right? I haven’t heard from him since then!”

Bori sighed, rearranging the plates she’d just placed so they’d line up nicer. “You should’ve visited and not gone off to wait an hour before your party’s visitors arrived. As of last night, he’s fine, but he can’t get up from bed today. The boils flared up really bad.”

Thern frowned, resorting to chewing on his bread and counting on its taste to drown the regret away.

Bori knocked her antlers, looking at Aurora that way. “Sorry to make it short, but I gotta go! They need me in there!”

Aurora could’ve said her farewells, but Bori was too quick for that, having disappeared through the kitchen’s door just as another chef levitating her own plates was coming out.

Now, it was just Aurora, Thern, and the background noise of more than a hundred dining reindeer at the table.

Aurora then drank some of the somewhat tangy nettle soup, having grown attached to its green appearance which, she remembered, terrified her grandcalves when she’d introduced it to them. Then, she put the bowl down and, like a refined lady, cleaned her mouth with the provided napkin.

“Well, Thern,” Aurora continued, facing him, “you know he’s fine... but, remember what I just said to you about your daughter. It’s bad to spoil her—”

“Hi!”

And both grandmother and father yelled “Agh!” at the sight of a suddenly appearing Alice, carrying a box of things on her back.

“Got you something!” Alice said cheerfully, her antlers glowing and floating a pair of bright red bows from the box, sending them to Aurora and Thern. They were just like the bow she was wearing right now.

Thern smiled, putting it on his hoof and examining it by turning his head here and there. “Aww! It’s so cute! Austral would love it!”

Aurora shook her head, slamming her face with her hoof in severe disappoint over her doting son. Then, addressing Alice, “Thank you for the gesture, but... nah. I’m not parting with this,” pointing at her scarf.

“Come on, old-timer!” Alice prodded, nudging her on the elbow. “If you won’t part with it, why not put the bow on it? Double the appeal!”

Not so bothered by what Alice just called her, Aurora put on a smile. “I’m more than old enough to let you know: I make my choices, and you’re not going to force one of those things on me!”

Alice rolled her eyes, knowing that this was the time to retreat and fight for bows another day. “Eh, you snooze, you lose! Gotta go!” and she sprinted off, carrying her present pile with her.

Thern sipped from his eggnog, watching Alice try to present her bows to a dating couple. “What a carefree child she is!”

“What she gets when Mommy and Pappy are working overtime here almost every day for public service,” Aurora commented half-meanly. “At least they’re part-nocturnal—Alice is the sort to enjoy the nightlife, after all.”

“Isn’t the Carnival all the better at night?” Thern suggested, giving her a smug smirk.

Aurora brushed her son off with a spoon-wielding hoof. “Bah! Enjoy your meal and make sure your Austral gets here, too!”

That left Thern chuckling to himself as he gorged on hall dinner. In between bites, he glanced at his snacking mother.

“Never change, Ma’,” he whispered, low enough that she wouldn’t hear.

Hours later, it was almost midnight. The festivities inside the public’s hall had migrated outside, though multitudes still remained within the wall’s confines to eat their fifth serving, much to the dismay of some chefs who already wanted to go home.

Aurora had left the hall, but she didn’t want to join in the rowdy festivities outside. Plenty of horns were a-blowing and a-blaring along with the accompaniment of banging frame drums; out there, the hall’s courtyard had become an impromptu dance floor, with reindeer stepping and strutting and swaying to the beat in harmony. It was like a contest to see who could be the noisiest or the most melodious reindeer of the hour, and Aurora wasn’t fond of that kind of boisterous chaos.

So, she made her way home, backtracking through the marketplace and through the streets, passing by calves who called her out and wished her a good night for the Caribou Carnival. She waved them a good night, too, wearing a pleasant smile for them but secretly hoping that she’d be inside her house already.

After five more minutes of walking through the winter landscape, she reached home.

It was a neat little lodge, sitting close to the edge of the city, those city walls towering twice as tall above it. They had their guards at their posts, but they, too, were having a ball in the festival’s activities: sharing food and drink all around, telling a listful of jokes and responding with uproarious laughter, showing off their presents to each other, and, as was tradition, telling stories by the bonfire several floors above ground level.

As for Aurora’s house: it was two floors tall and looked very square—no, it was a square, topped with a slanting roof so it didn’t completely look like she was living in a cube. By her door were some potted conifers, their forever green colors matching up against the icy white of snow and frost all around.

She trotted up the door and entered.

The living room wasn’t much. It was very tiny and there were few amenities to be had here. By the corner were her natural fridges, really just lids and tiny rooms under them to keep food either hot or cold. By the window resided a rocking chair, and beside that was a bed away from the bedroom upstairs which wasn’t daunting to her figure. A few sweaters hung on the wall, showing off her skill in the art of knitting which her knitting kit on the table also showed off; it even had her name engraved on the metal box, which was a nice touch.

This closeness she’s had with her home of over half a century was a, well, close one, as she trotted to the rocking chair, wanting to curl herself up with a blanket under the warmth she’d grown used to. She’d guessed she might fall asleep on her chair, but she didn’t mind: she’d been sleeping on chairs and couches a lot lately, but at least she slept. No need to stress herself on going up the stairs just to sleep, especially when her grub was here.

So, Aurora got herself a pillow, put it on the chai—

Felt something warm.

Kept being warm.

Looked at her antlers, her suddenly warm antlers.

They were glowing, pulsating slowly but surely.

“Huh?” was all she could say at first. “Well, I never—”

Then, food. She thought of food. The antlers or whatever it was that made them glow—they reminded her of food. Something warm, something hot and nutritious to bring.

Feeling the urgency of it, Aurora rushed to her fridge lids. She took the lids off of the ground, grabbed two pies while screeching “Yow!” at how heated it was down there, retracting a reddened hoof. No time for that, though: she was a cold reindeer living in a cold town surrounded by nothing but cold, and so, following her strange new gut instincts thanks to her strangely behaving antler—thanks to that, she hurried out of the house.

Outside, now, she was using her scarf to hide the pies from plain sight. Why hide? She didn’t know why, or at least she didn’t know how to articulate why; all she could say was she had to bring them somewhere outside of Rennefer… yet, outside? The Caribou Carnival was still going on, and even if it wasn’t, she had qualms about going outside.

But her antlers glowed, urging her on, almost physically pushing her to move towards the city walls, towards the gate.

Everyone else was caught up in the festivities, telling all about the presents they got from this and for that, and so on. Aurora passed by them, others thinking that she was just celebrating the carnival in her own way: maybe she didn’t have time to prepare or hide her gift properly, which could explain her wobbling around holding something in her scarf.

After making a few turns, she was closing in on the gate.

It was a sturdy structure, arched in a mixture of wood and metal and designed to fit with the architecture of the city walls. For now, it was open, and there, the guards weren’t doing much in the way of guarding. They were partying just like everybody around them: enjoying their crunchy snacks, singing songs with their varying levels of instrumental acumen, and even bringing out a collection streamers to play around with.

Aurora gulped, though. They didn’t wear armor for nothing. They didn’t brandish weaponized antlers for nothing. One step in the wrong direction and she would have their whole attention, and it wouldn’t be the good kind of attention.

So, hunching her body a little, she changed her trotting gait into a wobble, passing through the gate in that old I’m-just-a-grandmother-passing-through kind of manner. Observing her left and right, the guards were still occupying themselves with their revelries. A few glances went her way, but even the somewhat attentive didn’t pay much mind as she left went under the gate’s arch.

Before she left the gate, though, she heard the creak of wheels and then a huge wagon rolled up to view, skidding to a halt by a pair of merchant ponies.

Merchant outsider ponies.

“What a close call there!” yelled one of the merchants, sporting a mustache and a thick accent. He was brushing his mustache with the comb his horn was floating, perhaps to remove any stray bits of snow on it, before putting it back under his hat. “Sorry, ma’am! Just in a rush, that’s all! You deerfolk wanted some big surprises right now—about the speed, there!” He looked at his partner in crime. He edged him on the wing and tugged at his scarf, ignoring the wince on his pegasus friend’s face. “What’re you waiting for, Single Flap?! Unhook the both of us and let’s get these gifts rolling!”

Aurora breathed a sigh of relief as, by then, all the guards’ attention was on the wagon, not on her.

The merchants came bearing gifts: the loaded wagon was sure of it, filled to the brim and several hooves above that. There spread packed crates and sacks full of stuff, ready to be unloaded for Rennefer’s marketplace to feast upon like with the public hall dinner.

Already, a hoofful of guards went to the wagon to help the merchants unload, though the merchants themselves were under scrutiny by more of the guards who stayed behind, receiving their cautious stares.

Catching this opportunity, Aurora whisked away to the other side of the wagon, unseen as the guards were distracted either by the cargo or the merchants, however leery security was of the ponies’ appearance and their otherness as two non-reindeer.

Aurora didn’t think about that. She merely trotted on, making sure she was trotting right in front of the big wagon and its cargo so they’d block her from her fellow deer’s sight.

It took her fifty or so steps on uncivilized snow to realize she’d done something she’d never done before.

She’d stepped outside Rennefer.

Aurora halted, getting to her own skidding in the snow. Her forehooves felt the freeze of snow piled up on them, but that only made her mind race in a confusing cluster of worries: What if they catch her now? What if they snapped out of their celebration and realized they’d just let a reindeer go out of safety?

The antlers glowed, and Aurora gasped, feeling the doubts melt away.

They were pushing her on.

Raising her eyes to see what’s ahead, she encountered a downward slope. She’d seen that slope too many times to count whenever Thern gave her a ten-minute trip through the city walls on the way to meet his friends in the guard, but she’d never traversed this slope before… or anywhere outside of Rennefer, for that matter.

Now, far away from the comforts and cares of her village, her antlers told her to not look back. She had to follow where they were leading her: forward.

Alone. Forward alone in the lonely chill of nothing but pine trees and snowy ground.

Aurora trotted forward, trying to take care not to slip and tumble over to the bottom, yet she almost did—the snow proved slippery in more than a few spots.

Then, she squinted her eyes, adjusting her glasses, so she could see the curious figures straggling in her darkened vision, straggling at the foot of this small mountain.

Shifting figures there, lit by something solitary. Maybe a lantern, maybe a torch. Too far away to distinguish what they were in this cold night’s darkness.

Aurora trotted closer and closer to these oddities in the distance, still careful not to slip or trip. Remembering the pies, she hugged it closer to her scarf and chest, although not hard enough to squish them into a mess.

Closer, closer, past the trees, over a fallen log she went.

Now, close enough to see what was going on, what these outside anomalies were:

A pony.

A pony just like the merchants she’d seen back at the gate. This one wore no clothes, however. She didn’t have a horn or a pair of wings either unlike the merchants; at least the wagon-attached lantern didn’t show it. Here lay a simple Earth pony, if Aurora recalled correctly, struggling to fit the broken wheel back into its sack-burdened wagon.

“Come on!” she could hear the mare yell before the pony struck the wheel in tired frustration. “Wh-Why don’t you work? Why can’t you just work?! Argh!”

Aurora slowed her trot to a tip-hoof, quieting herself. She wasn’t sure how to deal with an angry pony like this. This mare could be one of those scaredy types she’d heard about.

The pony struck the wheel once more, attempting to fit it into its spot in spite of itself. A few punches, a few kicks, and it almost went in.

It popped out, breaking down into ten unworkable pieces with a snap!

Aurora recoiled at the sound. So did the mare as she dropped her jaw at this latest headache.

For a while, the thick silence between the two creatures was only cut by the howling of the wind beating on their manes. The mare proved unmoving, lifelessly gazing upon her shattered wheel, upon her shattered hope.

She saw the mare slump to the ground, the lantern casting harsh lights and shadows upon her face.

“... they’re r-right,” the pony muttered, looking at her forehooves in despair. “They told me the weather’s intolerable, outside of pegasus control if I take the shortcut.”

Punched the wheel’s remains with a painful crack!

“But, I want to go home!” she cried, shouting to no one at all. “I’ve always m-made it… made it before H-Hearth’s! N-Now,” forehooves trembling… “honey’s gonna miss me... little Fetsaw and Tutti’s gonna miss me... a-and I’ll be out here, with all these gifts I couldn’t even deliver myself because th-they were right!” and stomped the ground in self-fury, in self-loathing as jets of snow and dirt shot up into the air only to splatter on her face.

“I-I’m… stubborn….”

Buried her face in her hooves.

And then the sobbing. Her sobbing. She sobbed.

Aurora closed her eyes, flattened her ears, and turned away. Gritted her teeth, before letting out a sigh at the ringing anguish of this mare.

The pony’s ears perked up, having heard the sigh.

She turned around, terrified at the reindeer standing behind her, back turned to her.

“Wh-Who are you?!” the mare yelled, backing up to the wagon as her voice echoed through the air.

She grabbed the biggest piece of her undone wheel as her shield, shivering before this mysterious reindeer.

Aurora raised her head, still unturned to the pony.

Slowly raised her hoof to the scarf.

The mare shuddered, gripping the wheel part as tightly as she could. “I know martial arts! I won’t be fooled by your tricks!”

But before the mare could even think of showing this reindeer her own set of tricks, Aurora turned around, holding up a pair of hot pies under her graying, endearing face.

“Here,” Aurora said in her aging accent. “I… I actually didn’t know someone would be out here, but… h-here you go.”

The mare’s trembling abated.

She stretched out her hoof to the pies given. Took them with her hoof, felt the heat radiating from them. She smelled the pies, eyes widening at a smell she hadn’t known in quite a while. Then, she looked up. “Wh-What k-kind of pie is this?”

“Raspberry,” Aurora said, and then her antlers glowed but she didn’t mind. “It’s raspberry, Rack Ramble.”

Rack nodded. “Really? My favorite!” and then she sank her teeth into one of the pies, munching on its sweet fruity goodness—

Until her eyes shot open, aware of something off.

“H-How…” and gulped her bite down before continuing in a stammer, “I-I n-never m-m-met you before! You n-never m-met me b-before!”, her pointed hoof shaky and making Aurora back off a few steps. Rummaging her wagon for something dangerous with her other hoof, “H-How come y-you kn-know my n-name? H-Have you been spying on me?!”

“Spying on you?” Aurora repeated, raising her voice in fear as prey instincts were beginning to kick in—what if this pony threw a spear at her? Still, she steeled herself and continued, “Why, I only knew your name because...”

Then it hit her. Her irises shrunk to the size of needles.

“I-I never asked you your name, did I?” Aurora asked softly, believing that this mare wasn’t crazy enough to throw a spear at her. At least that was her belief.

Rack shook her head, shakily putting the pies onto the wagon but keeping her eyes on Aurora—just to be safe, just to be very safe. “I h-haven’t seen a r-reindeer in my life, save f-for the paintings th-they had b-back i-in school. N-No deer c-could’ve talked to m-me at all!” Desperately looking for a weapon or maybe a sharp object of any sort but finding none in the wagon, she kept her hoof inside, trusting that the bluff would work.

It probably didn’t, since Aurora trotted closer to her, close enough that she was almost at her side. This close, though, it made her face all the more mild to look at.

“Must’ve been great there,” Aurora said, oblivious of Rack being scared enough to bare her clattering teeth. “You had a pretty good time, didn’t you? You were the prized pony in dressage back in Riverraise.”

Rack exhaled a surprised whinny at that, only to shudder more in the end. Now, she was at the edge of hugging her wagon for protection, her eyes dead on upon this incomprehensible creature.

“S-S-Stop!” she screamed or tried screaming. “You’re scaring m-me! I’ll pay you fifty bits if you just stop scaring me!”

“Scaring you with what?” Aurora said, before looking up at her antlers.

Her glowing antlers.

“W-Wait…” holding her head with her hoof, feeling a calming surge through her brain, in time with the antler’s pulsating glow. “Y-you’re right, Rack. H-How did I know?...”

This left Rack alone with her rising fear. Here came this stranger of a reindeer, who most likely had never seen her much less had talked to her before, and yet she knew about some of her life. Not too much, not even much, but what she’d said had rocked the pony to the core. Now, her hoof rummaged around, feeling for anything that could neutralize Auro—

“Don’t fear!” cried out a familiar voice echoing in the distance.

And so, Aurora and the petrified Rack Ramble turned their heads towards the source of that cry.

There, aptly coming down the slope of the hill, coming down from the sparkly lights of Rennefer at the summit, was a pair of short antlers glowing blue against the dark.

But, the voice was enough for Aurora to recognize who this newcomer was.

“Alice?!” Aurora yelled, straining her throat and cupping her mouth. “What’re you—”

“‘—doing here?’” Alice finished, skidding to a halt before her and the mare with her wagon.

Her stopping slide caused clumps of snow to fly around in the air, some landing on Aurora’s face, others landing on Rack’s. Under the lantern’s light, her youthful face could be seen; even the freckles on her cheeks could be spotted over the new scarf she was wearing around her neck.

“Well, ‘Rora,” Alice said, putting a confident hoof on Aurora’s scarf, “I felt my antlers go all glowy and tingly,” bobbing her head left and right to show her antlers off, “and I felt this weird sensation to just give this to someone!”, unwrapping the scarf from herself and then displaying it to Aurora.

It was a rather nondescript scarf, toting no design on itself except for the one color of green. However, it was heavy, good enough to warm the average reindeer in a jiffy.

Then, she looked at the pony who had been hanging on to her wagon in snowballing fear and anxiety, especially over this next supposed gift-giver.

“So, it’s you!” Alice said gladly, giving the scarf to her, smiling at her to shoo that scared face away. “What’s your name, ma’am?”

The mare gulped, swallowing the fat lump in her throat as she took the scarf—kindness to a stranger wouldn’t be too bad, as long as the stranger revealed she didn’t have knowledge over her life. Mustering up all the courage to talk to this second reindeer: “My name is—”

“—Rack Ramble,” both Alice and Rack finished together.

Alice covered her mouth, blushing right after. “Whoops! Sorry... I just… you know... I’m quick! Other deer call me out for finishing their sentences. I’m that good!”

This only brought up suspicious glares from Aurora and Rack, much more with Rack thanks to the correct guess.

“And just to let you know,” Alice winking at her, “you will make it back to Riverraise before Hearth’s Warming, because you’re gonna get a new wheel!”

To this, Rack stood there helplessly confused—eyes and mouth open in shock, ears drooping in shame. A promise like that told to her plainly: this made her senses reel, as memories of the troubles that came before this hour cascaded onto her mind, onto her heart. Now, she just wanted to sit down, curl up her knees, and cry, cry, cry.

But, she wasn’t a mare without honor or dignity, not especially an Earth pony like her.

So, to combat this promise, she slapped Alice in the face.

“Ow!”

And Alice rubbed her reddened cheeks, feeling the sting of an Earth pony slap. Grumbling, “Hey! What was that for?!”

“You can’t just say that!” Rack shrieked, pointing at Alice with a hoof ready to grab her by the neck. “You don’t know what I went through! All the sufferings I’ve suffered just to get here and face this!”, raising pieces of her destroyed wheel from the snow, as if to say that its destruction was Alice’s fault. Then, pushing the pieces almost right to the reindeer’s face, Rack yelled, “You don’t know at all! You do not!”

“Well,” Aurora began, lifting her head and her glowing antlers, catching Alice’s and Rack’s attention with her unexpected words, “I know.”

“What?!” and Rack staggered back to the wagon, her stance starting to fail and crumble. “How—”

“You’ve always made it back home before the holidays, didn’t you?” Aurora began, her antlers glowing brighter than ever before like a beacon. “Then, you thought the new neighbors were jealous enough to harp on about bad weather this winter,” picked up a piece of snow, and then letting it fall back to the ground—her eyeglasses reflecting the lantern’s own glow... “but it turns out, they were right, you were wrong, and you had to learn it the hard way by too many snowstorms and snowslides. Now, you’re stuck here with a wagon that’s suffered a lot as well, enough to break down and make a wheel go out of place… and here we are,” gesturing towards her, Alice, and then Rack.

The mare’s dread only grew. Silent for only a few seconds, she turned to hyperventilating to cope with the glut of information she’d thought no stranger would ever know.

“Wow,” Alice said to Aurora, smiling a smile that spoke along the lines of I didn’t know you could do that. “Did she tell you her life story or what?”

“She didn’t,” Aurora replied, taking some time off from seeing this terrified pony slumping by the wagon again. She looked up at her glowing antlers. “And… that’s not right. That’s not right at all.”

Alice followed her eyes to those antlers as well. “Yeah… both our antlers are glowy and tingly.” Then, she stepped back and gasped, facing Aurora with a potential oracle in her mind. “D-Did you also feel the… obligation to bring something with you outside Rennefer?”

Aurora nodded, lips puckering as the mystery of their antlers and their urges developed further: to what end, they didn’t know.

“I guess you experienced it, too, didn’t you?” Aurora said.

Alice nodded back. “Uh-huh.”

That line of conversation now adrift, the reindeer turned back to Rack Ramble, resting her head on the wagon, sitting on the ground like she had not much else to do but mope.

Alice wasn’t fazed by this pathetic mare. Instead, she felt inspired to approach her, even as she hid her face from view with her forehooves.

“Trust me, Rack!” Alice said as cheerfully as ever. “Just like I said, you will come home in time! Do you wanna know why?”

Rack wrested her hooves away from her face just to say, “I don’t wanna know—”

“Because Bori’s going to give you a new wheel,” and Alice ended it with a flourishing grin, sure that this was enough to make Rack smile again.

But what Rack did again was slap her in the face. “How dare you say such words to me when you just met me?!”

“She’s right,” Aurora was quick to add, looking at Alice in suspicion while the latter was rubbing her cheek again.

“That’s because I know it’s gonna happen,” Alice said, her voice assured in defiance of her throbbing, reddening cheek. Then, raising her hoof and counting with it, all eyes on it—“the answer’s coming in three… two… one—”

“Agh!”

And they all looked to the left.

They saw a glowing pink something flying uncontrollably, somehow going around the trees in the pine forest but not without brushing against its leafy branches. Gracelessly swinging here and there, it rocketed to the sky, and then they could hear it screaming (and some jingling bells) as it whistled down, down, down—

Stopped right before it could’ve crashed on the ground.

Then, the pink reindeer dropped gracefully, getting half of her body and all of her apron covered in snow.

Dropping a whole new wheel she’d held on to for dear life during that whole crazed flight.

It was now Aurora and Alice’s turn to drop their jaws at this next visitor to the scene.

The mare, too, joined in the jaw-dropping festivities, although she likely wasn’t feeling festive about it.

What was left, then, was more silence.

Grunts from the pink reindeer as she opened her eyes, woozy and wobbly on her legs at first, and then slowly recovering, slowly getting back to her four hooves as she wiped the snow and dirt off of herself.

Standing before Rack now was Bori. Her mane was frazzled and her coat was still a nock dirty, but the other reindeer recognized her as good ol’ Bori.

She shyly waved at the pony. “Uh… hi?” Then, turning to Aurora and Alice, she changed her tone and said, “Um, what’re you doing here? Did you get the same thing, too, with the antlers and….”

Bori trailed off, as Aurora and Alice occupied themselves with gazing upon Rack.

So, Bori looked.

By the wagon, Rack touched this new wheel. She slowly lifted it up under the lantern, inspected its rim and its spokes in the illumination. Then, with a gasp of hope, she tried to fit it into the wagon.

Snapped in.

It fit.

The mare gasped again, this time louder, with thrill and exhilaration bubbling in her throat. Standing back to behold lay her eyes upon this miracle: “It’s… it’s—”

“—perfect?” Alice guessed, before receiving a pinch of the ear from Aurora to stop finishing other’s sentences. It was rude, apparently.

The mare neglected the guess. She instead looked at the wagon some more—it couldn’t be this good, could it? So, she pushed the wagon a bit, rolling the wheel a meter or so to test it out.

