Winter Break, a time when schools cancel because they don't want to have to deal with all of the potential risks that come from traveling through snow. To many, Winter Break is a time in which everyone can take a break from school life and focus on socializing and playing in the snow. However, Twilight was not like many, for she always put work before play. True, she had learned that socializing and spending time playing with her friends would be ideal, but today was different. Today was the coldest day of the year, so cold that if you were to take a plain glass of water outside it would freeze in an instant. No one in their right mind would be out and about today, which made it the perfect day to get work done.
Of course, Twilight had already finished up all of her assignments except for one, one assignment that was bugging her. The assignment was a history project where she and a partner were grouped together based on a "historic person" they both chose, neither knowing who they would be partnered with. Twilight chose to write the project based on her favorite writer, Jane Austen, and she expected to do the project with one of her friends like, Sunset, or Rarity, or anyone. The last person she expected to be partnered with was Flash Sentry, it was more surprising that he decided to choose Jane Austen as his historical figure, considering she was a more popular figure among women.
Nevertheless, Twilight knew that it wouldn't be easy, two main things were bugging her at the moment; the first being that she didn't really know how to address the awkward relationship between both her and Flash, what with the whole 'him thinking that she was a magical princess horse from another dimension', which wasn't the strangest thing she had experienced. The second thing was her current boyfriend, Timber, and she was worried about their current relationship. Recently they had begun growing further and further apart, she tried to reach out to him but he was becoming more...unreachable lately. Twilight tackled both of these problems the same way she did with all of her problems; throwing herself into her work.
Twilight walked beside the sidewalk, her boots sinking deep into the snow, it was difficult trekking through the snow but it was safer and more preferable since the sidewalk was covered in slippery ice. She wore snow-pants and a heavy purple winter jacket while carrying her backpack filled with books, her laptop, notes, and other school supplies. Black mittens covered her hands, a purple snow cap covered her head, and a scarf, which was made for her by rarity, covered her neck and face. She wore a pair of white ski goggles, the kind that fitted over her glasses, so that way she could see without the falling snow covering up her glasses.
One of the problems with wearing winter clothing, especially the kind only meant for downhill skiing, was that it got extremely hot inside of the jacket. It was like suffocating inside of a sauna, so every now and then Twilight would unzip the jacket and let the cool air turn down the heat, and once she was at a satisfied temperature she would zip her jacket back up. As she continued her trek, she eventually arrived at her destination, Flash's house. It was a simple two story building that sat atop a hill, the driveway had been shoveled as well as the front porch leading to the front door. Twilight, overheated from the jacket, had it unzipped to cool off as she made her way up the driveway. Once she reached the front porch, she then approached the door in a hurried manner to seek refuge out of the cold outdoors. Unfortunately, if she hadn't rushed, she would've noticed the ice covering the front porch and the salt that had been recently sprinkled on it.
Twilight was able to take a few steps forward before her feet slipped on the ice, she lost her balance and fell. Not wanting to suffer from a back injury, Twilight, still falling, leaned to her left and her body fell onto the, much preferably softer, snow before rolling down it the hill. Twilight would soon regret falling in the snow because she painfully realized she had unzipped her jacket to cool off, and now she had snow inside of her boots, snow-pants, jacket, and mittens. And it burned.
Twilight pulled herself up, knocking some of the snow loose but not all of it, and climbed back up the hill through the snow. This time, she carefully shuffled her feet across the slick front porch before reaching the door. She rose her trembling hand and rang the doorbell.
"Coming." The voice of Flash could be heard from behind the door. Twilight clenched her body to preserve whatever warmth she could. The door opened to reveal Flash Sentry standing there in a long sleeve black shirt with a red t-shirt over it, plaid polyester/cotton PJs, thick winter socks and slippers, some black gloves, and a scarf around his neck. He seemed surprised to see someone at his door, and after taking a second to analyze her, Flash realized who it was. "Twilight?" He asked, just to be sure it was her.
"Greetings, Flash." Twilight greeted, removing her goggles and scarf to show that she was indeed Twilight. "Can I come in?"
"Uh..." Flash stuttered, before moving out of the doorway, "yes, of course. Come right on in."
Twilight entered and Flash quickly shut the door behind her, Twilight then began to quickly throw off all of her winter gear before the cold snow turned into cold water. She took off her backpack and set it aside before she kicked off her boots, then flung off her jacket, removed her scarf, hat, and mittens, and, with her fingers free, she unbuckled her snow pants and slid them off. While she was doing this, Flash was about to say something but couldn't get a word in. Now Twilight wore a white long sleeve shirt with purple stripes across its body and sleeves, black pants that clung tightly to her waist and legs, and winter socks. Her outfit consisted of under-armor clothing, she scratched her hair to remove the itchiness she got from wearing the hat and she removed her glasses to clean off the fog that would be collected thanks to moving from a cold environment to a warmer one. However, she quickly noticed that her glasses were completely clean and the reason for that was because she hadn't moved to a warmer environment, Flash's house was just as cold as it was outside.