No creaks, no aches.

It didn’t break.

The mare whipped her head towards the three reindeer. Those three reindeer, standing in this dark winter night away from home, looking back at her with all antlers aglow.

Rack looked at them. Then, she put her head in the wagon, seeing the pies Aurora had given her. Next, she felt the scarf around her neck, the scarf Alice had given her. Finally, she gazed upon the new wheel on her wagon, loving this timely gift Bori had given her.

“Why…” and Rack sniffed, “I-I don’t know who you reindeer are... but… thank you!”

Bori smiled, and so did Aurora and Alice. “I don’t know what we just did,” said Bori, hesitating for a short while… “but, you’re welcome.”

Then, Rack looked up at the sky, seeing the moon high above them all. “Well, I gotta go! I’ve lost enough time as it is! It’s a three-day trip… but, it wouldn’t be three days if it weren’t for you!”

So, they waved each other goodbye before the mare hooked herself to the wagon, exchanging farewell pleasantries.

After that, Rack galloped away, disappearing into the snowy landscape and heading towards the mountains in the horizon.

Oats and Soup

Yitterby wiped his eyes, taking the tale’s pause to collect his thoughts.

Aurora simply nodded, creating a rather cheeky grin. “That’s what happened, as it happened. We were… quite surprised, to say the least. Suddenly, I knew bits and pieces of some random pony’s life, and so did Alice but only the bits and pieces that would happen. Bori, meanwhile, had random surges of levitating flight.” Shaking her head as she recalled that past night once more, “it was… disorienting for the three of us.”

“And that how reindeer got here with strange gift powers?” Yitterby asked curiously, leaning over the table with his head.

Aurora chuckled. She then produced her shiny white teeth, those pearly whites glowing under the room’s lantern lights.

“No, it isn’t like that,” she said. “Truth be told, we all thought it was just a bout of weird magic... just a passing, temporary thing. But it happened again.” Smiling and showing her teeth proudly again. “Twice more, actually.”

Yitterby clasped his forehooves, now eager to hear more of the story. At least he ‘d be lugging over a longer story to tell, something that could captivate more of his fellow yaks in his own hut. Over Snilldar Fest, perhaps, it might even become Yakyakistan’s new meeting place.

Ignorant of the yak’s ambition to relay her story so grandly, Aurora continued: “So… where was I? Ah, let me finish this one first: After our little incident with Rack, we had to return to Rennefer. Of course, we’d be in some serious trouble if we were spotted by the guards, but we had to take the chance anyway. When we got up, it turned out they’d just spilled five sacks’ worth of imported berries on the ground. Everyone was trying to clean the mess up at the gate—all the guards and the merchants, too—while we snuck in unnoticed.”

She took a sip of water from her mug. “After, we parted ways. Bori got tired from all the flying and the cooking before that, so she called it an early night. Alice still had a couple boxes’ worth of bows to give—she made all of them, don’t you know?” Aurora then drank some more water, clearing her throat that way. “Me? I went back home. Heh… I almost knocked Thern out of surprise. Turned out he was waiting at my house to give me yet another gift. Asked me, ‘Where’ve you been?' but I merely said that I just went around. He bought it, I got to bed, and tucked in.”

The yak nodded, slowly digesting the end of this first part, trying to store it in his memory as vividly as he could. Then, after dusting off his shoulders and patting his freakishly long hair, he asked, “What next?”

Aurora smiled, putting the mug away and retrieving a cup of eggnog for herself. “What next? Well: the next day, we didn’t get to see each other at first. Bori had to be with all the other cooks and chefs in the public hall’s kitchen—they were going to top last night’s feast with an even bigger feast! Alice was out doing her own thing with her peers, hanging out with them as teenage calves would. I myself lounged at the market, browsing the jumble of things on sale for the rest of my children and grandchildren. When night came... I wasn’t expecting my antlers to glow again...”

The yak scooted his chair closer when Aurora took in one deep breath before continuing the second part.

“Isn’t she the cutest?” Thern boasted, squeezing his daughter’s cheek, smiling at an unimpressed Aurora.

“Father!” Austral moaned, brushing the intrusive hoof off of her yellow fur. “We’re in public!”

By the street of busy lights and busy talk of the carnival, Aurora couldn’t help but smile for a brief moment, not at how cute her grandcalf was, but at how adorable her son could be when he lived in doting mode which was all the time. He had given Austral a couple bows to decorate her antlers with, and they made her look elegant, though whether she approved of it was another matter.

“Well, Ma’” Thern began, scratching his itchy neck, “I heard they’re also having a shipment of scarves coming in today straight from Canterlot.” Turning to his daughter to cutely squeeze her cheek another time against her will, “You know how fancy those scarves are, with all their intricate designs?”

Austral winced from the pinch and then rolled her eyes. “No, I don’t.”

Aurora slyly smirked at Thern. Her arched brows deftly reminded him of yesternight’s conversation, of the act of spoiling and what not.

Then, Thern widened his eyes at a passer-by carrying a huge gift on his back. “Hey, Buddy! Is that for me?!”

“Aww! This was supposed to be a surprise!”

Thern raised a leg, ready to trot off. “Stay right there! Got you now, Buddy!”

And the cow hopped off of the sidewalk to meet his gift-bearing friend across the street.

This left Aurora and Austra to their own devices by the curb.

Aurora sighed, her short breath becoming a little fleeting cloud before dissipating. She then turned to Austral who was watching her father exude eternal joy—even giving a surprise gift of his own to Buddy.

Austral detected Aurora’s look, however. Without looking back, in an exasperated voice: “What is it, Grandma? Gonna give me another one of your special talk downs?”

“Maybe,” Aurora said, seeing Austral roll her eyes again before the old cow tugged at her own saddle bag. “Or, maybe not.”

Austral stiffened. “Huh?”

Aurora walked to Austral’s side, placed a hoof on her shoulder, let her eyes gaze upon the myriad of bows hanging from Austral’s trimmed antlers. “I talked to your father about how you’ve been treating him… or, rather, how he’s been treating you: coddling you endlessly like you’re his little ‘numpkin’.”

Austral stuck her tongue out. “I’m, what, twenty-one and he still calls me—”

“Numpkin!” cried Alice.

Both Aurora and Austral screamed.

When they calmed down from their hideous screaming, they saw Alice carrying a little open box on her back.

“Sorry for the scare,” Alice said, nervously shifting her eyes about, “but I just wanted to let you know that my offer on my bows is still on!”

Aurora scratched her chin, left wondering. “What offer?”

Austral, meanwhile, was miffed by Alice’s outburst of numpkin. “You don’t have to rub the word in my face, Alice.”

This made the offending teenage calf scratch her growing antlers in more piling anxiety. She faced her victim with, “Heh-heh! I’m sorry for that, too! I hope you’re still doing well with Thorn!”

“His name is Thern!” Austral lashed out, growling and stepping forward with a snarling face.

Alice backed away, creeping up on Alice and her saddle bag, eyes still on Austral to ensure that she wouldn’t disappear if she ever looked away.

Aurora chuckled at the display of rough camaraderie. “Well, now, Alice,” she began, “I know you’re excited for—hey!”

With Alice caught closing Aurora’s saddle bag, having just removed her head from the inside.

“Hey!” Aurora repeated, louder and raising a balled up hoof ready to smack. “Who told ‘ya it’s the time for stealing?!”

“Whoops! Gotta go!”

And Alice zipped off, gliding on the snow-touched streets with ease, almost like an ice skater but before ice skating begun existing.

Austral sighed and wagged her head with Alice drifting out of sight. “There she goes, Grams, there she—”

Her mouth slammed shut, slowly stepping back, laying her eyes on the luminous anomaly before her.

“Uh, wh-what’s that?” she asked Aurora, pointing at her antlers.

“What’s what?” and Aurora looked up. She saw her antlers glowing blue, feeling that tingling sensation once more.

She bit her tongue in fear. Her head whizzed about, turning everywhere to see a few strangers looking at her glowing antlers, one or two pointing there and grabbing more of their friends’ attention.

Aurora felt a pull, irises shrinking. Then, she put her hoof on Austral’s snout and said, “Um, t-tell your father I have to go! I… I’ll try to fix my, eh, broken antlers… got something from the doctor... must be magic leaking—faulty antlers!”

“Faulty antlers?!” Austral yelled after removing the hoof from her snout.

But Aurora was already hobbling out of the conversation, trying to sneak away from everyone else’s eyes.

Aurora left Austral out in the cold. She didn’t look back to see what her granddaughter was doing: whether it was impatiently tapping her hoof or just straight out leaving and giving up on the old cow.

As she passed by several more curious spectators, she overheard the whispers all about her faulty glowy antlers. A sympathetic teen offered her a dozen bits and some help for a trip to the doctor, but Aurora declined.

Sensing the tug of the antlers towards the town gate, she did her best to look natural: levitated her scarf, making it glow in front of her, hoping that glow would excuse her flashy, weirdly-behaving antlers.

There she was, less than a hundred hooves away from the guards and their imposing presence. Surely, there wouldn’t be a pair of pony merchants distracting them with their wares tonight.

Except, a pair of pony merchants were distracting them with their wares tonight.

“... and I was like, ‘Really, Flap? You have no business using dough on a pan!’ Really… can you believe this guy?! He’s so full of himself, he’s calling his new creation ‘flapjacks’! The nerve!”

The same unicorn from yesterday was busy lounging by the wall, entertaining the guards around him as Single Flap and a few more guards put the wagon’s cargo onto the ground.

It helped that the unicorn was out of the way, not even close to the gate. The guards nearer the wagon outside city limits were busy assisting Single Flap and checking out what was inside the sacks and crates—some cracking their smiles at the goodies in there.

So, donning her kind elderly face again, she trotted to the gate, hoping that her status as an old cow would give her enough leeway to make it outside.
“Halt!”

Gulped, almost dropped the scarf mid-levitation. Muscles tensed, hooves still in place.

The guard, however, wasn’t looking at her. Instead, the armored bull was keeping a cruel eye on Single Flap who was doing double duty by carrying sacks on both wings.

“You forgot your back!” the guard yelled.

The pegasus began to whimper, looking up from his burdened stance. “But, sir, I-I—”

A guard dropped a sack of potatoes and cheese wheels onto the pony’s back, the pegasus bending and about to break but still holding his own.

Aurora felt the need to help this poor pony out. Perhaps she could tell the guards that they were hurting this miserable pony, inflicting him with a backache. However, she still had to keep up her stealth; she wasn’t noticed yet, but stepping out of the way to save Flap would blow her cover.

So she sidestepped and discreetly walked past the gate, around the wagon, and, in a flash, she was brisking down the cold and snowy hill in cold and snowy weather.

It was a trip made easier thanks to experience. A few logs and bumps she recognized, and she avoided or walked over them to no expense. After a few minutes’ worth of steps downhill, she lifted her head to see what lay at the foot of the mountain this time.

A familiar sight: a wagon-attached lantern set against the blinding pitch black darkness of the freezing night. Flickering under the vague light was a shadow, an equine one wrapping something around its leg.

Aurora stood still and kept her balance, trying to discern this stranger’s details. She could hear aggravated mumbling, but she couldn’t spell out a single word. All she knew was, from the looks of it, this probable pony looked stronger and squarer. Perhaps a stallion.

Hating to scare this pony off into punching her senseless, she coughed from a short distance away.

The figure perched its head up, raising its ears.

“Who are you?” it asked in a snippy male voice.

Aurora coughed again, glancing at her saddle bag before trotting closer to him.

As she got nearer, she could see his scraggy features: a growing yellow stubble blooming early on his face; a hat half-torn and with plenty threads threatening to come apart; a rugged coat with several healing scars and bruises, providing him with a measly appearance… a limping leg he was resting on another knee, trying to wrap it with the last vestige of cloth from his cart.

“Oh, no!” was all Aurora said, galloping up to his side.

She got a closer look at the affected limb. Becoming the audience to his attempts at keeping himself alive, Aurora watched the stallion rip off another piece of cloth with his sharp teeth, only to shiver with a cold gust rushing by him.

“You must be really hurt!” Aurora said.

“Thanks, Miss Obvious,” he replied, rolling his eyes in tired annoyance.

He winced in pain as he tightened the cloth’s grip on his broken leg, struggling to not lose his teeth’s clutch on the fabric.

Alone with him in the cold and dark night, Aurora frowned. She realized she hadn’t felt the urge to grab anything medical from home, although her saddle bag had joined her.

“Look, ma’am,” he said, gruff and to the point, facing Aurora with those weary, bleary brown eyes, “I know you folk’s supposed to be all kind and cuddly to a somepony down and out, but if you don’t have anything useful…”

Turned his head away from her, confronting a long and arduous path up the faraway mountains barely visible save for the moon’s glimmer upon them. He swallowed his own saliva, clenching his jaw...

“... then scram.”

A heart fell. It was hers, ignorant that she’d put a hoof to her chest. All this trouble getting past the guards unnoticed, this traveling down a mountain she’d only traversed once before, this sympathy for a pony in need: all for nothing but an impolite invitation to leave?

“Unless ya’ got something in that pouch of yours, missy.”

She glanced at her saddle bag again, her heart now rising from its fall. A little smile spread across her face.

“Actually...” she began.

Aurora opened her saddle bag, poking her muzzle in to grab whatever stuck there at the bottom.

“Huh… it looks like I have a couple more cloths for you if you ever run out for your leg. A tiny jar of cold medicinal water I keep in case of emergency. Also some… h-huh?”

The stallion looked up, biting a spare tooth and making himself grisly. “Tell me what it is now! Can’t you see I have places to go?” and pointed at his battered cart, a crate and a sack damaged and slashed. “No time for hesitation, please! Can’t you—”

Aurora took out a poultice and a little lidded bowl, shining mildly under the yellowish lantern fighting to stay still against the wind.

“Wh… where did this come from?” Aurora said, holding the mysterious items out with her hoof, mouth agape and eyes agawk.

“I don’t know!” the stallion said, exasperated and his throat wearing out. “You’re the one with the bag, not me!”

“Yes, I am,” Aurora answered in a declining shout, “but I don’t remember putting on these!” upon which she held her hooves out again, hoisting both poultice and bowl.

“Agh! Gimmie that!”

He swiped the poultice from Aurora’s hooves, gone in a breeze with no time for Aurora to react. She opened her mouth to chew this young stallion out, but she stopped when he unwound the cloth in flinching pain.

With a wince or two, he removed the cloth, exposing his limp and lifeless leg. Aurora covered her mouth and almost puked, if her green bulging cheeks said anything. Next, he wrapped the soft and soothing poultice around his leg, the mass of healing now hugging his hobbled leg. Sensations of relief poured into him, eyes fluttering in alleviation.

“Ah… much better,” he said, brandishing a relaxed smile in spite of the harsh wintry freeze all around him.

Warmth reached Aurora’s heart, even if surprise still lingered over the strange suddenly-appearing objects. “It’s good you feel better—”

“And what’s that mystery soup?” the stallion asked, his voice changed from a guttural dark to a subdued light.

Aurora raised a brow in confusion. She inspected the hot bowl on her hoof, bringing it closer to her eyes. “I… s-still don’t know.” Taking out the lid, she continued, “I don’t remember putting it in, either.”

A new smell wafted out of the bowl against the bleakly frigid mountain air. In its place settled a fragrant culinary aroma, enticing the stallion’s stomach to grumble and his ears to rise and his head to rear in hungry anticipation.

“... that’s got to be cooked just for me!” he cried out, eyes bulging as he rubbed his tremoring stomach.

Before Aurora could say anything, she had the soup yanked from her hooves, leaving her with nothing to hold.

The stallion goggled at his soup: leaves and tomatoes bobbing around under his flimsy grasp, sailing bumpily across the tiny waves of the tasty yellow sea.

More than satisfied with the soup’s attractive face, he whipped his head around to stare at the elderly reindeer. “Wh-who are you?! A-Are you my… m-my guardian angel?!”

“I, uh—”

Had her hoof shaken rapidly and rough, her glasses almost falling out.

“You may not know me, missy,” he said fast, almost incoherent, “but my name’s Oat Milk and... I don’t know, but you saved me! I-I’ve been stuck waddling since I had a bear attack me just hours ago… decided to just wait here and hope somepony would come down to even notice me… and then you came down with this great stuff! The poultice was nice, but medicinal herbal soup?! It’s like you knew I had a broken leg in the first place!”

Aurora was flabbergasted, and it wasn’t just the pony bursting in an explosion of thanks and gratitude. She didn’t know a single thing about these mysterious objects, and yet... her mouth flapped up and down, breaking out mere broken syllables in awe, the reindeer herself searching for what words to say.

“Accidental guardian angels, probably,” said a voice from above.

“What?!” yelled both Aurora and Oat Milk as they looked up.

Descending from the cold dark sky, her antlers glowing pink against the expanse’s black, Bori slowly floated down.

“Agh!” cried Oat Milk, holding his cheeks in fear at this even stranger abnormality.

Aurora stepped back, beholding her friend in mid-flight. “B-Bori?! H-How a-are you—”

“Not crashing into the ground?” Bori finished, smirking at her older counterpart.

Aurora rolled and rubbed her eyes. “Not you, too, ah...”

“Oh, that was really just a guess,” Bori said reassuredly.

She lowered herself to the ground, getting her hooves plopped with cold snow and a thin layer of dirt, staining her pristine pinkness.

Oat Milk hyperventilated, chest rising and falling in quick succession, at this strange new reindeer.

“Who are you?!” he yelled, pointing at her out of rising fear, too.

The pink reindeer smiled, though lowering a brow in worry. “I’m Bori. I’m sure you’ve met Aurora here and—” smelled the air. “Wait a minute… so that’s where the soup went!”

Aurora shook her head and smacked her antlers in shock. “You made the soup?!”

“Then, thank you! Both of you!” the stallion shouted at the top of his lungs.

He shook Bori’s hoof, catching her off guard and almost making her stumble to the ground. At least her face wouldn’t be caked with snow and dirt unlike last night.

“I...uh, appreciate your, um, happiness,” Bori managed after the hoofshake finished, watching Oat then hoarsely slurp his first serving of soup. “However… I didn’t know what I was doing, actually.”

The stallion spat out a mouthful or two cheekfuls of soup to the white ground in his surprise, tainting them with delicious yellow.

“H-How… ?” was all he could say.

Aurora shrugged, directing his gaze towards Bori.

Bori scratched her throat, initially unsure of how exactly to put the incident to words. “I-I was in the middle of cooking dinner for our big festival back home when my antlers glowed and I felt the strange urge to just... make this local remedy for partial lameness.” She coughed, looked down and saw she was still wearing her apron even out here. “It won’t heal you instantly or completely, but it has kepu leaves for—”

“Anesthetic leaves!” the stallion howled, reciting excitedly from a long-gone lesson in botany. Cupping the bowl in his hooves and rubbing its warm surface over his chilly cheeks, “This is amazing... stopping by, almost giving up—your town was my last hope, but turns out I didn’t have to find a way up!”

Bori felt uneasy at Oat constantly singing their praises. “Yes, that’s true... but, we didn’t even know you were here.”

Oat’s smile vanished, supplanted by a look of perplexion. “Huh?”

Bori wore a restive grin, eyes nudging up and pointing at her antlers. Oat followed suit and focused on those whitish bones coming out of her head.

“I felt my antlers glowing,” Bori began. ”They told me—I think they were the ones telling me—to go outside and meet whoever was at the bottom of the hill.” Leaving Oat to swim in his puzzlement, she turned to Aurora. “I guess that happened to you as well.”

Aurora nodded with a hum.

“Hold on, hold on,” interrupted Oat, raising both of his hooves to show off his bewilderment. “So you really are… what did you call it? Accidental guardian angels? Because of your antlers doing weird stuff and whispering to you things?”

“Kind of,” Bori said, shrugging as she inspected Oat Milk’s almost empty wagon. “This is only our second time doing this… and we just don’t know what to do except roll with it.”

She chuckled, looking at Aurora again, prompting Oat to look at her, too. “Also gave Aurora and Alice some crazy time-reading powers or something."

She finished that with a somber smile as another cold gust blew upon them. Their coats bent and their manes swayed; the reindeer lowered their heads and closed their eyes, the stallion covered his face against the onslaught of frosty torture.

After the gust subsided, he opened his eyes and saw Aurora smile. Seeing her old face reminded him of Bori’s words mere moments ago: crazy time-reading powers…

“He’s probably wondering what I’d just said,” Bori said to Aurora while wiping the snow off both their antlers. This only frightened Oat a bit more.

Aurora pat Bori on the shoulders before turning to comfort Oat. “I’ve been trying my best to hold my past-reading powers in. So far, it’s working, but I’m still knowing random stuff about you out of the blue.”

“Like what?” the stallion said, curious but also still frightened.

Aurora cleared her throat, though it took her quite a while to fully clear it since she was spitting out snow clogged from behind her teeth.

“Apparently, Oat, you wanted to return to your home in this new-fangled place called Rainbow Falls; born in that frontier town, you were. I guess you’re also trying to make it back before your wedding, hm?”

The stallion blushed, scratching his had in both irritation and embarrassment. “That’s true, miss... lovely Starchy-poo’s gonna get straight mad if I take too long.” He cut into that romantic stint with a lengthily drawn sigh, turning to his nigh barren wagon which, now, was too big for its scant cargo. “Too bad most of the gifts and souvenirs I’d got back in Canterlot didn’t survive the trip; bear and her family took the food, and then a random dragon ends up stealing the rest of it at firepoint! Can you believe it? A dragon in the snowlands?! It’s like I’m not supposed to make it in time!”

Thus his little diatribe ended with him smacking the ground in vain, causing a few jets of snow to shoot out and fall flat in the quiet night.

All eyes turned to the wagon, that empty wagon. Once again, the crate and sack lay prominently at the front, their surfaces casting a fuzzy reflection of the moonlight.

“Wait...“ Oat Milk began, rubbing his prickly stubble, “you said ‘Alice’. That means there’s supposed to be three of you… right?” A smile returned to his face, hope revived if ever this Alice reindeer did come.

“Speaking of Alice...“ Bori turned around to see the mountain and a bright Rennefer on top of it. “I wonder if she’s going to get—”

“Yaaaahhh!”

All turned their heads towards the noise’s source.

There, a glowing blue thing rushed through the forest, bumping and brushing against many sharp and leaf-devoid branches. It screeched in an absurdly high pitch, constantly cut off by colliding into so much timber with clanging bsh!’s each time. Weak branches and twigs ripped off under the speed of this breakneck figure.

The glowing stranger flew fast out of the forest, and, screaming all the way to the sky, crash-landed in front of the wagon, face smeared in cold white and moldy brown.

It turned out to be Alice, bedraggled with bruises thanks to her ungraceful end of a flight there, but she still had that anxious smile for a worried Bori and a concerned Aurora by her side.

Everyone else stood astonished, their mouths wide open at Alice’s damage. Bori and Aurora rushed up to her, constantly asking if she was alright, if she was feeling faint.

As they helped Alice up on her hooves, Oat just stood there, dumbfounded by another flying reindeer—perhaps Aurora could do it, too, if he waited long enough. Alice’s antlers were glowing, he observed, though this one was a couple tads shorter than the others.

“Oat?” Bori said, gesturing a hoof at the new arrival while facing the lone pony there. “Meet Alice. She’s quite—”

“—annoying with her future powers, huh?” Alice finished, elbowing Bori’s knee. “I gotcha’, didn’t I?”

Bori rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. “Yes, you did, Alice. Took the words straight out of my mouth.” Facing Oat again, she said, “If you’re wondering… yes, I was going to say that. Goes to show Alice’s abilities of seeing what hasn’t happened yet.”

That prompted Oat to panic inside, biting his lip and his tongue several times before ekeing out, “The… wha… she can see the future?!”

“Not all of it,” Alice clarified cheerfully, “just some of it! Oh, and a question in three, two—”

Pop!

Everyone looked at the soup. From the bowl rose a big yellow-tinted bubble, riding high into the sky and disappearing.

“Don’t worry, that’s normal,” Bori said to reassure Oat from any fears of eating bad soup. After scratching her head, she quipped, “But how did the soup get here in the first place?”

“How did it get in my bag, you mean?” Aurora added, removing her bag from her back and showing it off to everyone else.

Bori scrunched her face up, resting a fidgety hoof on her neck. “I didn’t do anything with it! I only saw you this morning on the way to the hall!”

“Well, I didn’t see you at all until a few minutes ago,” Aurora said.

“Um… me, too… that’s what I just implied, right?”

“I guess that leaves me!” Alice concluded, jumping and throwing up tiny pieces of snowy dirt and dirty snow with her legs.

Bori and Aurora blinked in surprise. Oat, too, now all three of them giving Alice a strange look while a moaning wind ruffled their hairs and manes.

“Bori,” Alice began, “you sent the soup for delivery, but you never saw who took it, right? It’s yours truly, motivated by my eeire antlers telling this exact moment’s gonna happen!” Galloping up to Aurora next, she continued: “Next, I bumped into Aurora on purpose to secretly get it into her bag—did some talkity-talk to throw off any suspicion!” She zipped to the soup, inhaled its savory scent, and uttered, “Yup! This is Bori’s cooking, for sure! See? I knew we were gonna do, uh, this.”

While Aurora and Bori congratulated Alice with careful smiles and quiet chidings to warn them about her motives next time—while that was happening, Oat stretched his cheeks in misgiving. The future and past were known by these two random reindeer in some faraway reindeer village he’d only heard of less than five times in his life? That was a scary thought.

“Well… that’s, something,” Bori said after she ended her congratulations. “Good to know my soup didn’t disintegrate into thin air.”

“But what about the poultice?” Aurora asked, pointing at her bag and Oat’s limp leg. “Where did that come from, Alice?”

Alice blushed. “I didn’t do anything with it… honest! Maybe it was inside the whole time and you just forgot, old-timer.”

Aurora grumbled, leaving Alice to fend for herself against the verbal backlash she’d likely receive.

However, Alice knew subduing the enemy without fighting was the acme of skill. So, she subdued Aurora by looking away from here and talking to Oat instead: “Oh! One more thing for you!”

She hoofed her saddle bags out to Oat who received them with a grunt before getting used to their heavy weight.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Just random stuff I bought from the market, plus enough food to last you the trip to Rainbow Falls!”

“... what?”

“Really!” Alice shook her head up and down in snappy nodding. “If you didn’t know, we got this thing called the Caribou Carnival going on right now, so the market’s full of random souvenirs and tidbits from around the world!”

She tied a red bow around Oat’s neck, catching him by surprise, but he decided not to protest; he didn’t know what to do with this future-seeing reindeer.

“Might as well consider this and the bags a gift for your you know who,” and she winked knowingly. “Better than just Canterlot goodies, am I right?”

It took a while, but Oat… gulped at the sudden gifts. His leg was healing faster with the poultice around it, some soup was available for him to get well on, food and gifts were aplenty for the trip home along with the wedding, and there was the bow which he wasn’t sure what to make of.

“... really?” he finally said in a croak, turning to the three reindeer before him. “Wow, I… I don’t know how to th-thank you!”

He put the bags into the wagon but not without taking a sneak peek into one of them.

“Ah, ah, ah!” Alice said, slapping the sneaking hoof away. “No cheating! I’d rather have both husband- and wife-to-be surprised. The best prize is a surprise, anyway… and I know you won’t cheat on those bags.” Leaning suavely on the wagon, “Trust me. I know.”

“Alright, miss…” turning to the rest of the reindeer, bringing a hoof to his throat as he failed to continue at first. “All of you misses… well, thank you. I… I, just—”

“Yeah, you can thank us by going out and fulfilling your future!” Alice said before having her ears pulled by Bori for being too rash with her goodbye.

With that, everyone exchanged farewells. Now, it was Oat’s turn to hook himself to his wagon and gallop away—or, rather, trot away, his limping but recovering leg getting in the way of fast pace.

The three reindeer stood there, waving at him as his figure slowly shrunk into a dot in the snowy and dark distance.

Too Hot to Handle?

“Aurora?”

Back in the present, Aurora looked away from her yak audience and faced the open kitchen door. There in the tiny room of cake-making, apron dirtied with batter but beaming with a smile nonetheless, was Bori smelling of dough. She remained undeterred in spite of the kitchen’s miserable messy state; all her hooves were clean and unstained from the batter, for one. In the back of the kitchen, Alice stirred the mixing bowl with so much vigor that drops of batter flew and splattered on Bori’s antler, ruining her cleanliness.

“What is it?” Aurora asked, holding in a teasing smile. “I was about to tell Yitterby here the good part!”

“Oh...” Bori’s eyes fluttered while she took a towel to wipe her antlers with. “You’re almost there, aren’t you?”

Aurora sighed, dismissively waving her hoof. “Yes, yes. I’m almost there.”

After a few seconds of staring down at the floor in thought, she took a step out of the kitchen. “I think I should take over,” she said.

Boggled, Aurora tilted her head and crunched her lips. “I’m the one who remembers almost every detail of what happened. Now that’s one more good and unobtrusive use of my powers aside from gift-giving!” and she leaned back on her chair, self-satisfied.

“Well... honestly, though,” Bori began, bobbing her forelegs, “I feel like I’m more suited for this part.”

“And why is that?” Aurora said, gesturing at Yitterby beside her. “We wouldn’t be hospitable to this kind yak here if we tell an incomplete story!”

“I know, Aurora,” answered Bori, eyes becoming a speck more downcast. “But I believe I should tell him how we got here… how we got to the present.”

Aurora looked off, a bit fumbled. “You want to take a break from baking, no?”

“We’re actually about to get to the heating part,” Bori said, adept in dodging the question. “At least, I think we’re getting there. Alice got the recipe from the future, so I’m not really sure. I’m taking Alice’s word on it, though.”

Aurora rolled her eyes and rubbed her hooves. “Fine. It’s strange: you talking about the past when I can see it like it’s crystal clear... but if it helps the now, then so be it.”

“Thank you, Aurora.”

So, Aurora got out of her chair and trotted slowly to the kitchen, passing by several trinkets scheduled to be wrapped into proper gifts. Her final words before entering were, “Alice! What’re you up to now with your future cakes?!”

“But it’ll be a Manehattan special! Hundreds of thousands of ponies will love it!”

“Manehattan’s just a tiny village by the island! How could it possibly house so many ponies?”

The door closed and the argument simmered down shortly after.

Yitterby was alone with Bori who’d just sat down where Aurora had been for a long storytelling while. With no windows in the dining room, he couldn’t tell if thirty minutes or three hours had passed. It felt more like the former, however; so enraptured by the old reindeer’s saga was he.

“So… uh, how are you so far, Yitterby?” Bori asked before taking a spoonful of the mint fudge she still had. “Doing well?”

The yak nodded. “Yak certainly doing well! Good story by old reindeer! Yak tell great story to family and friends back home!”

Bori smiled and cleaned her mouth with a napkin. “That’s good. But well… I hope you’re not missing the point.”

That brought Yitterby’s own smile down. “What point?”

“Seems you’ve forgotten already,” Bori said worriedly. “Stories don’t just exist for entertainment. They’re there to make the holidays… and, well, everything… a bit more magical.”

She looked back at the kitchen door, listening to the clings and clangs within. “I should know. I’ve eavesdropped,” and she chuckled afterwards.

Yitterby frowned at that. “Eavesdropping not good, right?”

“... let’s talk about that later,” Bori said with a blush, “especially when Aurora and Alice can freely talk about your past and future the way they talk about the weather.”

But her blushing smile gave way to a slump and a frown. She proceeded to take another spoonful of mint fudge, savoring the flavor and trying to let it overpower whatever had caused her bad mood.

“What’s wrong?” the yak asked, slightly rising from his chair.

Bori waved him off although she smacked her own forehead right after. With a groan, she replied, “Aurora was right about one thing: I don’t know ninety-nine percent of the details of how we got here. Technically, Aurora should still be on this chair telling you the story... but, well, Aurora’s about the past to a fault.” Her eyes gradually turned towards the kitchen door once more. “Ask her about anything that happened today, she’ll only know a thing or two before it’s back to relying on ordinary memory.”

Yitterby rubbed his dirty plate, processing what he’d just been told. “But superpower still superpower, right?”

“Not really,” Bori answered. “There’s such a thing as knowing too much... and, from the looks of it, Aurora wouldn’t be able to have a normal conversation outside of us.” A pained look came upon her, closing her eyes tight for a second. “She could try, but since she’ll know random stuff about you without having to ask for it... it gets quite embarrassing, or else, she tries to hide it, but you know she’s only faking ignorance.”

This left Yitterby resting all his weight against his chair. Sitting back in pitiful contemplation, he brought a hoof to his cheek. His pout, combined with the bangs obscuring his eyes, formed a sympathetic mien on him.

“Yak guess same thing happen to small reindeer,” he mused soberly.

It was Bori’s turn to sigh. “I could say it’s even worse for her. At least for Aurora and me, the future is an unexplored frontier full of surprises. For Alice, she’s Ms. Know-It-All, but that doesn’t help her all the time.” Now fully facing the kitchen door, “If someone showed something new to us, Alice would be bored because she’d seen it already. If you told us some news, Alice would’ve already heard of it. A new invention ten years later? Alice probably knew it ten years before.” Bori scratched her antlers in serious thought. “Really, there’s not much to surprise her with… or, well, make her excited about until recently. Doesn’t help she can see as far as… uh, she’s told me that something pretty wild is going to happen in Equestria’s thousandth Summer Sun Celebration, but she’s keeping it between us.”

“And me?” the yak quipped, holding up a glass of water.

“I don’t know,” Bori said with a shrug of her shoulders, losing eye contact with him. “She’s pranked us before, talking small things up like big things.” She sighed once more, this one longer and more sorrowful. “Point is, it’s hard for her to live a normal life since she pretty much knows half of the future. In a way, what’s the point? Or half the point...”

The yak sighed, too, having downed his glass of freezing glacial-level water. “Yak see problem.”

A few moments of silence passed as they stared to the side, wondering about Aurora’s and Alice’s plight.

“Yak curious,” he spoke up, silently examining Bori with a piercing stare. “What is pink reindeer power?”

Perking up at the sudden inquiry, Bori answered, “Not much. I can see into the present... which doesn’t sound great.” Her ears drooped at that. “I know bits and pieces of what you want and I know what someone else far away from here may be doing now... but that’s it. I don’t know your deepest darkest secrets, I don’t know if you’re married—maybe you mentioned it earlier, but I forgot...”

“Is that bad?” the yak asked.

“I guess…” and Bori drifted off before resuming: “I guess staying in the moment makes me the leader of sorts. You can’t have a past or a future without a present, after all. And besides, in a way, we all live in the present. Kind of strange how the present’s both fleeting and forever that way… but that’s probably how it is.”

Yitterby turned his head to the side, taken aback by the drop of insight given to him. “Pink reindeer sound deep. That wisdom to take home?”

“Not really,” Bori replied, that smile returning, “but if you want, go ahead and tell that to your fellow yaks back home.”

He hummed to himself, deliberating on whether to bring the wisdom back home. Turning to Bori again, he answered, “OK, that good. That good reindeer wisdom for gifts.”

Bori sighed in relief, although she probably still had some stress in her mind to air. After bobbing her half-empty cup of cold coffee, she sighed again and let her ears droop once more.

“... looks like I’ll pick up where Aurora left off.”

Yitterby leaned in, though instead of an eager attitude like the last two times, he bore only a pensive face. He had a bad feeling about where this might lead him.

“We were able to sneak back into Rennefer undetected again,” Bori began, “though it was a close one. We were spotted by a guard a block in; he didn’t remember us coming this way, so that made him very suspicious of us. I didn’t like lying and neither did Aurora so we locked up... but Alice fibbed her way out of it. It helped that he was new to the job, so he thought he merely forgot. I’m still uncomfortable about lying to our guards, but I did my best not to think about it too much while we went home.”

Bori paused, taking a sip of the bland and watery coffee.

“The next day was a hassle for me. It was the Eve of the Caribou Carnival Celebration. We were celebrating all that time, but everyone was preparing for the big day: games, plays, songs—a party everywhere you’d go. I had to do double the work in half the time at the public’s hall, cooking so fast my legs burned.

“In the back of my mind, however, I put two and two together. If my antlers glowed and did strange things around nighttime—and so did Aurora’s and Alice’s, too—then it might happen again tonight… and what if Aurora could fly this time? She wasn’t as sturdy as me or Alice, so what if that flying thing or whatever crippled her? I resolved to myself to talk to them immediately… to talk about our weird abilities, to see what exactly they were before things got worse…” Alice took a deep breath, looking away from Yitterby for a second. “Someone had to notice unless we took care of it ourselves.

“So, when I was able to take a break from my cooking duties at sunset, I rushed over to Aurora’s house as quickly as possible...”

“I rushed over here as quickly as possible!” Bori announced with a slam! of the closing door.

Her eyes scrambled to meet Aurora sitting at a new dining table, but there also sat Alice who had a box of more bows to give on the surface. Along with her sat Thern and Austral as well, father and daughter enjoying (though maybe not together in Austral’s case) a humble dinner of vegetable and cheese pie.

“Oh!” Aurora said, eyes meeting Bori’s as she adjusted her glasses. “What a pleasant surprise. Good to, uh, have you here, Bori!” Spotting the saddle bag on her, Aurora went on, “And you brought gifts, too!”

“Ah, yes!” Thern said happily, slightly bowing his head down towards the visitor. “Getting ahead of yourself, and that’s not always a bad thing! Too bad you didn’t help Aurora cook, knowing your expertise, but who am I to complain?”

“I am,” Austral muttered with a roll of her eyes right before stuffing her mouth with savory pie.

“Aww!” and Thern pinched her cheek. “Your snarky responses are so creative, don’t you know?”

While Austral had a hard time chewing her food with a pinched cheek, Alice kicked back and rested a hoof on the table. “I told you Bori was coming in less than five minutes.”

Aurora’s and Bori’s eyes bulged. The reindeer silently gestured at Alice to quit talking about the future, with Bori rapidly shaking her head as covertly as she could.

“Ah, I remember!” Thern said, raising a glass of orange juice to his lips and slapping Alice on the head in merriment. “Calves these days are so much smarter than we were! How exactly did you know Bori was coming here so soon, Alice?”

Alice turned to him and pursed her lips, eyes darting everywhere but Thern’s. “I, uh… lucky guess?”

Austral raised a brow, having swallowed her morsel of cheek-pinched pie. “A very lucky guess, considering you don’t even check schedules at all.”

“I-I don’t?” Alice repeated, blushing in distress. “I-I must be, uh, very lucky today, ya’ know? Just happens from time to time, eh-heh...”

Austral rolled her eyes and returned to the fresh hot dinner on her plate. “Eh, not that—”
Shifted the lights and the shadows in the room.

Everyone froze, but terror didn’t fill their minds. Instead, they looked out the window.

Out there, the sun had run much of today’s course. It was hard to see much of the orange horizon past the city walls, but they saw the sun slowly descend, sinking the final stretch from its noonday apex. The sky darkened, reddening in the cloudy and wintry climate before switching to a murky violet. Glittering stars twinkled into view, and in the sun’s place rose the moon, shining bright with its soft glimmering glow. Everything had become chillier, the blazing flame of the sun extinguished for the night.

Bori bit her lip, trying to maintain a calm face without looking skeptically at her antlers. “So... uh, what’s the occasion for, uh, all of you coming here? I thought Aurora was busy wrapping gifts.”

“Oh, it was supposed to be just the three of us family and Aurora doing that!” Thern replied, rubbing Austral’s mane against her will. “Sadly, dear Olenek couldn’t come; had to call in to help with the ol’ Cervidi meet-and-greet. Must be great to work for the monarch himself for this night only, but I miss her.” Gesturing towards a busily eating Austral, “She misses her, too, and I bet we’d all don’t want her to go if she were here.”

Alice placed a bow on Thern’s head, derailing his train of thought.

“Bori,” Alice said, rotating the chair towards her, “to explain myself: I so happened to decide to crash in here... I mean, uh, knowing you and also how you do with Aurora, I, uh, hazarded a guess that you were coming in short notice.”

In a failed attempt to look natural, she shot a hoof across the air, feigning confidence in her words.

“... right, Bori?”

Austral smacked her forehead in embarrassment.

Bori looked out the window. It was still night. It hadn’t changed immediately to day, though she wished it would to skip the weird glowing antlers thing altogether.

Aurora eyed her thoughtfully. “Is there… anything you want to talk about, dear?”

“Maybe not now,” replied Bori quickly. “It’s still early—”

“What’s early?” Thern cut in, wiping the splatter of pie filling from his gray coat. “Surely, you don’t mean the Celebration coming up midnight, eh?”

Bori smiled sheepishly. “Uh, yes! It’s still quite early to talk about that. We wouldn’t want to dampen the mood for tomorrow,” and, imitating Alice, she shot a hoof across the air as well, though it came across as awkward.

“Then you do you!” Thern said, refilling Austral’s empty glass with more orange juice although she hadn’t asked for it. “We as a family talk about it for as long as we want, right, numpkin?” as he hugged his daughter.

Austral sighed, never deigning to touch the glass. Not yet.

“Sort of, Dad,” she said.

“That’s the spirit!”

Thern hugged her again, trapping her in his loving embrace. It didn’t reach choking levels yet, but Austral tried to get out of it like she was being choked anyway. She grabbed her pie and risked splashing the pie all over her father’s face just to recommence dinner.

“Psst!”

Bori swiftly looked at Alice who was cupping her mouth.

“Now’s a good time to bail,” she whispered to Bori and Aurora, tugging the latter’s neck closer to her. “We should be upstairs in thirty seconds while they’re distracted. Aurora, tell them you’ll continue your gift preparations upstairs—they’ll believe you for about two hours.”

“What?” Aurora whispered back, staring at her with her unbelievable and incredible words.

“Just roll with it!” Alice ordered. “It’s from the you-know-when!”

Aurora couldn’t deny that the future was coming up, however Alice saw it, so she tapped the table and caught Thern’s and Austral’s attention.

“I’m awfully sorry for this,” she began. She got up from her chair and pushed her plate away. “I have to get back to wrapping and boxing my gifts. Alice and Bori would be of much help, so they’ll come with me.” A cough, and she went on: “You can help yourself to the rest of the food storage… just leave some for me, OK? Or else...”

Thern gulped, displaying a rare sign of agitation. “Uh, don’t worry about it! We aren’t greedy! Trust us! That’d be really bad since greed is, uh, bad!”

Austral smacked her own forehead in embarrassment a second time.

“Uh-huh!” Bori muttered, trotting upstairs with her hooves clanking on the steps. “Let’s, uh, make sure you end things early so you can relax as soon as possible, Auri!”

“I, uh, wha—” but Aurora loosened her shoulders and followed her up. “OK. I’m a-coming!”

“That’s how you do it, Gramma!” Alice yelled on her way up, too.

Only to be met with an unforgiving “I’m not your Gramma!”

As the three reindeer headed upstairs, they heard Thern cry out, “Be careful out there and don’t cut your hooves on accident! But if you need anything, then just call me! I’ll be right here at your beck and call!”

After reaching the top floor and not heeding Thern’s offer for gift-wrapping help, they turned a corner in the hallway. They passed by a few precious paintings of snowy landscapes to enter Aurora’s bedroom.

It was a decent enough bedroom, its scent containing hints and notes of well-cut wood. At the end of it lay a simple bed; lying around were a couple straw rugs. At the corner rested a sewing table and a lantern on the wooden surface for reading and letter-writing. On the floor were strewn a few doodads and thingumajigs for wrapping and boxing up into even more valuable gifts.

They closed the door and locked it to tight with a confirming snap!

A few seconds were spent staring at each other and their antlers. Mouths and jaws hung open. The intense uncertainty sticking in the atmosphere was thick enough to be cut with a knife.

“Alice told me what we’re here for,” Aurora said, becoming the reindeer to break the silence. “What’re we supposed to do with… all of this stuff going on with us?” as she pointed at her antlers and her head.

“I don’t know!” Bori blathered, backtracking close to the wall. “I came here to see if any of you had answers! I mean…” resting her head on a stretched out hoof, “this isn’t a fluke; this isn’t a one-time quirk. It’s happened twice now, and who’s to say it won’t happen a third time?”

They stopped and looked at Alice who had watched the conversation with wide open eyes.

Alice raised her hooves in protest. “I didn’t say anything! Really!”

“Yeah, but you randomly know stuff from the future,” Bori pointed out. “Do you have any idea what’s going to happen tonight? Are we going to help another stranger with strange gifts?”

“Um...”

Bori shook her head and groaned. She trotted back to the center of the bedroom where the other two stood.

“Come on, Alice!” she encouraged or at least she hoped it sounded like encouragement. “You know what’ll happen tonight, don’t you?”

It was Alice who backed away this time, alarmed by Bori’s tone.“It’s like… it has to come to me!” she reasoned. “I didn’t ask for it… it asked for me!”

“How does that make any sen—”

Aurora raised her hoof and Bori looked her way.

“I… I think that’s what’s happening to me, too,” Aurora said, coming to Alice’s defense. “I didn’t ask for knowing things about reindeer’s and ponies’ pasts and histories. They came to me.”

With these revelations out, Bori closed her and eyes took a deep breath. She felt her apron still on her chest, wondering how she’d forgotten to leave it at the hall, but there were more important points to discuss now.

“OK, I… at least we know that’s settled… sort of.” Bori paced around for a while. “Now, how come we can fly?!”

Alice almost jumped from the shout. “Yeah... I didn’t like that.” Lightening up, “I liked the adrenaline rush, though!”

Bori slapped her own face with her hoof. “Do you think that’s going to help?”

“Maybe?” Alice suggested.

However, she scratched her chin and peered at Bori with mistrust. “Well, you seemed comfortable flying the second time through. No crashes, too!”

Pressed to reply with something sensible without sounding crazy, she said, “That’s because I somehow knew how to be comfortable with it!”

This left everyone in silence. Bori could hear her own breathing and theirs, too, standing on the crumply, ancient rugs of straw. Aurora and Alice gazed at her with terrified wonder in their faces.

“I don’t know how,” Bori continued in half a blabber and fully shaking her head, “I don’t know why—”

“But you haven’t exhibited your special power, yet, so there’s that,” Aurora edged in. “At least that’s what I’d observed... or what the past brought to me.”

Bori groaned and sent dagger eyes at the older cow. She regretted it and resorted to a terrified face of her own. Hooves on her head, she said “This is freaking me out. Two friends suddenly gaining powers, Alice and I can fly, and you may fly, too, Aurora...”

She glimpsed around for a window to see the night sky through, but there was none.

“Me?” Aurora croaked, pointing at herself. “Fly?”

“Yeah, you… but you’re... well, uh, how am I supposed to put this?”

“Old?” Alice blurted out, looking at Aurora with an innocent enough smile.

“Hey, I’m not that old!” and Aurora stuck out her tongue at the technically truthful Alice. “I’m just experienced!”

“But still,” Bori said, raising a hoof, “if you suddenly start flying and you smack yourself through those painful trees… I don’t think we’d be able to explain away you limping around once we get back up. The guards would be all over us.”

That forced Aurora to look at her frail and fragile self, with her legs thinning and the outline of her bones beginning to show.

“... you make a point there, Bori.”