Twilight's body began to shiver to try and heat itself up, she rubbed her arms to get some friction going. She turned to Flash and asked, "Why is your house so cold?!" She demanded.
Flash avoided her gaze while rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment, "Sorry, our AC is being repaired right now, that's why my family isn't here at the moment, they're out doing other stuff until the repairs are finished." He noticed Twilight was in pain from the cold and quickly grabbed her hand, "You're freezing, come on." He stated, leading Twilight down the stairs.
She was taken off-guard by Flash's sudden assertiveness to grab her hand, nevertheless she followed him. At first, she was against the idea of going down into the basement, mostly because the basement is known to be the coldest part of the house since all of the cold air settles on the bottom floor. However, as they descended down the carpeted stairs, she noticed that the temperature was significantly warmer than it was upstairs. The basement was fully carpeted, there was a door behind the "L" shaped couch which lead to a bathroom, in front of the couch was a chest with a plate that held a half eaten sandwich and a mug filled with hot chocolate, attached to the wall, facing the couch, was a flatscreen TV with a gaming console and a DVD player connected to it. Far beside the wall were a stack of shelves that held books of all kind on them, and there were two space heaters in the corners of the room that were the cause of heating the room.
Twilight took a seat on the couch and Flash picked up the plate and mug, "Sorry about the mess," he apologized, "I wasn't expecting company, let alone you." He opened up the chest and inside was an assortment of folded blankets, he took two of them and wrapped Twilight in them. The fabric of the blankets was soft and warm, like they had just been taken out of the dryer.
"There, that should warm you up." Flash said, taking a seat on the couch away from Twilight. "You feeling any better."
"Much better." Twilight admitted, already starting to feel her body warming up.
"That's good to hear." Flash let out a sigh of relief as he stood back up. "I'm gonna go grab something, wait here. You can turn on the TV to maybe pass the time." He suggested before making his way up the stairs.
Once Twilight was alone, she pulled out her phone to look at her texts to see if anything new happened. The first thing she checked was her texts to Timber, she looked at his recent text which read,
"Working on fixing up camp Everfree 😓, chat with soon 😚.
Twilight found Timber's emojis to be cute and funny, when she understood them, she was still new to the whole "teen language". Unfortunately, that text was sent two days ago and her reply hadn't even been read by Timber. She decided that it wouldn't be the best idea to focus on Timber and moved over to her other group chats. Her most favorite one to visit was the one with her and her seven friends. She looked at all the funny "memes" that Pinkie and Rainbow sent and the reactions from the rest of her friends. While transversing the texts, she got a notification that she recieved a text, instantly she hopped that it was from Timber but her hopes were dashed away to find that was indeed not. It was a text from Sunset, and it read,
"Hey, how are you spending this fine winter day"
Twilight typed her response,
"Oh you know me, finishing up my winter project."
"How about you?"
There was a text bubble with three dots which indicated Sunset was typing her response.
"Really?! You know that you've got a whole month to do that, right"
"And I'm doing good just watching some Netflix
Twilight typed her reply
"I know, I'm just getting a jump on it. I've got nothing better to do, so I thought, 'why not get it out of the way'.
Sunset sent a reply.
"Fair enough"
"By the way who'd you get paired with? I got paired with Microchips"
Twilight typed her reply
"Flash Sentry."
There was a pause after she typed it, she saw that Sunset had read her message and the text bubble with three dots would appear and disappear, as if Sunset was typing, deleting, and re-typing. After receiving no reply, she turned off her phone and looked around the room once more, specifically to the shelves of books. Upon closer inspection she saw that a lot of them were books that were the work of Jane Austen. 'Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, and Pride and Prejudice'.
Before she could get a better look, Flash returned, carrying a tray with a bowl of chicken noodle soup, a metal spoon next to it, a mug of hot chocolate, with some marshmallows next to it, some salt crackers, a glass of water with a circular pill next to it. "I know that it might seem like a lot, you don't have to have any of it, but I would really prefer it if you took this Ibuprofen, no doubt your body is in pain cause of the cold, so this should make it better." He said.
Although Twilight didn't want to admit it, her body was beginning to ache thanks to her nerves reawakening thanks to the heat. She took the pill with the water, the water wasn't too cold nor was it too hot. Flash let out another sigh of relief as he sat back down on the couch, still away from Twilight. "Thank you, I don't know what I would've done if you were in pain."