Bori indulged in a little chuckle before trailing off and resuming her serious face. “Look, I know (and Alice probably knows) I just want this madness to end. No more uncalled-for flying, no more random knowledge about total strangers, and no more urges to get stuff and leave Rennefer which we’d never done before. That’s what I want: no more of this.”

And she came off panting, beads of sweat sparkling on her face creased with the strain of what she’d just said.

She looked down, ears drooping again. Sat down on the floor, slightly surprising the other two as they held stifled gasp.

Bori closed her eyes. Rubbed her hooves on those eyes, sporting a pout and a wearied, drawn-out sigh.

“For all that... i-it felt good to help ponies like Rack Ramble and Oat Milk.” She beheld the unfinished gifts left on the floor “If anything, it’d be nice to give to more than the reindeer here, much as I love them. It’s surprising to think… and to really think about the ones we just let pass by, and they just struggle without us knowing, and we don’t even know they were there in the first place...”

It ended with Bori closing her eyes again. Shook her head at the floor, at the straw rug which had no words for her.

Aurora managed the strength to get to stoop to her leve on the floor, garnering Alice’s attention. She wrapped a hoof around Bori’s neck.

“I agree,” Aurora said. “Much as this past-seeing thing has startled me, helping those strangers was real nice.” Wistfully looking up at the ceiling whereupon a lantern hung, “I guess that makes knowing the past… less startling.”

“It was so scary for me when it all started out,” Alice said, joining in by sitting on the rug as well, “but I just realized how lucky we all are. We get to spend Carnival time with every single one of our family and friends, and the gifts come to us from all over the land… then we have those poor ponies traveling so long and so far just to make their Hearth’s Warming trips!”

“Ah, Hearth’s Warming!” Bori repeated with a flourished hoof. “Isn’t that the ponies’ winter holiday? I remember you telling me that, Aurora.”

Aurora nodded, relaxing her forelegs on the rug. “You remember the tale, too, don’t you? Three tribes uniting in a cave with a friendship fire thingy: that’s how it was. ”

“And I remembered you telling me that way too much last Carnival,” Alice added, putting up a sick face.

Aurora tilted her head, puzzled. “What? I don’t have many other good Carnival stories; that’s why you got Velvet Fallow for the big ol’ storytellin’ time!”

“But that’s strange,” Bori said, ignoring Aurora’s rant about Fallow and storytelling time. “Were ponies always passing by our town like that, or was it only this year? Is it their magic doing strange things to us?”

“They should’ve detected it by now if that were the case,” Aurora said, easing herself back into the topic at hoof. “Warrants itself a town-wide lockdown or worse if they’d ever find a pony messing with Rennefer.”

“But they seem nice,” Alice said. She widened her eyes, letting them glisten like a dog extracting pity for its errors. “I don’t think they’d be faking their niceness that bad, especially with Oat and his leg… I mean, I know he wasn’t faking it since I see him in his home’s ward two days from now.”

“That just makes it even stranger,” Bori said, trying not to wince at getting tidbits of the future. “For some reason, we can fly, you and Aurora have knowledge powers that go beyond what’s normal, and we’re being randomly called to help ponies passing by for no apparent reason—Aurora, what?!”

Aurora simply stared back at her. “What’s wrong? Something stuck in my teeth again?”

Alice opened and closed her mouth up and down like a dying fish, eyes wide open for a different reason now. “You’re… you’re flying!”

”I… I’m what?!”

Aurora frantically looked down and saw she wasn’t sitting on the ground, nor was she touching it. She was a few meters above the ground and her friends, in fact. Weightlessness fell upon her along with the sense of being untethered, and so, in a panic fit, she flailed and whirled her hooves around, but to no avail: she was floating higher still, almost touching the ceiling with her massive antlers.

“How am I supposed to get down?!” Aurora cried out, looking down at her fellow reindeer.

“I don’t know!” Alice hollered back. “I—”

Looked down, saw she was floating, too.

“Agh!” she screamed so loud her tongue zig-zagged in her mouth. “I don’t wanna go through the forest experience again!”

“I guess it’ll be the three of us flying!” Bori said nervously, looking at herself hovering away from the rugs.

“Who turned off gravity?!” Alice blurted out, spinning around in frantic horror.

Silence. A common silence gathered when their antlers glowed pink and blue, each reindeer noticing this oddity once more.

Bori shuddered, biting her hoofnails. “Oh, no… i-it can’t be... i-it’s way too early for this!”

Aurora spotted the saddle bag Bori had all this time, still wrapped around her barrel as a gem floated out of it. “Uh, Bori, is that a—”

Bori gasped and yanked the airborne gem, putting it back into the bag.

Alice gulped. “The gem makes tons of sense… but I don’t think we’ll like it who’ll appreciate it at the bottom.”

“What do you—woah!"

And Bori floated away them, speeding to the door and smacking herself against it. Her own body repeatedly bashing itself against the locked door with loud bangs! but failing to open it.

“I think we need to open it!” Alice suggested, looking down at her poor friend stuck at the door.

Bori rolled her eyes at Alice floating above her. “You think?”

So, she quietly unlocked the door.

“Woah!”

And she flew mindlessly away from the room and into the hallway.

Aurora and Alice followed her in their uncontrollable flight, Alice smoothly sailing with the breeze while Aurora was still flailing her hooves helplessly, the lack of ground pinning her down instilling fright and fear in her head and all over her body.

Her head did pirouettes in that blind trip through the air, whizzing by and catching glimpses of those landscape paintings and a couple vases she barely missed, all in a blur. She wished she wasn’t flying crazily right now, so she tried pulling her body back to the ground… somehow. She didn’t know how; all she did was grunt and stretch her legs to the ground, which didn’t help, given she still felt the current of flight coursing by her.

A whiplash of cold air later, she closed her eyes, briefly hearing a crowd before that faded away, replaced with the whistle of lonely air. She couldn’t confirm it with her eyes, but she felt taken higher, higher, higher—

“I recommend you don’t look down, Auri,” she heard Bori say.

So Aurora opened her eyes and looked down.

Down there dwelt Rennefer, lustrous with so many lights on every block, at every corner, hanging from every building. The plethora of reindeer below, those reindeer trotting and talking and eating and drinking and laughing and playing and singing and dancing… they were mere ants in her sight, this far from the ground and this high in the sky.

“Agh!” and she closed her eyes again.

“Hold on!” Bori yelled, voice cutting through the wind’s uproar. “You’re gonna—”

Aurora no longer felt flying. She felt falling, endless falling racing around her, all over her, all in her while she felt spinning in the air.

“Aaaahhh!”

“Alice, you have to help her!”

“I don’t know how! I can’t… I can’t—ow!—can’t seem to get to her! She’s too fast!”

“I don’t wanna cushion the crash myself! We’ll both be dead!”

“Maybe if we crash into the dragon over there!”

“That’s a bad idea! Wait, a dra—”

Thud!

Agony, extreme agony everywhere from her head to her hooves, from her brain to her tail, meriting itself an ear-piercing shriek. The cold of snow, the rough of the dirt, and the unforgiving chill of the outside wind only deepened the pain.

“We’re so sorry!” she could hear Alice say through snow-muffled ears pricked by melting water. “We’re… sorry! We’ll make it up to you, um, Mr. Dragon!”

Aurora’s eyes went wide. The prior layers of suffering hadn’t been enough to snap her wide awake from her flying nightmare.

A hoof grabbed her barrel and stings of pain rushed forth, escaping as anguished moans from her mouth.

“Stay still, Auri!” she heard Bori say to her.

Enduring the slowly subsiding mess of compounded pain on her whole self, Aurora could feel her body being set up, picked up and put on the ground on its hooves.

Opened her eyes, moonlight too bright and bleary for her now. First thing she saw after fast recovering from the eyesore: Bori’s face, a sight for her kind of eyes.

“Ah, you’re alright!” Bori said, looking over her shoulder and frowning. “Mostly. You got a few scratches on your left, but, surprisingly… you’ll be fine.”

Aurora nodded, though her neck’s back was aching, crying out to her to please stop moving its stiff tissue.

“At… least I c-can rest through it… when we get back.” Aurora shot a hoof to her neck, massaging away as much pain as possible with only one hoof. “Just have to power through it…”

Her eyes snapped open again.

“Wait, a dragon?”

Bori donned the sheepiest smile she could muster. “Yeah… there’s a dragon behind me. That might end up being a problem.”

Aghast by the news, Aurora leaned to the side to verify Bori’s claim.

Behind Bori, Alice blubbered apologies to a dragon five times her size; he towered over her and the rest of the reindeer. The offense committed on him had showed in his snow-covered face, obscuring his vicious fangs and the horns protruding from the top of his head, not to mention his huge wings and his shiny orange scales each of which appeared sharp enough to cut like blades.

“Sorry about that for the twelfth time!” Alice said, running out of breath. Then, she beamed and clasped her forehooves. “Uh... just to let you know, um, you should, uh, not be worried, even though you’re, uh—”

The dragon wiped the snow away from his face, revealing his long and pointed snout and his fiery orange eyes.

Alice trembled with shaky hooves planted on the ground, not noticing Aurora and Bori united in trembling with their own planted hooves.

Alice managed, “Eh-heh! Well, um... what if, uh, I told you that, um, you’re not going to eat us? We’re, um, capable of running away really fast and you’d certainly be tired after that!”

The dragon did nothing but stare at her silently.

Alice gulped. In a quiet, cute whisper: “Please take the signal to leave us alone!”

He merely cracked his knuckles and snorted smoke out of his huge nostrils. “Give me one good reason not to cook you for dinner,” the dragon said in a husky growl.

Alice smiled although her teeth and her dimples faltered thanks to the dragon’s brutal voice. “Um… fear me because I know the future and I say you won’t cook us for dinner—eeyah!”

The dragon had picked her up by the tail, watching her scream and flail for help and mercy. “Nice try.”

He brought a cage from behind his back.

“Alice, no!”

Slam!

Inside the cage went Alice and would-be right-hand reindeer Aurora, cramped in the tiny cage with each other. On the top of the cage were scrawled the words, My food. Over very high heat.

“Aurora!” Bori yelled, watching her elder and feeling feeble while the dragon gently put down the cage of squished reindeer.

The end result was Ow!’s from the two of them.

“Agh! Don’t worry!” Aurora cried out, waving a hoof at Bori. “I’m going to—”

“Ouch! My antler!”

“Sorry, there, Alice, my b—Ow! That’s my antler!”

“Aurora!” Bori called out, standing firm in case the dragon would push her away. “Try using your past powers on him!”

Aurora gulped against all the pain still running through. With a bold face, she turned to the dragon to withstand him.

He had sat down on the snow, twiddling his thumbs while watching his caged prey persisted through the lack of personal space.

“Do not mind me,” the dragon said. “I am here to entertain myself with how you will try to fool me.”

Aurora took the taunt head-on and replied with, “You better hear from me, sonny!”

The dragon tilted his head, coughing out of amusement. “And why should I hear you out, something-genarian?”

“You should hear me out because I know why you’re here, Pyrite!” Aurora declared, exaggeratedly raising both her forehooves and hitting Alice’s antlers, but Alice had to bear this one for now. “You’re here because you’re hungry and…"

She gasped, seized right there.

“You… you th-thought of c-c-coming t-to… to r-raid—”

Pyrite raised his claw and Aurora stopped. A grin graced his scaly face.

“I shall stop you there, old one,” Pyrite said, lowering his claw.

They could hear Alice clattering her teeth.

“Let me say that I am impressed with your knowledge and that you have guessed why I’m here, as unseeming as you may be, old one.”

He craned his head up. It aimed at the city on the mountaintop.

Alice gasped. “I knew it! You were going to raid Rennefer!”

The dragon chuckled, smoke coming out of his nostrils again. “Yes, that is true. In short order: I bided my time and spent it scouting the area. I’ve learned that you have this yearly winter carnival where gifts abound, and that, when the clock strikes midnight, everyone will be gathered to celebrate and give those gifts to all.”

The smile on his face widened further, becoming a smirk not of happiness but of malevolent planning close to fruition. “What if... I swooped down on your defenseless village and took all I want? Would make a good hoard for me. I wouldn’t even need to travel all across the land; I can just wait here and let all the merchants converge here."

He kicked a patch of snow into the air. “It is a great plan, no?”

This is when all three reindeer gasped together in common dismay.

“You can’t do that!” Alice shrilled.

“Oh, yes, I can,” Pyrite said, rubbing his claws and his huge fingers, “and if you think of trying to stop me with those puny muscles… that’d be pitiful.”

“You dragons want gems, right?!” Aurora yelled, pointing at Bori and her full saddle bags. “She’s got gems!”

The dragon turned to Bori and smacked his lips together, eyes dilating in anticipation. “You have gems?”

Bori grumbled, gritting her teeth. “Aurora, why?! You should’ve kept it quioayh!”

She dangled by her tail, the dragon licking his lips to further enjoy holding this reindeer by the tip of her short tail. One slip and it’d be a nasty fall to the bottom. Alice and Aurora screamed in unison; Bori’s fate was on the line this very moment.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” Bori said in spite being upside-down and a dragon’s temper away from being shoved into the cage for dinner. “You want to get us and the gems! Um, uh… wouldn’t that make you sick?”

“You know nothing of dragon biology,” Pyrite boasted. He rubbed his belly “Our stomachs know no bounds.”

“Then... what… about we give you all the gems inside the bag and you leave us alone?” Bori hastily proposed, closing her eyes since this felt like her last move.

“You mean spare the three of you while I burn the rest of your home down?” the dragon asked. “You are strange reindeer, I must say.”

“No!... I mean... i-if you burn our town, that’d be it! It’d be a one-time thing!”

“Then I shall not burn the town down,” the dragon said. “I shall merely come once a year to feast on your shiny gifts… which I’d been planning to do anyway, so you really changed nothing.”

As Bori slowly felt pulled towards the cage, she sent her mind reeling. Thoughts of being roasted alive in a pot by an evil dragon filled her, although she found a sliver of comfort in being roasted alive with her friends. It still wasn’t a nice ending, however, and Bori didn’t particularly like being the idea of being delicious game to this vicious creature—

Bori blinked. She felt her antlers pulsate. One look at them: they glowed and pulsed.

Pyrite hesitated. “Wha…? What’s going on?”

Still upside-down, she wore a sympathetic smile. “Pyrite, what do you doubt?”

The dragon paused even more, tightening the grip on Bori’s tail. “Huh?”

“A dragon isn’t supposed to be in the Frozen North, you know,” Bori answered, confidence rising in her tone. “You should be back in… wherever your very hot homes are. So, that raises the question: What brings you all the way out here?”

“That is none of your business, OK?” the dragon whispered, half-embarrassed really. “I don’t like it when my food talks back at me!”

“But what if it talks about something very important,” Bori reasoned, “like, maybe you’re running away from something.”

Pyrite growled. “Alright, that’s it!”

He shoved her into the cage to the painful shouts of Aurora and Alice. More cramped, more pressure on many sides of their bodies—squished and squeezed. Bori’s antlers felt pressed against the ceiling, the immense strain on them against the metal coming awfully close to a crack in those bones.

The dragon picked up the cage and lugged it with him on his short journey away from his target town. “I’ll take care of Rennefer as scheduled, but I’ll help myself to an early, fiery feast, hm?”

Alice and Aurora looked at Bori, silently sending their hopes to her. Bori bit her lip once more, not knowing what to say… but her antlers glowed.

She looked at Pyrite from the cage. “So you’ll have a fiery feast… like a feast of fire?”

The dragon flinched, glanced down at Bori. “What did you say?”

“I said, Feast… of Fire.”

Pyrite gargled something in his mouth and spit it out on the ground, leaving himself with an unimpressed face for Bori to see.

“I’m not bluffing, Pyrite. I… i-is this my power?” Bori then said to herself. “I don’t know… but, I’ll say it anyway, Mr. Dragon.”

She inhaled one big and deep breath, cheeks bulging.
“You… you don’t have to run away from your loved ones, Pyrite.”

The cage was thrashed to the ground, sending the reindeer flying and hitting each other in dizzying rolls, gathering up snow along the way.

“I didn’t say anything!” Pyrite shouted at the then stopped cage. Wagging a finger at Bori, “You say you’re bluffing… I won’t believe it!”

“But I know… I really know what you’re going through, Pyrite,” Bori said, pleading with him. “You’re… you’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be back home, celebrating wh-what’s supposed to be a great get-together in that Feast of Fire of yours, and… and it’s a shame this will be the first time you’re missing out on this.”

Pyrite clenched his claws into fists. The rumble in his stomach grew, the grumble in his mouth grew. His slit eyes sharpened, and he bared his teeth into an array of natural knives.

“Consider your family!” Bori continued despite the display of force. “I don’t know if it’s a thing for dragons to go around and do things on their own at such an early age... but they always had you back when the Feast came around!” She sighed, catching her breath through a stressed out throat. “... If you want… you could talk about it—”

“Argh!” and a dragon’s fist came hurtling towards them.

The reindeer huddled together, murmuring their last words to each other, saying they loved each other, hugging each other for one last time—

Nothing. No pain. No being crushed. No being taken out to be cooked right away with fire breath. Nothing.

With nothing done to them, they opened their eyes.

Snap!

The cage door opened, yawning out to the snow-laden ground in a gesture of freedom and liberation from the dragon.

The reindeer slowly trotted out of the cage, Alice coming first though she rather tripped to the ground since the cage had been so tight. After she recovered, Aurora came forward next, walking slower than usual due to her compounded pain all the way from the crash landing a dozen minutes ago. Finally, Bori walked out as serenely as she could, keeping up a warm smile for Pyrite while her antlers continued to glow in the cold winter night.

Bori looked up, seeing a morose dragon shamefully covering his face with his claw.

“I… I know this might not be the time to say this, but thank woah!”

Was picked up, had the saddle bag yanked from her. The strap broke and she fell to the ground.

She got up, shrinking away from the new pain given to her legs, but undeterred, she looked up at the dragon again.

Pyrite examined the bags which were tiny on his humongous claws. He opened one of them and his eyes glistened. He crammed a finger inside, came back with a clawful of gems, and ate them all with a deafening crunch—the reindeer covered their eyes and held on to their teeth.

And he left, taking the bags with him, traveling the clear path cut through the trees. Pyrite spread his wings and flew, flying high above the trees and disappearing in the horizon above, his figure growing darker until it perfectly blended with the violet sky.

The reindeer stood there, gandering at the sky needlessly.

“Should we… uh, go back home?” Aurora asked.

“Yeah, Auri,” Bori said. “We should.”

She looked at Alice whose teeth were clattering again.

“Uh, Alice, what’s wrong?”

“I… I have an even worse feeling about this..."

Something to Prove

It was a slow trip headed back home, the dead trees becoming sideliners to a lonely party. The cold’s severity turned out grating tonight, which was cause enough for all the reindeer’s teeth to clatter and shiver, hugging themselves to generate what little warmth they could: Alice held tight on to her tiny bow while Aurora let Bori share some of her ragged scarf.

It was also a silent trip. No questions were asked verbally; however, they might’ve asked those questions mentally (though they all hoped they hadn’t suddenly develop psychic powers between each other). No questions about why Bori had dozens of gems in her bag, no questions about what Austral and Thern might’ve thought about the ruckus they’d caused upstairs, no questions about whether they’d been spotted by anyone during that crazy flight or if they’d somehow kept their heads down all this time.

Such internal reflection did wonders in passing time and alleviating boredom. Before they knew it, they’d crossed over almost every bump and log and rock in the journey. Only twenty or so steps more and they’d be at Rennefer’s gate.

Nearing the town, they’d seen an unusual abundance lights and lanterns lined up on the walls. Figures and glimmers disturbed themselves, shifting restlessly along the walls’ towers and borders.

“Um, Alice?” Bori asked, keeping up her normal speed, “Did you anticipate this?”

Alice replied with a nervous laugh, kicking up some snow as a stress outlet. “Uh, I was meaning to tell you that…”

“And you didn’t tell us!” Bori whispered brashly.

The response was an audible gulp. “That’s not what I mean… I mean, I was m-meaning to say that I don’t know anything about this at all!”

Bori and Aurora gasped. “Why?” they asked together.

Alice shook her head, afraid that it might go loose if her hoof went away from it. “I don’t know! It’s like some kind of mental block... or I just didn’t know how to explain it...”

Bori grunted, turning the burden over to Aurora. “OK, do the guards ring a bell to your past-focused mind or whatever? What about the lights?”

Aurora squinted her eyes to see if she could get any past wisdom on the matter. She ended it with a sigh.

“Sadly, no,” Aurora said. “Not as far as I know of.”

Bori bulged her cheeks, holding her breath in. They almost turned red out of exhaustion before she exhaled tiredly.

“Let’s hope Pyrite wasn’t faking it,” she said, revealing teeth clamped together.

So they went up some more in the cold.

Closer, they heard the shuffling of hooves and the slight din of whispers mingled with the chink of armors banging slightly against one another. Nearer and a few more dips of hooves in the deep snow, they could clearly see the guards standing ready on the city walls, their eyes honed in on the approaching three.

A slight glimmer from the city walls twinkled differently from the others before it disappeared.

Alice whimpered, cowering from the stare of at least a hundred armed reindeer. “OK, we’re officially in trouble!”

“Just stay calm,” Bori said, attempting to calm her own voice down. “Let’s say we just got thrown really far away from a fight and a magic mishap. Don’t worry.”

“I might’ve not seen this before, but this had bad written all over it coming from experience,” Aurora remarked, nudging Bori on the withers afterwards.

“Just stay calm,” were Bori’s repeated words. “Just smile and stick with the plan.” She bit her lip after saying that.

One more bump overcome, they finally saw the gate in full.

A gate swarmed with guards. A gate swarmed with guards watching them, checking their every more. They had their spears, swords, and primed bows aimed at them. Not a welcoming smile was within their ranks; all they had were the standard stoic faces of straight eyes, closed mouth, and forward-facing head.

Aurora, Bori, Alice gulped together at this new danger.

“What’s going on?” Alice asked, shuddering behind Bori now. “A-Are we criminals?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” blathered Bori. “Perhaps they saw us and thought we were other creatures. That’s a reasonable enough explanation to me.”

“Then why do they still look mad at us?” Alice persisted.

“Don’t worry,” Bori reassured though her ears wilted. “Let’s just see, OK?”

Without waiting for Alice to nod, Bori kept walking and so did Aurora and Alice herself. They trotted up to the front of the gate where a line of guards stood, blocking entry into their beloved hometown and halted with one solitary meter between them and safe space.

The halt didn’t slacken the guards’ rigid composure. The weight of a hundred eyes and ears facing their way might’ve quickened their hearts, but Bori had a plan to stick to.

“Oh, uh, hi!” she said happily, waving a hoof at them. “If you may step aside and let us go on our way, we promise we won’t bother you, OK?”

The guards didn’t budge.

“Um... maybe you forgot who you’re talking to!” she continued, sustaining her smile. “I’m Bori, and these are my friends, Aurora and Alice. I’m sure you know—”

“Tell us how you got outside Rennefer’s realm,” ordered the guard directly in front of them, speaking in big baritone.

He stepped forward, bringing into better light his helmet which was shinier than the others; presumably, he was the captain.

Bori sweated in light of this pressure. Still, she continued despite the officialized browbeating: “Um... we got into a big fight back in Aurora’s place. We locked antlers, and before we could process anything else, a magic explosion happened, and we got sent flying out the window!”

“There were no booms heard,” the guard replied, face hardening like steel. “Your testimony conflicts with others.”

“Others?” said Bori, stepping back; in her voice, coolness ran away. “Who said those others?”

“Why, this upstanding citizen here.”

He stepped aside to reveal who’d been standing behind him.

It was Austral. She held a pair of glimmering binoculars and was escorted by two taciturn guards. Sorrow was spelled out on her face, this sorrow the kind that pitted her eyes into pink, halfway to a sickly red.

Bori and her friends gasped. “Austral?!”

Austral nodded, full of coughs blocking her throat. Her entourage leaned to her, whispering if she needed medicine or some water, but she frantically shook her head.

“I-I didn’t know,” she uttered in between sobbed wheezes, holding up her binoculars to cover her eyes on the verge of becoming waterfalls “D-Dad told me not to tell b-because i-i-it might’ve been an accident, but I h-heard wh-what you said upstairs while he wasn’t looking, s-s I went to the window…”

Brought her long mane in front of one eye, covering herself from the shame a million soldiers serving her twenty-four/seven could never suppress.

“I s-saw you… flying away… a-and Th-thern wouldn’t believe me or want me to tell or do anything with the g-guard… it just came out wh-when they kn-knocked, a-and I didn’t want to lie t-t-to the guards!”

Sniffling, she dared a look behind her and saw Thern with a tormented twist for a pout, glancing at her not with lingering disappointment but with horror that only deepened when he turned to see his grandmother on the other side of the law.

“You know full well that leaving Rennefer is highly unwise,” said the captain, stepping forward to conceal Austral from view, “for it is highly unsafe and we may never know what has befallen you.”

“It was an accident!” Bori yelled, all semblance of composure lost. Pointing at her friends beside her, “You ask any of us… we just randomly flew out of the window! We couldn’t control it at all!”

The captain responded by rubbing his metal-tipped spear. “Still, you have interacted with an outsider well beyond the bounds of what’s right, and that outsider was a dragon no less! Who is to say you are not being used as bait, perhaps ignorantly?”

“Well, I believe we’re not bait!” Aurora proclaimed, stomping on the ground, antlers glowing and prompting everyone to gasp at her unexpected blaze.

“Aurora, really?” said the captain, smiling but dripping with disbelief. “To think you’d be among the more respectable role models of this community.”

The elderly reindeer murmured something incoherent under her breath. Then, she spouted out, “Unlike you when you were too busy peeking at your gifts earlier tonight and said you wanted a sleigh instead of your ‘dinky decorated jars’!”

All gasped again, this time towards the accused captain. His entourage whispered fast, their mouths working strenuously by his ears long the lines of, “Is this true?”

Under all this public scrutiny, the captain twitched. “How did you know that?!”

“Uh—"

“It’s hard to explain,” Bori said, going right before Aurora in her defense. “You’ll have a hard time believing us when we say it, but—”

“Hoofdagent’s gonna sneeze three times in ten seconds!” Alice shouted in a jump, forelegs spread like a rainbow.

Captain Hoofdagent raised a brow. “... what?”

Now, all eyes were on this distinguished soldier and guard, the chilly wind breezing upon his brown coat and ruffling it.

Hoofdagent smirked confidently. “Hah, what’re you talking abou-choo!”

What came after was nothing but more breeze, a draft winding around his antlers.

He rubbed his runny nose, careful to hide the snot from public view. “OK, Alice, that’s a good call, but tha—choo!”

More silence. Agitated air was the only one to greet him with something audible. However, among the guards, they circulated suggestions and worries, whispers directed away from the captain’s ears.

“Alright, two times,” and Hoofdagent wagged a hoof at Alice. “I’m not that known for being quiet about my health, but I-choo!”

That was it: the third sneeze. The whispered worries blew up into aired concerns, soldiers talking to one another and eyeing both their captain and their supposed targets in the form of those outsider reindeer. One even yelped, “He sneezed three times after five seconds, just like what Alice said! I counted it with my hourglass here”

“Yeah, yeah, rub it in,” Hoofdagent said, willingly overlooking the finished hourglass held up for others to see. “I’ll let you know, cadet, that I shall sneeze four times instead of three: Ah-choo!”

Though the same silence reigned save for the icy wind, everyone knew that sneeze was staged.

“What?” he said, incredulity full in his tone. “Are you telling me Alice can predict the future just by sneezes? Remember: I sneezed four, not three times.”

“You know I meant three real sneezes,” said Alice, irritated by the captain’s attitude. “Any hack could predict their own sneezes.”

“Whatever!” he bellowed, belittling Alice’s ability. “Next thing I know, you’ll—”

“—interrupt your sentences and also tell you that someone would bring you your bow and arrow because you left it at home... all in half a minute!”

And Hoofdagent stopped talking. He observed Alice, tried to see if she was just spewing hot air around. His confident smile wavered after a while of more observation. His soldiers also expressed their concern not with sad faces but with paying all of their attention to this apparent future-teller.

“Alright,” Hoofdagent finally said. “I’ll take your word up for it, Alice. In the meantime,” leaning his head to see the other reindeer there, “you and Aurora are seers that way, hm?”

“It’s all three of us, actually” Bori added, raising her hoof.

“So we have a trio of seers now?” Hoofdagent replied, rubbing the goatee protruding from his chin. “Anyway, I don’t need to check Bori’s powers if two out of three can prove it… so let’s wait for Alice. It should be thirty seconds any moment now.”

So they waited the remaining time out.

A few seconds later, a soldier came running up to him. Exhausted and sweaty despite the arctic climate up here, he carried a bow and a quiver of bows with his mouth. With his bumbling pace, many reindeer stepped aside and made way for him; it was partly out of respect, but they also didn’t want to get hit by his freakishly long antlers.

“Ah!” Hoofdagent exclaimed as he received his weapon, bending his head back to not hurt himself with the antlers of his subordinate. “And where did you find this?”

“In the living room,” this cadet answered.

“Well, thank you—”

“I found it underneath the pyramid of dinky decorated jars you told me to dispose of for your new sleigh.”

“Thank you, cadet,” Hoofdagent said, half-growling. “I’d say that that’s too much detail, but I’ve already admitted that error, so off you go.”

Dismissed, this lowly cadet galloped away, his hoofsteps echoing throughout until they faded from earshot.

With the predicted bow and arrow present, the captain held it close, checking every nook and cranny on them.

He dropped them to the ground.

Bori and her friends opened their mouths in surprise. So did a good number of the guards.

“OK, I have no problem with you,” Hoofdagent said. “I wish I’ll never have problems with you. You’re really good citizens, really good reindeer. You’ve always seemed like reindeer I’d want to spend more time with well past the Carnival.”

A sigh came from his lips. The captain lowered his head but kept his stare on them.

“However, the law is the law, and you’ve clearly gone outside Rennefer. What’s more, something has infected you with these strange powers, and they could only portend doom.”

“Doom?” Alice repeated. “We never said anything about—”

Clack! and freezing sensations traveled from her legs.

“Wait, are you arresting us?!” Alice shouted at her apprehenders, looking back down on her chained legs.

She got her answer by checking herself and her friends: Aurora complained about how her legs were quite fragile and waved a balled up hoof, but no guard took her seriously as they detained her; Bori behaved submissively, but the obedient body betrayed a grieved face.

“As I’ve said… the law… is the law,” Hoofdagent said, his words cut with nasty lumps in his throat. “Hurts me to say it, but the law is also blind; no amount of pleading or good memories will sway me.” Giving one final sigh, his breath becoming frosty vapor. “I suppose the hope here would be seeking Cervidi’s wisdom.”

Alice desired to upbraid this stuffy and stiffy captain, but a shoulder prod from Bori made her hold her tongue.

The three remained silent when a cadre of armed and armored guards surrounded the prisoners. Hoofdagent took command by starting in front of them. With head and antlers held high, he shouted to the sky.

So began the miserable parade into Rennefer.

Passing by familiar old cabins and lodges, overtaken by fellow civilians pulling sleighs of passengers and gifts before they stopped to see what this fuss was all about: back in this not-so-cozy village, Aurora and Bori and Alice trudged around, bound in their chains and shackles. Lanterns both inside and out lit up their faces for everyone else to see, to behold, to mocked at even, yet no mocking occurred. What happened in its place was silence from the gathering crowds; the only sound to be heard, to be worth noticing, was the wind whistling with a sore throat, roping rapid snow into Rennefer with budding force. A few who’d stayed inside closed open windows, refusing the entrance of this annoying weather.

Past the houses and the stores, they entered the market. News had already spread about the arrest of those three alledgedly kind reindeer, but it took their genuine appearances in this bazaar to quell their chat by the stalls. The everyday smell of fruits and freshly cooked soup and stew wafted everywhere in these parts, but it did nothing to stir a smile in those reindeer, whether they were the observing onlookers or the observed outlaws. The guards themselves had eyes that never strayed from straight, always looking forward.

The public’s hall loomed ahead, its height and magnanimity warping into the outline of perl in the detainees’ minds; it appeared more a lair of evil than a resort for help, especially with the snowfall turning unusually aggressive tonight whipping more cold onto everyone outside.

However, Bori cracked a smile at Alice and Aurora who trailed not far behind. “Whatever happens, girls, we’ll make it together... right?”

Alice and Aurora said nothing. Only nods of assent.

A few guards galloped ahead, barely noticing the faintly taller layer of snow on the ground. They took the front doors’ handlebars which were as big as their bodies and pulled these stories-spanning doors open.

Looking inside, they saw the inside slightly refurbished. No dining table nor benches were found, nor did a smorgasbord of many dinners greet them to a hearty meal. Rather, ten steps away from them, sat the monarch Cervidi himself, occupying his throne of wood and stone.

Cervidi had his wrinkly old forehooves clasped, wriggling his wrists in self-generated suspense. The glasses perched on his snout weighed down on his face. What startled them, however, was the cow’s lack of jewelry and rings hanging from his antlers; without them, they appeared mundane though big nonetheless.

Bori and her friends held their breath. Jolts of fear tore through their bodily systems, yet a tingling sense of comfort pat their hearts.

The guards went on their knees, and the captain galloped up to the throne and doubled down on the respect by smacking his head to the ground.

“Oh, Wise One!” Hoofdagent thundered in his deep voice which echoed throughout the length of the hall. “We are terribly sorry to report of this travesty happening within—no, without this fair village. As you see,” gesturing towards the prisoners without making eye contact with them, “these three reindeer have been spotted outside Rennefer. They say it was an accidental, and that strange magic led them out.”

Cervidi replied with nothing for a while, humming raspily while stroking his beard. Seconds later, a servant came over and stroked the beard for him. Five or so strokes were done before Cervidi raised a hoof and the servant trotted away, having done his work for the moment. He looked back at the convicts in question.

“I see,” Cervidi muttered, stroking his beard once more.

Everyone else looked at him, watching every single muscle movement in his body for any sign of a response, of something positive or negative, of something implying a yes or no.

Cervidi knocked his own antlers, letting the knocks ring all over the building.

“Captain Hoofdagent, leave us be. I and the defendants shall talk solely with each other. You know these matters to be dreadfully important, that they are not to be trodden lightly.”

“As you wish,” Hoofdagent ended up whispering.

So, the guards stood up, and with Hoofdagent, they left through the small opening made by the half-opened front doors.

The doors closed with a resounding clung! which bounced off the ceiling and the walls.

When that died down, there the four reindeer sat and stood, the three fugitives alone with one Cervidi. The lack of words marked the escalating cry of the rampant wind outside. Muffled shouts could be heard, some vague orders to hunker down communicated not-so-clearly.

Cervidi stroked his hairy beard once more, blinking many times to set his vision aright even with his glasses.

“So... this is quite interesting,” he said. “A very interesting case. Such a shame our dear captain thought he had no time to explain thoroughly. He is a rash bull when all is said and done; letting him stay here would only taint this discussion.”

He clasped his forehooves again.

“With that said, let us do away with frivolities. I shall begin with this question,” so he raised his head, hoof tugging at his beard: “What exactly is this strange magic?”

Alice opened her mouth and sucked in a ton of breath, but she had second thoughts. Mouth still wide open, she looked at Aurora.

Aurora received the notice but shook her head. Instead, she poked Bori on the withers.

Bori didn’t have to turn her head. She raised it, hoped the antlers wouldn’t glow or that strange magic wouldn’t flare up at the worst possible time, and sucked in her own breath.

“Cervidi,” she began, “this will be... hard to believe. However, I believe we’re speaking the truth for we’ve experienced this ourselves, and if you think we’re lying, just ask the deer we’ve been with for the past few nights and they’ll back us up. For you see—“ she gulped another big breath “—we are seers.”

Cervidi raised a brow, humming softly in piqued interest. “Seers? As in, you can see into the past or into the future?”

“Both, actually,” Bori said. “Uh, sort of. Aurora here can see into the past, perhaps of someone’s life and background. Alice here cane see into the future of one’s life and foreground... whatever the opposite of someone’s background is.”

Cervidi now stroked the hoofrest of his throne. “That leaves you, Bori, as a mystery to me. If they see past and future, you must then see into the present.”

“That’s because... I think... I think I can see into someone’s heart, to what pleases and troubles them as we speak.” Bori paused, her head a little dizzy upon re-realizing she was talking to her leader and monarch. “I’m, yes, a present seer.”

Cervidi nodded. “Interesting. Very, very interesting...”

Alice cocked her head, her bow bending with her. “Aren’t you not, um, worried about your citizens suddenly becoming seers?”

“Quiet!” Aurora whispered, pulling Alice’s ear with enough force to make her recoil but not scream. “How dare you speak like that to Cervidi of all reindeer!”

“How did you receive these anomalous powers?” Cervidi asked, ignoring the verbal scuffle that’d went on before him.

Bori bowed her head. “I... I don’t know.”

Aurora grit her teeth, Alice bit her hoof. Both wondered how it’d go down now with this admission of ignorance.

Cervidi stared at Bori with his squinted eyes, his glasses showing they weren’t enough for tonight and were probably in need of replacing. Still, he persisted unfazed even as the outside wind squalled and beat itself down on the public hall’s exterior., even as the windows’ hefty curtains slowly swayed.

“I see that you speak the truth,” Cervidi said calmly, stretching a hoof towards her. “However, what is the context of your... powers? How have you gotten them? A frame can make or break a painting, after all, and I believe everyone outside would not want to think they are cursed by you.”

Bori nodded although her lips quivered at the thought of being outed as bad omens. “Well, I... I was busy cooking in your public hall for the nightly carnival feast two nights ago. I was about to take my break when my own antlers glowed out of nowhere! All of a sudden, I felt something telling me, almost pulling me, to go back home.”

The monarch leaned closer, his spine rippling with a crack or two.

“There, I felt this intense urge to get a spare wheel for Snow Goose. Next thing I knew, I was flying out of my house with the wheel, shot out of Rennefer, and... well, that’s when I crashed at the bottom. That’s also when we met a pony who had her wagon broken—“

Cervidi shot his head up with a loud Hmm! “You’ve met a pony, an outsider without the safety of our fair village?”

Bori stepped back, sweat returning in full form and threatening to drown her in dread.

“I knew this would happen!” Alice whispered to herself, shaking a fist against herself.

So Bori clammed up, grasping for what words to say to this wise one. “W-well, she wasn’t that bad! She was just a traveler who wanted to go home, not some army spy.”

“That’s what an army spy would want you to think,” Cervidi replied in a sharp tone. “Must I remind you of who we are?”

“We’re four-legged creatures just like that pony,” Bori replied, holding fast to the floor.

“We reindeer are also prey,” Cervidi reminded, pointing at himself and then at Bori and friends “Say what you will about ponies’ kindness and cleverness—I have perennially heard news of their ever-growing influence in the world stage, and it’s not stopping. Soon, there’ll be ample grounds for a pony takeover of our cherished home.”

“Why would they do that?” Bori argued, stepping forward and defying common courtesy towards the monarch. “That would be mean! And why would they do that when the news has always been their princess or another pony trying to solve things peacefully?”

“It takes a mastermind to win a war without fighting,” Cervidi said, calming his voice and clasping his forehooves again. “What Princess Celestia and her lackeys are doing is just that.”

Seething through her teeth, Bori scratched her head. She shot a glance at Aurora and Alice behind her, silently asking for assistance. They both shrugged and folded their lips in royal trepidation.

The wind beat upon the hall once again, this time agitating the curtains. This caught Cervidi’s eyes which filled not with anger but with horror.

“Wait,” said he, whipping his head towards the accused again. “How... how many times did you meet up with outsiders like this pony?”

“Two more times,” Bori answered, avoiding the monarch’s crazed eye roll. “We helped another traveler pony the next night, and then we helped a dragon solve his own pro—“

“You helped a dragon?!” Cervidi yelped in an almost shout, clutching his chest, about to have a heart attack perhaps. “Why would you—“

“We thought the same way,” Bori interrupted, much to Aurora’s and Alice’s fright with their spooked faces. “That was until... until my powers activated and I saw what was really going on: deep down, he was out in the snow with so much trouble and burden on his heart, so much spite for his home so far away.”

Bori slowly turned her head towards the huge window to her right, flapping curtains and unshakable winds coming back to focus.

“Let’s say... we helped him overcome that struggle of his,” she finished, smiling widely to soften the words for Cervidi.

That strategy didn’t work since Cervidi clutched both hoofrests on his throne, now his turn to bare his teeth in a mix of fury and fear. “Do you not know what you’ve done?!” Cervidi yelled, competing with the bad weather’s noises. “Do you not see the signs? Do you not know what you have wrought?”

“... what signs?” Alice asked, as deadpan as she could. “And what are we wrought-ing?”

“That you’ve been tainted by the outsiders, you fool!” Cervidi declared, pointing at Alice with his cheeks raised, his mouth twisted into something resembling wrath. “And what you’ve wrought is a horrible lot for Rennefer, for all us reindeer!”

“I don’t think helping helpless creatures taints us!” Bori replied, fighting back in volume. “And why should helping others lead to bad things down the road?”

“You helped them get closer to fulfilling their own interests!” Cervidi answered.”

“We helped with our fellow deer’s interests so many times before! Why not help the non-deer?”

“Because their interests are against ours!” Cervidi shouted.

He stood up, hooves striking the royal floor. An eep! later and he found his servant scurrying away from sight. Then, he took in the sweeping view of Aurora, Bori, and Alice; he took a step and lifted his head, desiring to look down upon them and impose his authority on this danger once and for all.

But he didn’t.

Cervidi was distracted by Bori’s antlers glowing. Aurora and Alice’s glowed, too.

Aurora and Alice gasped upon this realization, so they looked at Bori.

No determined face on her. Just a calm, serene face, smiling smoothly.

“... a-are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Alice asked Bori, tapping her antlers which warmed with the glow. “Because, I think I know because it’s telling me—“

“We know what it wants,” she replied. All edge and tension in her voice had vanished.

“It?!” Cervidi repeated, head shaking a little. “What is this it? Is it the strange magic in you?”

“Yes, it is,” Bori affirmed, brandishing her eyebrows but still staying calm. “In fact, what it wants us to do you’ll probably reject... but this awful treatment of outsiders—this whole idea that they should never be trusted—is... well, awful! We can’t isolate ourselves like this! It’ll just be us, us lonely reindeer against a big and bright world out there!”

“Tell your it that it is mistaken,” Cervidi said. “The world out there is cruel, unkind, and woefully merciless to us reindeer. We are either attacked with weapons or with words, no matter how nice the veneer of the other creature looks.”

“So you’ll still insist on that? Then I propose a deal.”

Cervidi chuckled. It was a loud chuckle since it had to overpower the storm going on outside, curtains extending like the stretching of forelegs after a good night’s sleep.

“What deal could you possibly make to remedy this situation?!” Cervidi said, almost daring.

Bori toned down her smile a notch. Her antlers glowed brighter than before, halfway to blinding him, and so glowed Aurora’s and Alice’s antlers.

“You open the gates to these outsiders,” Bori began, “so that we can help them and ourselves. It’ll lead to a better Rennefer, and it’ll help us become better reindeer... and if you refuse, we will leave Rennefer for good.”

Gasps flourished from everyone else. Aurora and Alice hugged each other wobbily, wishing that Bori wouldn’t be shouted at or, worse, be struck by the monarch’s pointy antlers. Cervidi left his jaw hanging, his old and aging teeth the tip of this outdated iceberg. Bori kept standing there, a confident smile on her face.

The storm kept blowing outside.

Ever Northward

The frigid tempest lambasted the village of Rennefer with all its might, pervading the entire town as this menace. Seeing anything past ten or so meters showed up a bit difficult, obstructed by the freezing fog. Yet, above the storm’s rambunctious wailing, they could hear the shouts and cries of a hundred reindeer. Were they angry or at least as forceful in emotion as this hurricane? Probably, but confusion had seeped in with the tempest: a few aborted stampedes, antlers locking up with another’s on accident, and loud questions couldn’t be distinguished from hurled accusations.

All this happened during Aurora, Bori, and Alice’s parade to an unceremonial exit. It felt worse with the weather crashing down on them along with their chains and shackles refit and reworn; those chains reminded them for the tenth time that they were escorted by an entourage of guards once again, ostensibly to keep them from escaping, but they also kept the herd of reindeer from trampling them in supreme anarchy.

They tried to find familiar faces amid the fog and disorder: there weren’t any. All were wrapped by the constantly curling sheet of shooting snow. As for hearing what they were saying and shouting, they couldn’t discern anything lucid: it was all a mishmash of emotionally charged syllables.

Slogging through the build-up of snow and ice, they felt the sting of their chains’ metal cold. It did them some good, however, since it helped them force their eyes closed and protected from snow traveling at unsafe and harmful speeds.

The baffling cries, the indifferent guards, the chilling chains, the treacherous snow: these made few minutes pass by like eternity, after which the convicts espied the outlines of the village gate. This opened barrier was their entrance to exile, and they were going to pass it no matter what.

They couldn’t hear what the captain said; all they knew was that they were canned orders. Now they could hear his underlings blocking the outpour of the crowd, preventing them from getting any closer to the prisoners.

More heavy trotting, chains weighing them down against the thick layer of snow and more snow. One step, another step, yet another step under the wind-shout mix of more noise.

A muffled shout rising above the rest.

The escorting guards backed away. Their hoofsteps faded, becoming in tune with the the ruckus around them.

Slam!

They reflexively looked behind.

The gateway to Rennefer but closed, locked with its age-old grid gate.

Through the checkerboard of obstruction, they caught a glimpse of Hoofdagent’s face before it disappeared in the blend of a silent crowd. They gazed upon them as one would upon the ashes of a burnt tree. Anger and depression and revenge for them had to pause for they melted away into pure, simple disbelief.

Popping out to their vision and through one of the gate’s square openings, was Austral front and center. Squeezing her trimmed antlers through, she stared at them with a haggard mouth, a pair of beige eyes, and perhaps a broken heart. She drank as much of this one look as she could before she was pulled out of sight.

Another gate closed in the archway, blocking everything from their sight. They couldn’t see the crowd, the crowd couldn’t see them. It was just a wall, adorned with a filled in archway. Brick-muted commands sounded, but that was all they could hear through the blizzard.

They turned around, facing that same downhill slope. Against the storm, they saw a gray fog everywhere against the rattling of snow kicking up and being kicked up to their face by the wind. So dense was the fog without the aid of artificial light, their world only consisted of them and the little patch of snow-beaten ground they occupied.

Bori kept her head down against the gale dropping snow for the antler’s palms to entertain, her chin resting on the apron she still wore. “So... that’s that...”

Aurora rubbed a hoof all over her frost-caked face. She turned around, seeing her darling home with no way in, staring at where Austral had been. Looking down, she noticed she had brought her scarf into banishment.

“Where are we gonna go?!” Alice cried out in havoc, flailing and wailing and also lucky that she didn’t drop her bow in all that flailing and wailing.

“I don’t know,” Bori said hastily, raising her voice just to be heard over the inescapable growling of the wind flapping their ears. “I think we should start by finding shelter... maybe in a cave or—“

She couldn’t say the other option because her antlers glowed. She looked up, seeing the pink light like a pink lighthouse in an overcast day. Blue lights dotted her periphery, and she saw Aurora and Alice’s antlers glow, too. Together, they were a colorful lighthouse, living beacons against the volley of snow and bad happenstance.