Twilight didn't understand why he was thanking her, after all, he was the one that gave her the blankets and warm nutrients. If anything, she should be thanking him.
"So..." Flash began, "not that I don't appreciate your visit, but why did you come here?" He asked.
Twilight immediately remembered the reason as to why she was visiting in the first place. "I came over to so we could get a head-start on our project." She replied, to which Flash gave her a very perplexed look.
"What project?" He asked, dumbfounded.
"The one you and I are a part of." Twilight began to list off, trying to jog Flash's memory. "The one we were given in history class. The one about Jane Austen."
Upon hearing the author's name, Flash instantly realized what Twilight was talking about. His eyes lit up as he spoke, "OH! That project...wait, isn't that due about a month from now?" He asked.
'Technically the project isn't due for another four weeks, three days, fourteen hours, and thirty four minutes, but hey, who's counting?' Twilight thought. "I thought it might be best for us to get a head-start on it, never put off to tomorrow what can be done today." Twilight quoted.
"I mean...I guess so." Flash rubbed his head in embarrassment.
"Now then," Twilight stood up, "I'll go grab my supplies, then we can start on the presentation."
"Um..." Flash hummed, before revealing an embarrassing truth to Twilight. "We might have to wait on that...because I haven't....really, fully read any of her books just yet." Flash admitted.
It was now Twilight's turn to be in shock, she stared at Flash with wide incredulous eyes. "You...haven't...read...any of her books?" She repeated, just to be clear she heard him correctly.
"I mean...I've begun reading them, but I haven't really had a chance to finish reading them." Flash admitted, trying to defend himself. "I was planning on reading them over the break, which is why I was surprised you wanted to start the project now."
Twilight pinched the bridged of her nose, moving her glasses up, "If you haven't read the books yet, why did you choose Jane Austen for a project?"
"Well..." Flash began to explain, "I guess I just like her works because she was so ahead of her time." Flash said, standing up and walking over to the bookshelf. "I mean, back when she originally posted her stories, they were considered to be bad and boring according to the critics, her characters were so...what's the phrase for it...?"
"Against the grain?" Twilight suggested.
"Yeah!" Flash exclaimed. "They were written unlike any of the other characters from other stories, and that's what made them so unique. True, her works weren't appreciated during her time, which is why I feel like it's a crime to not appreciate them today."
Twilight stood there in surprise, of all the reasons Flash wanted to have Jane Austen as his project this was the one she least expected. Even though he knew barely anything at all about her, he was willing to listen and understand her and her works.
"Look..." Flash began. "I know that I'm probably no where near your knowledge on her, but I guess we can learn about her through some articles and papers on the web." He suggested.
"No," Twilight shook her head, "that won't do. You can really only truly know her by reading her books. So I guess we better start reading."
"Okay...which one do you want to start with?" Flash asked, looking to the books and then back to Twilight.
"It might be best to start out with Pride and Prejudice." Twilight suggested. "Mainly since it's the most popular, which chapter are you on?"
Flash took the book in question and opened it up to where he left off, as indicated by the bookmark sticking out of it. "The end of chapter 2," He answered, walking back over to the couch, "the part where Mr. Bennet meets with Mr. Bingley."
"Fair enough, let's continue from there." Twilight also approached the couch.
Flash sat down and Twilight sat down as well, except she sat a cushion away from him. He read the story out-loud, telling the tale of the story while Twilight sat back and listened. While she had already read the story before, it was a delight to have it read to her again, especially since Flash gave all of the characters funny voices. Whenever there was a part that he didn't understand, he would ask Twilight for an explanation and she would provide one that was easy to understand. As he continued reading, Twilight noticed that Flash was starting to look a little paler than usual. He was hiding it well but she also noticed that he was slightly shivering. Flash was cold, and instead of bringing it up decided to remain silent. Twilight, not wanting to be a burden, stood up and walked over to Flash and sat right next to him. He was taken off-guard by her sudden action and more so when she wrapped the blanket she had around both her and Flash.
"Uh..." Flash stammered, a slight blush crossing his cheeks.
"You looked cold," Twilight said, "and this is the least I could do for all you've done."
Unable to protest, a small smile came across Flash's face and he kept reading. As time passed, Twilight felt more comfortable around Flash, he felt warm and cozy, like being under a warm comforter in a cold room. The two continued to read the story for the rest of the day until they finished it at the very end. Afterwards they both chatted and talked about the book, Twilight would talk about how and why Jane Austen wrote it and Flash would listen and comment on it. However, the two weren't doing it because of the project, but rather, they did it because they were enjoying each others company. The thought of a project hadn't crossed their minds while they were conversing, and what was most interesting was while they were reading and conversing, Twilight didn't once look at her phone.