Then those antlers pinged, echoing a faint ring.

“Huh.” Bori tapped her antlers. “That’s something new.”

“Just like a sonar,” Alice observed.

“I don’t even have to ask if that’s a future thingy,” Aurora blurted out.

Alice blushed. “Sorry! Can’t help it when you suddenly know there’ll be underwater radars in a couple centuries!”

“We just got stranded by every deer, never to return again, and what you think about is underwater radars? Do you even know what a radar is? ‘Cause I sure don’t!”

“Alright,” Bori said, stepping in between them, seizing the small break in the storm to catch their attention. “I know that this... this isn’t exactly great, but getting into arguments will get us nowhere.” She shoveled the snow off of her mane and the top of her head. “If we’re going to get progress soon, we’ll have to work together, rein in our powers, and just bear with each other.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Alice remarked.

Bori frowned at her. “Please, Alice. This is serious. I know you know this is serious.”

Alice scratched her neck and flinched. “Sorry, Bor’. It’s just... I didn’t expect to get kicked out of Rennefer like that. Or at all.”

“Well, I say Cervidi showed his true colors!” Aurora complained, raising her hoof and shaking it towards the closed gate (all that was needed was a cane). “To think that we could’ve been mighty helpful with everyone else with our smarts, strengths, and other reindeer stuff. I say he’s gotten too old!”

Alice snickered at the irony of age, but she covered her mouth from her sight.

“Are we done?” Bori said. She didn’t wait for a reply with both Aurora and Alice paying her attention again: “OK, girls, let’s start thinking of a plan. I propose we start with—“

Her antlers glowed and pinged again. She squeezed her eyelids shut, concentrating with the wind-driven snow landing on her face. Seconds later, she opened them up to Aurora and Alice ogling her like she was a deer on the loose.

“Actually,” Bori began with a lifted hoof, “I say we should keep going north.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “Duh! That’s how we got down from here!”

“Uh, no,” and Bori rubbed her antlers like she was rubbing a revered heirloom. “I-I think my antlers or whatever it is... it’s telling us to just go north.”

“North until where?” Aurora asked immediately. “I’m not sure if my poor body could endure this. And why north anyway?”

With two sets of eyes asking her for answers, Bori covered her cheeks with her hooves, warming herself against the militant cold. “I don’t really know. However, our mysterious antler powers have helped us with two ponies and a dragon before, so I’m sure they know what they’re doing. I hope.”

“I hope it’s taking us to safety,” Alice said, tugging at her apron. “Maybe it’ll even take us to another town and we can move there!”

“I only hope so,” Bori replied slowly, morose. “I only hope so.”

So after one last look back at Rennefer, of a village and a home that’d produced a river of memories and good times, of the families and friends they’d leave behind—after that, they trotted down the hill against the raging weather.

The kitchen door opened and Alice popped her head through it. “Bori, I got some spare batter for snacks! You wanna?”

That snapped Bori and Yitterby out of the story, eyes now on Alice for some delicious matters.

Bori replaced her facial gloom with a smile. “Sure, why not?”

The bowl was enveloped in a pink glow and levitated to the table. Both yak and reindeer put in a hoof to taste the rich batter.

“Sweet. As. Usual,” Bori commented, smacking her lips in between words. “It’s even sweeter now. Did you do anything to it?”

“Not really,” Alice replied, still hanging out in the kitchen.

While the small talk of cake and batter went on, Yitterby let his mind mull over who exactly these reindeer were. They weren’t mythical beings who’d been living here since the dawn of time like the fabled Discord he’d heard off from traveling ponies. On the contrary, these were reindeer who didn’t give him a challenge, who didn’t have tricks up their sleeves, and just exuded hospitality... to think his quest would end so mundanely.

Bori and Alice’s cake conversation ended with the both of them waving farewell and Bori peeking through the door. Aurora was seen reading and re-reading a cookscroll, eyes trailing the fine hoofwriting on them.

The door closed and Bori turned back to Yitterby. She wiped her lips clean of batter stains.

“How are you feeling so far?” Bori said while she put down her napkin. “You don’t feel uncomfortable, impatient, or anything like that? Maybe it’s too cold, hm?”

Yitterby shook his head, letting his thick bundle of fur swing freely. “Yak OK. Yak learning.”

Bori nodded, relieved with the answer. “That’s good to hear!” She glanced up at the ceiling, descrying something unseen in the rafter. “Well, let’s see where to pick it up from...”

In a moment of weakness, she got another hoofful of batter and licked it. Yitterby took this as permission to get more batter, too. To him, the more batter, the better.

With their stomachs indulged in for the time being, Bori wiped her lips again and continued the tale:

“It was a hard trip for all of us. We went through unfamiliar territory; everything was unfamiliar. We’d never left our home before our antlers started acting up. All we’d ever known was what the scrolls and books taught us, what we could get through the city wall’s windows from time to time. Certainly didn’t help make the journey any easier. Even worse when we had no idea where we’re going at all; all our antlers told us was to go north, north, and north some more.”

Her voice halted a bit. She took in another hoofful of batter, downed it with cold water. Her eyes became downcast, filled with an anxiety that was strangely neutral: it wasn’t wanton worry nor giddy hope. It was just plain anxiety.

“We had a few good times on the road. We laughed at each other’s jokes and they helped us cope with what the world threw at us. When we slept (usually under a tree), we sometimes cuddled up to each other, hugging each other for warmth against the ever harsher elements. Of course, we also talked which kept us sane from boredom for those lonely weeks.

“Make no mistake, though: we had a really rough time out there. Beasts and monsters lurked in the unknown hinterlands: the abominable snowpony who runs way too fast, and we only escaped because he got distracted; the humongous amaroks who blend in with the environment so good, we had to start acting like amaroks just to get halfway past them; the thunderbird that can shoot thunder out of its mouth, so we just waited until it wasn’t stormy... let’s just say we had too many close calls.”

Here she laughed, partly to blow off some of the tension from remembering when Bori and the others had to dodge the thunderbird’s sneezes of lightning from singing their bodies.

“Even without them, we still had the wild terrain: crossing cliffs and ravines, traversing dark caverns, climbing up and down mountains without falling into certain doom. Well, we tried to fly at first, but it never came to us.”

Yitterby took spent the pause getting yet another hoofful of batter. When he looked at Bori again, she saw her eyes sagging, severely downcast this time.

“On their own, they were more than difficult to overcome. But do you want to know the biggest problem, the biggest obstacle we had to face?”

The yak slightly raised himself from the chair, making sure his ear was close to her.

Bori sighed once again, inhaling a heavy breath. Her shoulders and her back hunched. She turned to the kitchen door, heard a bout of hearty laughter from within.

“Our biggest problem... was each other.”

Now a bout of silence came over them. Expecting something profound or humongously dangerous at least, Yitterby couldn’t help but frown with Bori. Looking at the door and trying to see what went on in the kitchen, it seemed impossible that these friendly reindeer would stoop lower than occasional arguments.

“It was inevitable,” Bori continued, eyes still upon the door. “They say familiarity breeds contempt. Combine that with our weird focuses on past, present, and future... things had to go down, and it didn’t take long. Aurora would sometimes wake up crying from dreams of home, and she routinely blamed our strange magic for separating us from the good ol’ days we’d always had—not to mention she keeps reminiscing about those days every thirty minutes. Alice was good at helping us prepare for any challenges ahead thanks to her future vision, but it took a toll on her: knowing the threats and dangers ahead in advance made her afraid of the whole trip even if they were days away... and somehow, her vision didn’t stretch to our destination, wherever and whatever it was.

“Me?” She brought a hoof to her aproned chest. “I once thought it was a never-ending nightmare. Everything fused together in my mind, into the present. For all I knew, we were walking forever in endless snow with no escape.”

Yitterby gulped. He leaned back fully on his chair, a lingering terror creeping up on his hulky back.

“I... lost count of the days. I had to ask Aurora too many times how long we’d been out there.” Bori brought her forehooves to her temples. “It was so long, so weary. Were we not careful, it would’ve broken all of us...”

Crashing into the night, the perilous and savage storm from which none could escape its cold and ever-reading grip. Once inside the fog, no sign of help could ever pop up, for within the confines of this blinding mist, heavy snow and heavier wind collapsed upon them, forcing them to move slowly and suffer ever more from the heavy snow and heavier wind. In short, the storm styled itself a vicious cycle.

Here, nothing could be seen save for an infinite canopy of snow. Not a tree, not a mountain, not a valley: only snow and fog.

Against all odds, a cough echoed through the strident gale. It’d come from Alice whose lips were caked in still more snow and frost, sitting under her baggy and saggy eyes.

Bori and Aurora followed her not far behind. Their lips and eyes had similar chills to their names, too. The latter had her scarf covering half her face from weather attack; the former just sloughed on, letting the apron soak up the bitter freeze.

Their gait had degraded from a resolute pace to a stumbling stagger which wasn’t helped by the gusts blowing the opposite way. Their only hope was north and the glow of all their antlers lighting up a few more meters ahead of them. At least in this, some beauty could be found as blue, cyan, and pink meshed to form a swirling colorful light ahead of them.

“Are you sure we won’t encounter the icegator again?” Bori asked, raising her voice above the din of the storm. “You said he lives around here.”

“I said I think he lives around here,” Alice replied, pointing forward. “But he won’t come around.”

“Well... OK, then.”

That done, they spent a couple more minutes dragging themselves through the land of ever more snow. The wind blew their way, not so subtle in its intent to stop them.

Alice groaned, covering her eyes from any potential snowflake intruders. “Uh, Aurora?” she called out. “How long is it again?”

“A full week,” Aurora shouted, echoes faint in intense breeze. “We’ve been hurting ourselves for a full week.”

Bori glared at her. “And what does that mean, Aurora?”

“What do you think it means?” Aurora shot back, shrugging with her shoulders. “We’ve been bracing the outside world without any experience at all for one full week!”

“Aren’t you forgetting when we had that big blizzard a few years’ back?"

“That was then, this is now!” Aurora yelled, now clear enough for both Bori and Alice to hear. “And since it’s the now, I’m trusting you to help us!”

Bori huffed. “Auri, I—“

”At least we had a whole community helping each other out,” Aurora went on, shaking her forehoof. “Now, it’s just the three of us!”

“At least there’s three of us,” Bori said, stern yet trying to be as understanding as possible. “You know what they say, that birds who flock together—“

“—stay together,” Alice continued, “but birds usually flock away from the winter, not into it.”

Bori groaned and whipped her around to give Alice her second glare. “If you think you can sass around like that, Miss Future, please look ahead of time and tell us when we’re going to stop going north!”

Alice pointed at her antlers and made a desperate face. “For the millionth time, I’m getting future-blocked there! I don’t know when or where we’ll stop... if we’ll ever stop...”

“Why are you getting future-blocked?!” Bori shouted, putting her forehooves up and down like a zany hummingbird. “Why do your powers have to break down when we need it the most?"

“D-Don’t ask me!” Alice countered. “I’m the one with the problem! You’re asking a bricked computer to troubleshoot itself!”

That made Bori pause, standing still in the rabid storm. “... what?”

“I get what she’s trying to say!” Aurora cut in, raising her hooves high against the gloomy and unseen sky. “I don’t know what this magic thing is, but it’s caused us more trouble than good, I can tell you that!”

Bori gasped and lifted a hoof, knee-jerk at that. “Auri, no!”

“Well, what if she’s right?!” Alice said, standing up to Bori and arching her brow at her. “I don’t see any ending for this one and I’m supposed to see endings! All I see is snow, snow, snow...“

“Just snow?” Bori said before bursting into a hopeful smile. “We might be close! This could be the final stretch, and we could see what our antlers are trying to tell us!”

“Are you serious?” Aurora replied, planting her hooves into inches-deep snow. “We’ve walked almost non-stop for seven days, and it looks like we’ve covered an ant’s throw of distance!”

“At least we’re here!” Bori looked off into the horizon despite how grim it was with the storm and all. “We must be a lot closer than when we’ve started!”

“Bah! ’Course we are!” and Aurora kicked some snow behind her in frustration.

“But what if we still have a lot to go?” Alice asked Bori, turning from anger to a charged, worrying sorrow. “I don’t want to walk forever! We’ll be like those ponies who keep traveling and don’t have permanent homes!”

“We won’t walk forever and you know it,” Bori said firmly. “What we have here now is each other, and that’s more than enough to last us through this journey. If we can just grin and bear it for just a little longer, we could find signs that we’re almost there!”

“And if we don’t?” Aurora quipped, wiping her glasses from fogginess for the hundredth time.

“I hate to say it,” Alice began, tugging at Bori’s apron, “but for all we know, this weird magic might lead us to somewhere worse than Rennefer.”

“How do you know?” Bori asked, challenging her.

Alice crossed her forehooves, donning a smug smile. “Oh, it’s just a guess!”

“A guess, huh?!” chipped in Aurora. “What, you know something we don’t? I sense your passive-aggressive attitude, youngin’!”

“Girls!” Bori started, staring at them, gritting her teeth. Realization was in her eyes, and she looked like she had that realization a second too late. “You have to understand—“

“Do you think you’re Miss Know-It-All?” Aurora prodded Alice, paying no heed to Bori’s warning.

Alice recoiled from the old cow. “I never said that!” Scanning her from antler to hoof, “And, what’re you gonna do? Bring up something from my past?”

“I’d never think of that!... but what I think is there’s more danger in your future powers ‘cause you can threaten them all you want as this self-proclaimed seer... and Bori’s just gone psycho!”

“It’s psychic,” Bori corrected with a groan, “and I don’t think that’s nice to say, Aurora.”

“Says the one who was all in on being stranded in the snow for a week! Why, if it were up to me, I would’ve made sure to resist whatever strange things that magicky thing wants me to do, especially if it wants me to fly—”

Stopped. She felt something felt icy, way too icy to be regular snow. Bori’s and Alice’s looks of surprise confirmed it wasn’t just her feeling it. So, they looked down.

Under the light of glowing antlers, a blanket of ice crept up on them. Amid this sounded howls and thunder accompanied by the flashes of far-flung lightning. So, they looked up.

There, forming in the clouds, circled a lone figure creating a whirlwind in the feisty clouds. It was an equine ghost, eyes glowing like gems; it was composed of personalized wind and breeze, its zephyr vocal cords eliciting a garbled whinny.

That was enough for Aurora, Bori, and Alice to cling onto each other for safety from whatever that creature was.

“What is that?!” Bori screamed, holding tight onto Aurora’s sturdy antlers.

Aurora gulped, biting her lips so much, she felt pain in them. “It’s a... no, I can’t believe it, but it’s a windigo!”

“A windigo?!” and that sent Alice afluttering. “Alright, alright, alright, alright... how did they do it? I-I got it! We, um, we declare we’re friends and fire shoots up to beat him!”

Bori and Aurora looked at her, dumbfounded by quite the daring solution.

The windigo, slightly amused at this suggestion of how to be defeated, glided ever closer, bringing the blanket of ice ever closer as well.

Alice coped with this ramping difficulty by saying, “Should’ve known it’d be harder than that.”

“Of course, you dummy!” Aurora roared, slapping her on her blooming antlers. “You’re dealing with the dreaded windigo, and none of us are the legendary Clover the Clever!”

But instead of diving into the argument again, Bori took stock of raw reality attacking her with this snowstorm and the windigo in the sky. That immense ghost giant hovered over them, its long muzzle and its glowing eyes shaking Bori to her core as it descended ever closer and incited the ice to snake its way to encase them in ice for the res of time.

Except it didn’t shake Bori to her core.

Aurora and Alice clung to her neck and leg; this was done in the hope that bundling together would give them a fighting chance against these specters of frosty hearts. However, Bori sported not a single hint of terrified trembling in her features.

Above Alice’s and Aurora’s desperate screams, Bori stared the windigo down.

The phantom stopped in mid-air. It showed not a smile, unamused at this pathetic gesture. It continued its merry circling around above, gathering more storm clouds and raining ever more snow on the three reindeer, forming a furious weather.

But Bori’s antlers glowed still, shining brighter, refusing to be blotted out by the whirling and whirring fog. It shone, not a care in the world even as the gusts and gales rushed to try to snap them away. Pain coursed through her whole body, pain of the freezing kind, but Bori held her head and her glowing antlers high.

She gasped before turning to Aurora.

“Aurora!” she yelled, grabbing her by the antler; Aurora would’ve punched her any other time, but inclement conditions dictated otherwise. “R-remember when we helped those ponies and that one dragon out? How we stuck through the weird stuff together?”

Aurora nodded, clenching onto her glasses; they were about to fly apart.

“We got through them because we had each other!”

“We were secretly told to do it with each other!” Aurora yelled back.

“But still!”

With that, she turned to Alice who was quaking by her side. “You used the future to be confident about, well, the future! We prevailed against whatever came our way and even helped others out without them knowing!”

“Like knowing the dragon won’t eat us?” Alice said, before blushing at how late she was. "OK, I see what you mean, Bori!”

Affirmed with Alice, Bori turned back to Aurora who’d been staring at her the whole time with baffled eyes.

“I... I’ve never seen anything like this before, Bori.”

“Maybe not exactly like it,” Bori said, more snow and wind beating down on all of them. “But something like it... that, I’m sure of.”

Her confidence fully regained, there was one more thing to deal with: the windigo. She stomped a hoof into the ground, driving it deep through snow and soil. This stance completed, she stared down the windigo again.

“I know you’re trying to feed on our discord,” Bori bellowed high into the sky. “But I’ll let you know, Windy Whiner: you just helped us grow stronger!”

She received a ghostly scoff from the creature, which echoed out as far as they could hear. The reindeer wobbled from the volume, but they still held their ground. In fact, Aurora and Alice joined her in staring the windigo down.

“Back then,” Bori continued, gesturing to her friends by her side, “we were united by the unexplainable urge to help three complete strangers in a place we’ve never been to before. Then, we desired to help just about anyone who would come our way with some kind of gift, whether literal or not. Now, we’ll finish this journey wherever it leads us together... and that includes stopping you!”

Lights flashed brighter, brighter, and still brighter. The reindeer didn’t know they were floating above the ground, escaping the blanket of ice in the last second. The windigo first arched its head back; it whinnied when it saw the reindeer still floating closer to him, trying to hold them off by directing all the snow and the wind right at them. It neighed when even it couldn’t see them under the blinding light of their antlers.

That blinding flash of light and an explosion.

Nothing.

There was nothing after, not for a while. Eyes closed and squeezed tight.

They felt cold covering their whole bodies. Yet, a warm breeze came over; upon feeling that, they snapped their eyes open.

Over there in the distance, without the gray obstacle of fog, they could see a color that wasn’t white or gray. It was a splotch of green first, then there were splotches of that leafy color. Accompanying green close ahead was brown. It wasn’t the brown of wood since they saw the trees fully covered in green leaves with not a branch nor even a sign of trunk peeping out.

The brown belonged to a lodge in the middle of the snow.

It's Warm

“Huh?”

That was what all three reindeer said in unison when they saw the lodge. Huh? was the perfect word for the occasion: they desired a sign of civilization or some suggestion of help, but a random house in the middle of nowhere had never crossed their minds.

Their antlers pulsed rapidly, lights blinking in succession upon this bright wintry day. Aurora and Alice beheld them with questions in their minds. For Bori: she smiled, wrapping a hoof around Aurora’s and Alice’s necks. “This is it, girls.”

The hoof-wrapped deer glanced at her oddly. They would’ve asked if they should knock on a stranger’s lodge (if it did belong to anyone). However, given they’d just defeated a fairy tale creature, they let that question slide: something odder could crop up.

Everything had calmed down. Snow fell upon their antlers at a leisurely pace, winds had slowed to a manageable breeze upon their coats, and trees’ leaves swayed with the air’s flow to point these guests to the lodge.

Bori sighed and saw her breath turn into frost before her. She had a foreleg on her barrel, striking a confident pose.

“Well, no time like the present!” Bori declared. “We’ve come too far to go back; we’ve signed up for this. Whatever happens, happens, and we’ll face it together.” She turned to her side to face her friends. “You ready?”

Aurora and Alice nodded simultaneously, smiles back on their faces. Alice even jumped before landing flat on her face.

After Aurora picked her up, they walked towards the mysterious lodge. They gave passing looks to the trees, hoping nothing would pop out at them. Nothing did save for the buffet of fresh pine tree smell. Devoid of surprises, it was a refreshing walk through calm snow in a place that happened to be very cold.

They reached the door, Bori leading the three-deer herd. Stopping right before it, she took a deep breath and then another deep breath. She examined the door’s dull design, but that was another matter. She tried to look through the provided door window, but a sheet of fabric blocked the interior from view.

Nothing else to do but wait for someone (if there was a someone inside) to notice them or knock. Bori knocked.

She waited. She waited some more. She waited a bit more. Aurora tapped her hoof impatiently while Alice looked at her foreleg to check the time; she proceeded to slap herself on the head when she realized portable watches wouldn’t be invented for a century or two.

Bori knocked on the door again, worry crawling on her lips. “Uh, hello? It’s, um, us! We’re three reindeer: Aurora, Bori, Alice. We were l-led here by, uh, strange antler flying magic. Could you please let us in?”

No response.

That elicited another “Huh?” from Bori.

“I didn’t come all the way here for nothing!” Aurora said, budging Bori out of the way and stretched her hoof towards the doorknob.

“Wait, Aurora! You can’t just—“

The door opened.

The three of them, including Aurora, shuddered at that. “Well, that’s unusual!” the elderly cow said herself. “I was hoping jangling on their locked doors would have ‘em scrambling downstairs!”

“But why would they leave their front door open?” Alice mused. “It’s like they’ve been expecting someone to come here around this time.”

“Considering your track record with the future,” Bori said, “you may not be far off.”

Alice nervously scratched her mane. “Hah! I wasn’t even trying!”

“’May not be far off’,” Bori said, sounding pedantic much to Alice’s irritation.

So, Bori took a step forward, a step into the lodge. She raised a hoof, signaling her friends that it was OK to enter.

They closed the door after them and saw what was inside: knickknacks, curios, and various other whatnots laid about on the floor and the shelves and on each other in semi-organized piles. Special glittery wrapping paper teemed a crate or two Alongside them, more pine trees stood by, filling the building with their luscious minty yet earthy natural scents. Yes, furniture was there, but why bother about the furniture when they’re overshadowed by so many trees and gifts-to-be?

At the end of the living room reposed a furnace, on and burning. Like any other good furnace, it provided warmth for the room, which eased the reindeer into the house’s coziness away from the harsh and biting cold outside.

After getting quite comfy with the welcome blast of hot air, the reindeer looked at the plentiful gifts in awe. Here, Bori held up a silver bell hanging from the rafters. There, Aurora enjoyed the wind chimes yet to be wrapped, lying beside a sheet of wrapping paper.

“Uh, Aurora?” Alice began, sitting by the furnace and rubbing her hooves. “You didn’t tell me you had a vacation home out here! I thought you were always on vacation!”

Aurora let out a playful “Hmph!”

Meanwhile, Bori smiled and rubbed her antlers. “Looks like our strange magic thingies led us in the right direction. We have all we need to make gifts.” Then, she rubbed her chin in thought. “But who prepared all of this?”

Two pairs of eyes fell upon Alice. She got the memo and shrugged. “Beats me.”

Bori shrugged back. “Anyway, no matter who did this, we just have to make these gifts and help out other creatures... but who are these gifts for exactly?”

“As many as you see fit,” came a fourth voice.

“Agh!” and Alice leaped to Aurora to cling onto her.

Aurora wasn’t that fazed by the voice, but she was more than surprised by Alice’s accidental assault which Bori softened by galloping right by Aurora’s side.

Now together in the same living bundle of flesh and antlers, they each took a step back from... anywhere, really; the voice kept echoing from every angle, bouncing off from and in every angle so it was like someone had spoken to them in circles.

Bori gulped, eyes darting everywhere. “Wh-who are you?”

On cue, the furnace burned and glowed brighter, its crackling growing noisier. Sparks fell upon the floor but caused no fire. Still, it was enough for the reindeer to look that way, in time to see smoke billow into the room.

However, it was too thick and dense to be ordinary smoke; it had more in common with a storm cloud than tenuous smoke. Unlike ordinary and tenuous smoke, it was gathering, not drifting and dispersing everywhere, and it didn’t give off that familiar pungent stench. Slowly, the smoke took form—or three forms, rather. As more smoke came, featured emerged: first, they took on vague equine outlines. Next came their hooves and their manes, shaped into something eerily tangible. Their barrels and the rest of their lower bodies came about along with their tail, and clothing was forged out of this smoke. Finally, their heads were fashioned into something recognizable, something distinctly pony. So the rest of the smoke vanished, leaving behind three creatures.

When it was done, the reindeer saw three ponies. The first was a pegasus donning a rugged hat between her ears and a flower on her mane, complete with a ragged, rustic gown; what most caught their attention, though, was her ethereal appearance which made her ghostly transparent. The second was an Earth pony who had a garland of fragrant flowers and tiny cornucopias of fire, sporting a robe of gold on her torso and the widest of smiles on her face. The third was a unicorn with a huge cloak, shrouding its figure which proved the tallest among the three; much of her face was hidden by the cloak’s shadows.

The reindeer just clung to each other tighter, wishing these three ponies wouldn’t do something bad to them.

But Alice, venturing out to brave whatever might come, asked them, “Wh-who are you ponies?”

The second one stretched her smiling cheeks wider which should’ve been impossible. “I’m so glad you asked!” she said in a pepper tone, sounding just like that mystical fourth voice. Turning to her companions:“You know it’s roll call time, spirits!”

“Spirits?” Aurora muttered, silently letting go of her grip on her friends. Now, fear gave way to curiosity. “Spirits o-of what?”

The first one bowed her head. “I am the Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Past.”

The second one hopped forward and stood on one leg. “I’m the Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Presents!”

Bori cocked her head at this oddity. “Shouldn’t it be present? As in, what’s going on now?”

“Not really,” the pony replied, bobbing her head to the side. “Really, I’m the Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Gifts, but that doesn’t sound as catchy as presents. I mean, you could call me Presents because—seriously—who’s going to say Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Presents every one hundred seconds?”

Bori’s genuine smile morphed into fakery, masking her anxiety in the hopes that she wouldn’t offend this unfathomable spirit. She left Presents off with,”O...K... whatever you say, spirit.”

Last but not least, then, was the third one who stepped forward, revealing a glimpse of her hoof adorned by a shiny silver shoe. Lowering her head, she simply said, “I am the Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Yet to Come."

Alice was impressed by the imposing figure. “Pretty cool, Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Yet to Come!”

Presents trotted forward, shaking her head at saying one of their long names, but she shook that out her mind. Turning back to the reindeer: “Together, we’re the Spirits of Hearth’s Warming! We do our best to make Hearth’s Warming go superb for the ponies of Equestria!” She leaned on Past who was miffed at someone just using her back for cool introductions. “So what do you think, kind reindeer?”

If anything, the reindeer had their mouths open at not knowing what to say. Having three spirits pop out from the furnace’s smoke wouldn’t be expected, after all.

Aurora was the first one to close her mouth and reel her senses back. She raised her hoof and asked, “... so why are we here?”

Past chuckled and rubbed her own mane. “You don’t get it? Consider our names and you’ll see.”

That sent the reindeer thinking, racking their minds. Alice hummed her way through that thinking process while Aurora absentmindedly scratched her scarf to free her brain up from any distraction.

A few seconds later, Bori gasped with eyes widened. She leveled a hoof at the spirits in a sweeping motion, terrified awe overtaking her.

“Wh-what’s wrong?” Alice asked, seeing Bori in this mad state.

Bori didn’t mind her; she was too astonished by the revelation before her. Gazing upon the spirits, she uttered, “A-Are...are you the ones who made our antlers glow?... and made us want to go outside to give gifts to complete strangers?... and made us leave home to be here?”

Yet to Come nodded. “That is correct.”

And the reindeer gasped together, staring at each of the spirits in shock. They saw Past’s blushed cheeks, Yet to Come’s blank expression, and Presents’s still wider grin.

Aurora kept staring at Past with that face of disbelief, only for Past to come forward and pat her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, old-timer. If it comforts you, I’m a lot older than I look. All three of us are.”

“In case you want to know, we’re quite busy doing our jobs most of the year,” Presents said, bringing Bori in with half a hug; the reindeer was closer now to the spirit’s slight dose of scatterbrain. “Which sounds weird because Hearth’s Warming is a winter thing, but these things take time, you know? Like how animals store up food for the winter—you get me now? It’s that hibernation thing.”

Before Bori could reply, Alice trotted up to Yet to Come. “So, let me guess: You can—“

“—predict stuff from the future?” Yet to Come finished. “Yes, young one. I believe my name would’ve given that away.”

Alice felt dizzy at that. “Woah! It feels weird being on the receiving end of that.”

A chuckle came from Yet to Come’s wry smile.

After being let go of Presents’ hug, Bori had a hoofful of curiosity on her mind, much more than intrigued by a holiday having its own spirits. “So... what exactly do you do with Hearth’s Warming?”

Presents winked at her while picking up a pillow. “We’re spirits, so we can’t do much in the material world... least not directly. Our specialty is mental whispers and conjuring dreams.” She twirled around on the floor, doing a short jig before continuing. “We’re here to stir up the spirit of Hearth’s Warming (figuratively speaking, of course!) by reminding ponies of how the holiday came to be back then, of what it means right now, and of wonderful memories and times further ahead!”

Alice’s ears drooped in thought, eyes set on Yet to Come. “Yeah, because nothing speaks bright futures better than wearing a dark cloak.”

Yet to Come sighed, upset by the choice of words. “These clothes weren’t my choice.”

That got the reindeer’s eyebrows raising, evoking a harmonious Huh? from the three of them.

Past took her mane flower off and put it close to her chest. “We got some explaining to do.” She took a deep breath and began: “We used to be ordinary ponies back in the day, living in an ordinary village with ordinary neighbors and friends. Well, ordinary as can be when famine’s abundant in the land and the tribes got at each other’s throats. When Earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns united to form Equestria... well, there was lots of celebrating. With something so historical, it took two and two and everyone started calling it Hearth’s Warming.”

Presents nudged her on the elbow. “Uh, now they’re wondering why we’re still here after all those hundreds of years!”

Past blushed again, giving her hooves idle work in tying her mane to wipe the anxiety away. “Oh. Right.”

“I’ll take it from here,” and Presents stepped in front of Past, blocking her from view. With the attention focused on her, she went on for the reindeer: “You see, we weren’t content with just giving stuff to other ponies. We wanted to make gift giving extra extra!... but we didn’t know how,” and her ears deflated a bit. “Long story short, we got here, realized we wanted to help others a lot, and it was like Hearth’s Warmingness came to us and turned us into its spirits!”

She amazed the reindeer, not really for the story itself but for how casually she’d hoofed it to them. Intentionally or not, she played up the casualness by leaning on Past again, though the latter wasn’t amused at being used like a wall.

“B-but,” Aurora began haltingly... “but all this magic stuff took us from our f-friend and family!”

Bori’s and Alice’s cheerful mood dampened at that, memories of sweet home and comfy friends rushing back in.

Yet to Come nodded solemnly. “Yes, it is indeed a sad affair, and I don’t wish to downplay that. For a time, even we didn’t expect you to become estranged from your own.” Here, she raised a hoof, her tone becoming lighter: “But I know you got something in you, something that runs even deeper than even your friends and family.”

Alice looked up at her. “What’s that?”

Past went over to Alice and pat her on the shoulder. “To start with, you three got the biggest hearts to give... and it’s always been there. It’s just that, like all the other reindeer, you had that ‘Oh, no! Outsiders are bad!’ sort of thinking.”

“It was only later,” Yet to Come continued... “only after did you learn later that those outsiders have their own struggles and problems on the same level as the average reindeer’s. You learned that a good gift from nowhere is a fresh glass of water in the middle of the desert.”

Presents took out a grape from one of her garland cornucopias and flicked it to the furnace to roast. “Too bad we couldn’t get everyone else in on it with you; sadly, we’re not omnipotent or anything like that. And even if we wanted to, this thing’s a three-deer thing.”

“Three-deer thing?” Bori asked. “What do you mean?”

Presents’s eternal smile failed her now. “Um... we’re spirits.” She pointed at herself and gestured towards the other Hearth’s Warming spirits. Sure, it looks like we got flesh and blood and all that good material stuff, but it’s a really good illusion spell over us.” She waved her hooves in front of her face like a second-rate ghost actor. “Our bodies aren’t really bodies. Because of that, we can’t do physical stuff really well—tires us a lot to stay in these forms for more than day. Our energies are better spent mentally telling creatures to know Hearth’s Warming more, which won’t be enough if we don’t do any of that physical stuff.”

So Bori stepped back, had Alice and Aurora lending her worried looks. Turning to Present with a caution written all over her face, “What’re you getting at? I guess you want us to help you in some way, no?”

It was Presents’s turn to blush. “... yeah, though I don’t want to think of it as helping us. I think of it as helping you... helping us helping you, if you know what I mean.”

“But you must understand,” Yet to Come added, cutting in: “this offer is not normal. I believe it will unsettle you at first.”

The three reindeer exchanged looks before turning back to the spirit in question. “What is it, then?” Bori asked, itching to know.

Yet to Come cleared her throat. She loosened the hood of her cloak, revealing her face a bit more and showing strands of her mane.

“You’ll be granted greatly expanded use of our powers,” Yet to Come said, slowly pacing around them with her imposing figure, striking not fear but a moment’s pause in their hearts. “The future shall come clearer to your head, especially for the gifts that have not happened yet. The past will be given this same clarity along with its gifts that have already happened. As for the present—“ she gazed upon Bori a tad longer than the other two “—you will know the present even more, seeing into many’s deepest thoughts when the need arises... to what troubles and pleases them at the moment. You will thus serve as the balance between the past and the present, as their hinge.”

“And also because the present is now!” Presents shouted happily, giving Yet to Come a surprise hug which she didn’t mind.

What Yet to Come had said, however, gave the reindeer more than just food for thought. Here lay these improved-and-not-so-new powers, to be elevated from mere random surges and flashes, all for the purpose of Hearth’s Warming.

“This is the part where you tell us the catch, right?” Alice asked.

Past nodded sadly, leaning on a tall chair and not on a living creature unlike a certain spirit. “That depends on how you see it. Firstly of all, this lodge will be your new home. For some reason, this gift-givingness force or whatever you call it is strongest here: we can manifest ourselves like this longer than anywhere else, for example.”

“Which means you will stay here,” Yet to Come said darkly. “You might’ve been born in Rennefer, but that is no longer your home now.”

In a second, all three reindeer became crestfallen. An imaginary chill coursed through their veins and arteries, a swift reminder of this journey’s cost.

Presents came up to Aurora who was most affected by the first catch. “I know it’s not easy to break it to you... but remember it won’t be the last time you’ll see Rennefer.”

Those imperfect eyes then lit up in hope, under better light through her eyeglasses. Alice’s and Bori’s ears perked at the tender promise.

“And another thing,” Presents said, plucking a flower from her garland and putting it on Past’s mane, much to Past’s confusion. “I’m surprised you didn’t say anything about how we’re still alive and not dead after so many years.”

That set the reindeer’s minds ringing alarm bells, which was a quaint way to put it. Aurora, for instance, bit her hoofnail.

“That’s one perk of being a Hearth’s Warming spirit,” Presents said. “You were given immortality, or at least long-livedness. I mean, I don’t feel like my back’s getting super crunchy and I’m over seven hundred years old!” She bent her back and, sure enough, not a single crunch or crack thundered throughout the entire room.

Past and Yet to Come nodded together. “We’re all over seven hundred years old,” the former told. “721 years old, to be exact.”

To this, Alice let her foreleg sway in concern. “Are you saying we’ll live for a long time?”

“That’s what I said!” Presents said. Then, trotting up to her specifically, “For you it’ll be special because you’ll end up seeing stuff in the future. That sonar won’t invent itself, you know!”

Alice shook her head in amazement. “How did you know?”

“Read your thoughts, eh!”

In the background, Bori rolled her eyes.

“So,” Presents said, twirling around the reindeer, “I know we’re right here and would really like you to help us—and I know it does sound a bit selfish—but we thought of it this way: We didn’t give you the desire to give to others. We just helped put it to the forefront, gave you the push to be unafraid... ‘cause deep down,” touching Bori’s chest, right over her heart, “we know you want to give to others... and that Hearth’s Warming, most of all, shouldn’t just be for ponies.” She took out a mini painting of a pony for emphasis. “Sure, ponies started it, but we realize there are other winter holidays out there and, more importantly, that giving gifts to others shouldn’t just be a pony thing... it’s a big thing! I think you said that, Yet to Come, didn’t you?”

Yet to Come nodded.

Presents grinned in response and turned back to the reindeer. “Think of this as the opportunity to fulfill that passion of yours in the best way possible.”

Past joined Presents in going around the reindeer (not the twirling). “Still, if you think it’s way too much, then we understand. Being the spirits of Hearth’s Warming wasn’t easy for us, especially in the beginning: we’d outlive all our friends and families, for one.” She glanced away, staring emptily at the wooden wall.

“And it’s something you can’t take back,” Presents said. “If you say ‘yes’, the powers and the responsibilities stay with you for the rest of your lives. Trust me, there were times when even I wanted a break, and I absolutely love giving presents!—if I do say so myself,” and smirked at them.

Yet to Come paced around the reindeer again, completing the circle of spirits surrounding them. “Should you choose to decline the offer, we’ll grant you a severance package.”

Aurora and Bori looked at each other, perplexed. “Severance package?”

Alice, however, winked at Yet to Come. “Are we doing inside future jokes now?”

Yet to Come coughed and cleared her throat. “Perhaps I should’ve worded it in a more, hm, present fashion: We’ll give you all we could give to assist you home or wherever else you may go: Equestria, Griffonstone, Yakyakistan... wherever. We don’t have the power to teleport you to your destination, but consider this our next best option.”

Presents broke the pacing circle and trotted inside. All eyes on the reindeer, including hers. She spread her forelegs wide, took out a flower from her garland, and extended it to them. “So, what’s it gonna be?”

All eyes were on them. The reindeer huddled together, hunkering down with each other. No words came out of their lips, however. The flurry of thought was in their minds: nostalgia-tinted memories of the past, of familiar faces and familiar places, of something safe and nothing dangerous in Rennefer; weighty musings on the present, of making it here in this lodge in one piece, of wild wonder and novelty of these Hearth’s Warming spirits, of the price to pay for giving gifts “the best way possible”; curiosity for the future, of more adventures to be had, of being given a more powerful form of this strange magic, of giving gifts anywhere and everywhere to the joy of anyone and everyone they’d pass by.

First to act: Aurora with her mellow smile for Bori, fixing her eyeglasses. Bori didn’t know what that meant, so she turned to Alice.

The teenage calf winked at her. “We’re with you whichever way you choose; the present is your forte. I know you know what to do.”

Bori didn’t voice a snarky comment about how Alice also knew. She was above that.

She took a step forward, a step closer to the flower Presents had been holding for a good two minutes straight. Took the flower, that flower of a thousand aromas she could discern. Bori put the flower down, still on her hoof, to face Presents’s waiting smile. She closed her eyes, inhaled...

“We say, ‘yes’.”

The flower disappeared in a flash.

Suffice to say, Bori didn’t expect that. On her hoof where the flower had been, there was now nothing but empty space. It was enough to pull this word out of her mouth: “... what?”

Light engulfed the three reindeer, their bodies slowly levitating into the air. They could see nothing, could hear nothing, could sense nothing in this exotic state.

As fast as they ascended, the light disappeared, and they fell to the hard timber floor, landing on their backs with a few thud!’s.

Nothing but light-headed pain was what they felt for a few seconds. Bori quickly gained her bearings, and her eyes shot open into a sideways view of the room.

She rubbed her aching head. “Ow... I-I didn’t know that would hurt.” She lifted her head, straightened her vision to see Aurora and Alice still lying down. “G-girls, are you OK?”

“Gingerbread, candy canes, jam, cinnamon, purple rock sugar for Pinkie!” Alice yelled rapidly, standing back up in one jump.

Bori blathered, “What did you say? And for who?”

Alice and Yet to Come exchanged knowing smiles and a hoofbump. “It’s a grocery list due in, say, three hundred years. Best you don’t mind it for now.”

Bori had a puzzled look on her face as Presents helped her up. “OK... at least you’re taking this a lot better than I expected, Alice.” After saying a quick thank you to Presents, she turned to Aurora who was trying to stand up. “Uh, Aurora?”

Instead of the usual five seconds, however, Aurora got up a lot faster, too fast since she wobbled and almost got to know the floor with her head a second time.

“H-huh?” she muttered before steadying herself. “Wait a minute... I feel...” and jerked her head up towards Past who was smirking all this time. “I don’t feel old now. I-is that—”

“Comes with it,” Past said, elbowing her on the leg. “Tell me: what’s on your mind now?”

Aurora let out a hmm which went well with rubbing her chin and squinting her eyes. “I... can picture Rack Ramble, Oat Milk, even Pyrite... but clearer, like I have this scroll of their lives and the gifts they gave in my mind somewhere!”

“Like?” Past prodded, reining in her bubbling excitement. “They might think you’re bluffing.”

“Rack Ramble setting aside a fancy chair for her lumberjack friend when she was looking for presents for her friends back home.”

Past let her head lean with her smile. “’Atta there.”

That left Bori with her head still in an aching flux. Thoughts of now rushed through her head, thoughts of what gifts this or that creature from across Equestria and beyond bouncing in her mind. She closed her eyes, clenched her jaw, grit her teeth.

“It’ll take some time getting used to,” Presents said, patting her on the back and massaging her withers, “but I’ll help you get the hang of it. We’ll help all of you get the hang of this.”

That said, the reindeer studied their respective spirits. Each of the spirits looked back at them with golden smiles before they gave each other knowing faces.

As for Aurora, Bori, and Alice: they did the same and gave each other the same sort of faces. No words needed to be said; they knew it was a time for a hug, so they hugged each other. In that loving embrace, there was company, there was comfort, there was camaraderie against the loneliness in this house in the face of an apparent forever—all felt in their affectionate grips and their warming tears and their muddled chokes.

“I can already taste it!” Presents muttered, clasping her forehooves in a fake swoon, consistently and constantly annoying Past with her antics. “All six of us, working together as a team! It’s the Hearth’s Warming Squad!”

“Psst!” and Past silenced her. “You have to give them some space.”

Presents looked their way, witnessing that bittersweet hug. “Oops! Sorry!”

A smaller forever came to a close when the hug finished. Bori turned to Presents who was busy wrapping a rock with paper. “Well... I d-don’t know what to say, but... thank you for giving us this... thing.” She let out a long and tired sigh, shifting her gaze away from her. “I don’t know how it’ll turn out, but I know we’ll be fine in the end.”

Aurora and Alice grinned, their teeth shining a shade of yellow under the furnace light.

Presents smiled back, using a mirror to reflect the furnace’s light on to her teeth. This made Bori laugh a bit.

“And if you need help,” Presents said, “or if you want a shoulder to cry on or if you just want a listening ear, we’re here for that and more.” She stretched a hoof out towards them, and so did the other spirits who’d come together by her side, forming a grand and ghostly welcome.

Bori rubbed her hooves together, invigorated like she had been given a new lease on life. “Alright, what’s the agenda?”

Presents glanced up, knee-deep in thought. “Good question, and good timing! Why? It’s because I just thought of a nice idea!” She pointed at Bori and her friends. “Since you can fly around and make gifts properly, what about...” and she scratched her throat. “First off, do you know Saddle Clumps?”

The three reindeer shook their heads in sync.

Presents grabbed a chair and sat on it, taking on the role of storyteller. “It’s a legend ponies tell their foals around Hearth’s Warming time. The thing is, Saddle Clumps is a chubby pony—ahem, allegedly. Anyway, that’ s not important: He flies around all of Equestria with a sack of gifts for all the good little colts and fillies while they sleep through Hearth’s Warming Eve.” She shook her head. “Of course, there’s no such thing as a Saddle Clumps; just an invented dude... but, what about we make the legend real?”

Alice let out an Ooh!, leaning forward but not enough to fall flat on the floor. Aurora glanced at the other spirits to see what they had to say about it: they nodded in agreement with Presents.

Bori asked, “Are you suggesting we go around Equestria and give gifts during Hearth’s Warming Eve while everyone’s asleep?”

“About three days from now, actually,” Presents said. “I know that’s a lot of gifts—” the spirit pointed at the piles of gifts to be finished “—but we’ll help whenever we have the energy to be physical enough for the task. Past also brought a cookscroll for things like coffee and other caffeine recipes, and if that doesn’t help, Yeti can play the violin for you!”

Yet to Come groaned and tapped Presents with her violin bow. “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t call me Yeti.”

Presents put on a jester’s hat. “You know I won’t stop, Yeti!”

The future spirit rubbed her eyes in resignation. “Fine. Just don’t push the nickname too hard. Alice is going to call me Yeti at this rate.”

“I promise I won’t!” Alice guaranteed.

Presents took off her jester’s hat and went back to ordinary conversation mode. “On topic: So, what do you reindeer think of the Saddle Clumps idea?”

“I think that’s a great idea!” Bori replied.

Aurora took a while to put her reply into words. After some prodding from Past, the reindeer said, “I’d like to see joy in the faces of those little ponies. Heh... it will be more fun when the parents can’t explain it away!”

“And I don’t think it’s just ponies now, is it?” Alice said.

Presents shook her head. “Just about anyone you want! We trust you on that. I mean, who knows? I know you’ll surprise us!”

And so, the reindeer looked at each other once more. Here laid the plan. Ahead, a few days’ worth of invaluable gift work. None of them had any certain idea about what was coming next, but this was their new life, and time wasn’t waiting for them.

“I’ll let Past and Yet to Come show you your bedrooms!” Presents said. “Leave it to me to bake you some dinner! You reindeer need a proper meal after all that walking!” With that, she hopped up the stairs, away from their sight.

Good Morning...

Seconds of silence, of nothing. The lull stayed forever, keeping him hanging. A mental image of an empty staircase, waiting for the next scene to happen. He could smell mixed whiff of mint and coffee lingering in the air.

These snapped Yitterby back to reality, back to this time of rest and anything that didn’t involve adventures, drama, or otherwise stress. No more story words to hear from a reindeer. A shake of his head and a few blubbering notes, the yak had fully pulled himself out of the tale in his head.

Bori’s smile creased, compounded with a slight downward turn. She crossed her forehooves on the table.

“I... I hope you get it,” she said softly. “I mean, I hope you really get it. The stories may be real, may be fake... well, our story is real. But whatever you call it: The Caribou Carnival, Hearth’s Warming, your own Snilldar Fest... you see that giving gifts won’t always be easy as buying them from the gift shop, but it’s those hard-earned gifts that really count. Whether it’s a trek through a barren wasteland to buy some one-of-a-kind rarity, or, better yet, a cherished friendship cultivated over the years and decades—and I mean real friendship, not the kind that disappears when the weather’s no longer fair—” she put her head down, rubbing her nose before continuing:

“What I mean is: What does the gift mean? The average creature would think medical supplies, soup, a spare wheel, and a talk aren’t valuable gifts... but to the creatures we want to help, they mean so much more than what they are on the surface.” Her smile shrunk into something more genuine, more sincere. “You were looking for the best gift ever, or how to give gifts in the best way ever, no? Knowing what your gifts mean to them... that’s our advice, our piece of wisdom.”

Yitterby’s first reaction to this was blinking. It clicked in his head. Interest became stark awakening in his eyes with their now tiny irises. “I... I...”

“Cake’s ready!” shouted Alice.

The door opened, and Alice and Aurora came out, bringing forth a simple white cake with dozens of sugar strands scattered on the frosting. It had a teeny little candle for the mighty big yak.

“I hope you enjoy it!” Alice said, levitating the cake to the table. “You’ll be tasting the world’s zeroth white cake with sprinkles!”

“Zeroth?” Yitterby and Bori asked at the same time; they turned to each other and giggled awkwardly at their own responses.

Alice rolled her eyes. “Duh! The first won’t be made until another hundred years!”

Bori rolled her eyes back at her. “Well, after enduring that long story of ours, the yak deserves some cake.”

She levitated the cake closer to Yitterby, now inches away from his watered mouth.

“Bon appetit!”

After the hearty dessert, Yitterby didn’t spend much more time with the reindeer. They noticed that he hadn’t talked as much after the story than before. Aurora chalked it up to sober contemplation: that sort of thing was bound to happen after hearing a tale at the end of an arduous trip through tons of snow and a generous serving of hardship.

He also helped clean the dishes. At least Yitterby was true to his word.

When all was said and done, Yitterby prepared to leave the lodge for the journey home. The reindeer had furnished him with a heavy bag of supplies: plenty of food and water with hopefully enough leftovers, and ample spare carpets for his back to keep him warm.

The door to the outside was open. Nighttime revealed itself in the clear violet sky, the snowstorm having had subsided. The ground of snow had grown an inch or two, but it didn’t seem too bad if the little clumps of snow that’d invaded the lodge were of any indication.

It was only Yitterby and Bori again, standing by the door and on the threshold between light and dark, between warmth and cold, between safety and danger. Aurora and Alice had stayed upstairs, getting a head start from Bori at wrapping gifts.

Bori looked at him, Yitterby staring out at the endless void of moonlit snow.

“What’s going on?” the reindeer asked.

Yitterby sighed, his breath turning into vapor which floated away into the sky, dispersed into nothing.

“Yak... brooding over reindeer story.”

Bori lowered a brow and maintained her smile. “Well, aren’t you excited to tell it? You did say you wanted to tell your friends and family a story, and that’s a real story!”

Yitterby nodded. “Yes, with changed details for reindeer safety, as pink reindeer said.”

“Thank you. I wouldn’t want a mob of greeds come over here and take gifts by force.” Bori’s smile then faded. “But what’s wrong?”

Yitterby tapped the wooden floor, nervous that way. “Maybe yak scared with story. That story maybe drive prince for search for magic reindeer for no good.”

“So what?” she countered, furrowing her brows and glowing her antlers. “He doesn’t know how to get here without a map.”

Yitterby gave her a sad grimace “Yak want to meet nice reindeer again, but yak need map.”

“Then write it when there’s a new, better prince,” Bori suggested. “Anyway, I’m sure he isn’t that bad if he’s not being shouted at on the streets.”

That gave the yak a spark of hope and reassurance. That spark was snuffed out right after, judging by Yitterby’s immediate frown.

“It’s deeper than your prince, isn’t it?” Bori asked.

Yitterby sighed, giving the outside air more vapor to work with. “Most yaks very proud of number one at everything, even if not true. Yak feel like only yak not so proud and know truth. If yak tell reindeer story and lesson to Yakyakistan, yak maybe mocked and laughed at.”

Bori pat him on his massive, hairy, carpet-laden back. “I say, do your best. If they don’t accept it, leave it be; it’ll be up to them by then, not you... and I’m sure there’s at least one yak who thinks like you, isn’t there?”

Yitterby shared Bori’s smile. “Pink reindeer right. Pink reindeer very right.”

Bori let it out with a sigh of her own. She looked ahead, saw the dark silver landscape before the yak.

“So, I guess this is the time for a hug, right?” she said.

Yitterby shook his head again although he couldn’t shake the anxious smile on his face. “Yak not sure of hugging.”

“Alice told me it’ll be scientifically proven to be healthy, so...?” Bori chuckled at herself. “The thing is, you’ve made it this far without anyone by your side. You might as well get a hug; you probably won’t be seeing anyone else for quite a while.”

A few moments of yak hesitation later, Yitterby hugged her. He did his best not to squish her with those gangly muscles; it did feel weird to hug so lightly, though.

They exchanged farewells and goodbyes. Before he knew it, Yitterby was back on the path, feeling the cool of winter brushing on his hair not as a raging and vengeful storm but as a pleasant and favorable breeze ready to help him back to Yakyakistan.

The door closed, and Bori was alone in the living room. She breathed one more sigh, that of relief, and took stock of her surroundings.

There was still so much to do for the night. She remembered it was still early in the evening, but with so many things to wrap and package as gifts here and there and everywhere in the living room, she had her work cut out for her. At least she had Aurora and Alice who would come down to have a fun time working in this spacious place.

“That was really nice of you.”

“Agh!” and Bori whirled around, only to see Presents inexplicably by her side.

She chalked that up to just spirit things.

“Yet t o Come told me you’d have to get finished soon,” Presents said, wrapping a clock in gift wrap. “She and Past are already upstairs. I think they can last until midnight for this one.”

“And you?” Bori asked.

The spirit moved her tail around and wrapped a barrel of spices in gift paper. No hooves, not even her mouth; just her tail. She flourished the act with a cross of her forehooves.

“I’ll just enjoy it while I can,” she said.

“Of course, you will.”

Presents grabbed her by the neck, bringing her into one of her signature half-hugs; she had learned to tone it down and not squeeze the life out of her friend.

“By the way, I just had another idea, Bori!”

The reindeer gave her a curious look. “What is it?”

“I’ll give you a hint.” Presents moved her forehooves around, performing some crude charades with them. “You’re going to visit Rennefer last... is that correct?”

All signs of Bori being quite OK broke away. She stepped away, silent. She wasn’t sad, but remembering their return to Rennefer, though brief, was a burden of a thought to bear.

“Well... what about you pay a certain someone a very especial visit? And I don’t just mean give gifts in secret—no, no, no!” She wagged her hoof at her. “I mean a real visit!”

Before Bori could say anything about it, Presents cut in: “Don’t you worry about it for now! That’s Yeti’s problem until it’s here.” She hopped away to the stairs once more and beckoned Bori to follow. “Won’t be any gifts to give if we don’t make them! Come on!”

The reindeer took comfort in that. At least there was work to distract her from that watershed moment.

It was an eventful night of preparation after everyone moved downstairs to wrap the rest of the gifts together—the reindeer and the spirits sharing stories, jokes, and trivia about whatever passed in their streams of thought.

Plenty of things got wrapped: jars of fresh pinecones, a bottle of a dragon’s clipped toenail, an assortment of stringed instruments, a dozen shiny gems, some hoof- and homemade dolls, a couple warm sweaters and hats and scarves, a collection of books and scrolls, exotic fragrant flowers perfect for a lover...

Time elapsed as a rushing waterfall in the rapids. Soon, it was an hour before midnight.

By then, they had gathered the gifts into a pack of sacks. It turned out there was too many gifts for the reindeer to bear on their own, so, with the spirits’ help, they built three sleighs thanks to the nearby pine trees and their willingness to lend their wood to the cause. The newly-minted vehicles appeared inelegant, but they were sleighs nonetheless which should do the job.

Almost an hour later, Yet to Come and Alice pushed together, grunting for the final sack to get onto her sleigh. One thud! later, and it was done. With the sleighs parked in front of the lodge and loaded with all those gifts of varying sizes and colors in just their boxes alone—with all that, it was really done.

Under tonight’s light and dainty snowfall which was a balm after the earlier storm, the reindeer took one long look at the spirits, all their work about to be capped off: Past’s sweat shone under the moonlight even with her translucent appearance, and her clothes were ruffly to boot. Presents’s hair was frizzed and frazzled, but that didn’t stop her from wearing one of her big smiles for the occasion. Yet to Come, on the surface, remained unaffected by the level of labor she’d dedicated to those gifts, but if one squinted past the cloak’s shroud, her baggy eyes would beg to differ.

“So, you’ll be OK out there?” Presents said, trotting to Bori’s sleigh and feeling the sacks lying there.

“We’ll be OK,” she replied.

Presents spread her forehooves wide, struggling to stand on her two hindlegs. “One more thing for you all: group hug?”

So everyone, reindeer and spirit, wrapped their forelegs around each other and joined in one huge embrace. Did the winter make the hug any warmer? Certainly: against the cold, they still had each other.

They let go, removed themselves from each other. The reindeer headed for their sleighs and hooked themselves up to them.

“It’ll be good to see them again,” Aurora said, lighting up her pair of antlers and shining some blue over the white snowy ground.

“But don’t forget all the other cool creatures we’re gonna end up meeting along the way!” Alice reminded, her antlers lighting up, too. “We’re going to visit cities full of ponies—and, ooh! We’re paying a visit to that griffon town, too, right?”

“It’s Griffonstone,” Bori answered for Aurora, her antlers the last to light up, “but that’s hours ahead. Now, we’ll do a final check.” She cleared her throat as harshly as she could, ensuring beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’d be heard loud and clear. Then, she began: “Alice, you got all your gifts?”

“All right here!” Alice yelled, pointing at her sacks stacked behind her.

Bori turned to Aurora. “Ready with everything?”

“I was already ready!” Aurora shouted back.

Bori couldn’t help but shake her head at the elderly cow’s tiny defiance, but that could wait or be dismissed. Now, she looked ahead, facing the vast expanse of snow on the ground and of stars and moon in the sky.

“I’m missing nothing and prepared. Let’s go!”

And they were off, accelerating into a gallop and speeding farther away from the lodge’s solace. Antlers all glowing into a bright intensity, their hooves touched the ground one last time, and they flew.

Before they disappeared into the horizon with gift-filled sleighs in tow, they waved at the spirits back on the ground. A minute later, the reindeer went out of sight, blending in with Hearth’s Warming Night.

It was fun being Saddle Klumps. Or Saddle Klumpses.

Their first and most major stop was Equestria basking in all its vast renown. The brash avalanche-worthy climate of the Frozen North had given way to a winter more tolerable to ponies’ thinner coats, but snow was still a cold blanket for them.

They went through a great variety of villages and cities; from aspiring hamlets to sprawling boroughs, they visited as many as they could. The novelties of pony society amazed the reindeer guests: the humble hay-thatched cottages, the grandiose stone castles, the colorful diversity of swaying flags, the array of strange new aromatic Equestrian flowers, the familiar yet different wooden carts and wagons—and there were the ponies themselves. However, the reindeer only had so many hours in a night, so they didn’t stop to fully enjoy the sights.

It was late enough that it was early: many ponies were asleep by then, dozing off in their beds with not a care in the world. Against this blue halcyon backdrop, the reindeer—with a sack or two slung on their back—went their separate ways for each town, leaving their sleighs parked in an alley or on an unassuming rooftop a pegasus would likely neglect.

Next, the reindeer entered the houses, whether they were cottages, bungalows, apartments, or manors. When a chimney was available, they flew into it and landed with silent tread; when there wasn’t a chimney, they entered through a side- or backdoor which their magic unlocked for them. Alice mused on whether this counted as breaking into someone else’s house and was therefore a crime, but she justified it with her gifts. She also considered the foals themselves, some of them so imaginative that they left milk and cookies on the table for Saddle Klumps. Alice gladly gobbled the milk and cookies she came across.

The act itself was simple: get the right gift from her sack—she’d know which one—put it down under the Hearth’s Warming tree or wherever else, and do it all without waking anypony up. But with each delivery done, a beautiful vision graced Alice in the back of her mind. The nuances and details of each were different, but she saw the poignant similarities: a foal opening her gift, joyful screaming at the glorious reveal. Tears of joy and passionate shouts that Saddle Klumps was real. The parents also receiving their own presents in the ruckus, unable to explain how they got them—and giving some silent thanks to whoever had given the gift, with a few going so far as thanking the fantastic Saddle Klumps himself.

One delivery in particular Alice would remember fondly was when she went into one of the stately chateaus of Canterlot. For all the town’s sophistication and fanciness, it endeared her to see a noble’s filly lying on the sofa by the holiday tree, a few gifts already lying under it from supposedly her friends and family. Alice saw the plate of cookies and milk by the table, and she licked her lips, ready to gobble them up. When she approached the plate, she saw what the filly had drawn there with the crumbs: a picture of her family awash with smiles, hanging out with one fat pony, presumably Saddle Klumps.

Maybe the filly was expecting the legend himself, hoping she’d stay awake for the occasion. The drool dripping from her mouth tore that hope into pieces, and she didn’t know it.

In a flash, they were finished with Equestria. Thus, they proceeded to other places: Griffonstone in their descent from glory, Mount Aris with their ridiculously high altitude, the Dragon Lands flowing with fire and lava and hot air... they even sent a random gift to a changeling in the Changeling Hive (though they didn’t really visit it so much as they threw it to the hive and hoped they didn’t disturb any love-hungry creature).

In a matter of hours, they were almost done. Flying across the sky back northward, they could see a gradient of pink in the distance. It was the herald of the sun and the incoming day, about to usher in twilight before the dawn. Still, there was one more place to visit and shower with gifts:

Rennefer.

The village of Rennefer busied itself with its holiday sleeping.

It was technically the last day of the Caribou Carnival. It wouldn’t really start until everybody woke up, but the carnival’s looming end already had specters in the air: there were fewer lights and lanterns on for the event, the decorations had been diminished to scant obscurity, and almost no one was outside either enjoying the remnant of yesternight’s celebration or getting an early lead on today’s joyful agenda.

The reindeer had planned to solve the problem of the city’s gate by flying over it—it wouldn’t open to anyone when no deer was awake, probably much less to them. However, warm recollections of home disappeared into surprise when they saw the unobstructed archway, the open gate. Caution filled their minds, so they still went above the walls; they didn’t want some graveyard shift guards to ruin the moment.

Now, Aurora, Bori, and Alice had returned to Rennefer, hovering over their old village with a bird’s eye view. Not many artificial lights were left, but the residents of Rennefer didn’t need them now: the slightly brightened violet-pink sky cast a dark yet dreamy hue over all the town. The roads glinted with that color, and the marketplace, devoid of anyone save for the occasional guard, had the hue permeate every nook and cranny of the stalls. Really, save for the extremely early risers shoveling snow out of the streets for the rousing public later, barely anyone was up.

“Wow...” Alice muttered, mane flapping with chilly high-up high-speed winds. “I didn’t expect the town to be this... quiet.”

“You should’ve, Ms. Future,” Bori replied, nudging her on the antlers with a playful smirk.

Alice rolled her eyes. “Hey, it doesn’t give me all knowledge of the future. Still, though, it’s just so... quaint or whatever you call it.”

Bori and Aurora looked her way. They’d also noticed the quaint quiet of Rennefer. Coupled with the colors not of night but neither of day, the town was a tad unworldly.

With not much time before dawn would come up the stage, the reindeer flew on. Staying out of police’s sight—or anyone else’s sight to save them from a shock attack—Alice pointed at one house in particular, and they swooped down to it, checking that they weren’t making a single swish of noise.

They landed on the snow-laden backyard, some evergreen flowers growing at the sides.

There, they faced the back of this home. It was average-looking, run-of-the-mill for its two-stories kind and not much else. It still had its carnival lanterns on, shining on the backyard with faint green lights.

They sneaked to one of the windows. After laying their backs against the wall and putting their gift sacks on the side, they meticulously raised their heads just enough to see what was inside, trusting that their antlers wouldn’t give them away.

The living room was a nice treat. A few gifts rested unopened by the side; others had just been opened: a nice painting of a snowy landscape, a pretty if fragile vase, a hodgepodge of winsome perfumes, and some book with an antler symbol on it.

Slumping on a chair and gazing at the floor, lay Austral.

Her face spoke of despondency. It’d lost a bit of that youthful glamour, replaced by regretful gloom that stained her features with creases. Her lips formed a frown surrounded by good gifts and a good home, heralding a sorrowful young cow.

She stared at a window, not the one the reindeer were using.

”... why?”

That one word, slipping out of her lips, a frog’s croak in a lonely abandoned swamp.

She clumsily got up from her chair, walked dejectedly to that across the window. Her trip of one melancholic mile and one real room done, she set her eyes upwards to behold the gloaming sky. Stifled illumination cascaded on her face, bringing to light the silent grief on her face. It spoke of guilt, whether true or not.

She put one hoof on the window pane.

“I-I’m s-s-sorry... j-just know I-I’m s-sorry...”

A long sigh from her; it almost choked her. She continued her way without minding the potential pain. Placed her face to the windowpane, peered into the sky, probably hoping a miracle would happen or that she would change.

“... I-I miss you.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Agh!” and she lost balance, almost tripping to the floor. Her melancholy gave way to terror which brought her hooves to her face. “Oh, no! I’m hearing things now! She can’t possibly be here!”

“Yeah, I can!” said Alice through her window. “Look over here!”

Austral did that. Antlers at first, they rose and revealed the trio themselves.

She shot a forehoof to her trembling mouth, legs shivering. “I-is... i-is that you?! All of you?”

“Sure am, sure are!” Alice replied.

The reindeer disappeared from the window. A second and a jangle later, the backdoor opened to let them in.

No words had to be said. They knew a hug was long overdue, so they dove into one more hug. It was a crushing hug, drowning the four of them in a sea of loving reunion. Its fruit was the little whimpers stuck in their throats, the tiny tears running down their faces and dropping to stain the fresh carpet they stood on. No one wanted to let go.

But the hug had to end, and Austral let go first to take a better look of these three unexpected but certainly welcome visitors. “I-it’s so good... s-so good to see you...all of you!”

“It sure is!” Aurora said, voice muffled by her lumped throat.

Next up for Austral was Bori, and the young cow gasped at her appearance. “Bori! You’re... you’re still wearing the same a-apron from last time!”

“Wait, I am?” she asked, confused.

Bori lowered her head and saw, on her chest, the same cream-colored apron she’d been wearing since the night they’d been banished. “Huh... I am.”

“Wait!” yelled Austral, holding her head together with her hooves, smile distorted to a puzzled expression. “I-I don’t get it! What brings you here?”

Alice stepped forward and wrapped a hoof around her shoulder. “Long story short: we found a strange house in the middle of nowhere, met the literal Spirits of Hearth’s Warming, and got apprenticed to them, so we’re now like that fat bearded pony who goes around giving gifts at night but real.”

The shortened long story made Austral tilt her head, the poor cow immersed in untangling whether the story itself was real or not.

“Yes, that’s what happened,” Aurora said, raising her hoof. “I was there and so was Bori.”

Austral smiled sheepishly. “Wow... that’s a lot to take in... like it’s your new job.” Before anyone could reply or say something to her, she retracted her smile, nervously letting her forelegs sway about. “So... this doesn’t mean you’re staying, d-does it?”

Alice scratched her head, her own nervousness emerging. “W-well... not exactly. We have our own place far up North, and that’s where we’re going to do the thing we love: making gifts and helping others that way.”

Austral’s frown dampened, eyes deepened and heavy, ears falling flat almost to block out every sound in the world. Her head slowly turned to the side. “Oh...”

Bori and Aurora looked at Alice with worried looks, their own ears drooping. Alice answered by nodding back at them, keeping her smile on against the odds.

So she turned to Austral who was likely on the verge of a worse kind of tears.

“We may not have enough time to get back to how it used to be, Austral... but I can always leave something behind.”

She rummaged her short mane, searching for that something. She took it out and gingerly put it on Austral’s forehoof.

A red bow, just like the one Alice wore.

Austral flinched, came close to dropping the bow. Once she regained balance and control, she held the bow close for her eyes to behold. Rubbed it against her face, feeling its soft velvet on her cheeks. When she was satisfied with brushing this bow, she raised her head, Alice now in view.

“Consider the bow as something more than a memento,” Alice said, Bori and Aurora standing at her sides. “It’s a sign that we used to be here, and I know a bow can’t magically bring the past back... but though we moved on to fulfill our passion, we’re still out there and you’re still out here... and we’ll always be out there for as long as we can, and we’ll always remember you for... well, ever.”

Silence reigned in her words’ wake. No one moved for an eon. An unusual tension hung over all of them, this cost of being the first to speak and break the silence. Austral, especially, fought off the desire to speak, clutching the bow on her forehoof. She put it on her chest, over her heart.

They hugged again. Austral closed her eyes, rested the full weight of her head on Alice’s shoulder, had Alice pat her on the back which she took as permission to let the tears flow freely. She couldn’t tell which hoof was whose; all she wanted to do now was cry, let it all out—all this affection out on these rare reindeer...

“Honey?” Thern called from upstairs. ”Is that you?... and, is that sobbing I hear?”

Everyone stiffened, yanking themselves out of the embrace. Aurora and Bori readied themselves to bolt outside, but Alice held up a hoof and stopped them.

Austral massaged her puffy red eyes, smeared with the riverbeds of dried tears. Fighting against the lumps in her own throat, she managed, “Y-you’ll v-v-visit, right?”

“That depends,” Alice said, bringing out an encouraged tone “But that’s a great idea! Let me ask,” and she turned to Aurora and Bori. “Should we visit, say, once a year?”

“In private or can we just waltz into town?” Bori asked, a little concerned.

“Private first,” Alice answered. “I think we’d be getting everyone scared if they’re not used to the random gifts, what with Cervidi still in charge."

“Not really,” Austral chimed in, a little glimmer shining in her eyes. “Cervidi’s not in charge anymore.”

“What?!” the other three reindeer yelled—though they muted themselves, aware of an unaware Thern upstairs.

“I did not see that coming,” muttered Alice.

Austral sighed, preparing herself for the explanation. “They threw the old bull out the window when everyone thought he’d just banished innocent deer. A few guards overheard your conversation, and they thought back to the pony merchants they’d talked with... which, I guess, was a fun time, because when word spread, everyone rallied behind those guards... that the world out there isn’t all that cruel and unkind to us reindeer, after all.”

She paced around for about a few seconds before returning to her original spot, worried her hoofsteps might alert her father to investigate.

“You might’ve not heard, but they actually let in pretty much anyone in the city now—they just haven’t taken the invitation yet because the other creatures are celebrating their own winter holidays... and that’s how things are now.”

“Austral?” Thern called out again, hoofsteps incoming. “Who’s there?”

“Oh, um, n-no one!” Austral shouted up, eyeing the staircase which would grace Thern’s presence. “Just mumbling to myself—ah, you caught me mumbling again!”

Whirling her head back to her friends, she whispered to them, “Go! Bye! I love you!”

And so they said their farewells. The reindeer galloped out of the house, took the sacks they’d left in the backyard. Running out of time before the day dawned, they took off to the sky, ready to give the final batch of gifts to their fellow reindeer

Back inside Austral’s house, Thern had come downstairs. He was sweetly adoring his daughter, curiously staring at the red bow she held in her hoof. “Aww! It’s one of those bows from Alice! You were able to get one from her before they left?”

“Not really,” but Austral mentally slapped herself for that.

Thern raised a brow. “That’s strange. Who gave it to you, then?”

Austral exhibited a toothy grin and looked out the window, making her father look there, too. “Oh, just a special friend. Three of them, really.”

Meanwhile, if she opened the window and sharpened her ears really well, she would hear Alice saying:

“There’s no need to be scared this jolly holiday,
Of crazy fears and risks, of getting hurt with sticks,
For if you close your heart, you’re sure to never find,
The gift of giving and friendship, forever and today.”