The Joys of Homework on Hearth’s Warming

by Pascoite

Rating: everyone
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Slice of Life, Sweetie Belle, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rarity
Length: 5791

The assignment Miss Cheerilee gave the class should have been simple. But it got Sweetie Belle thinking about her Hearth’s Warming present for Rarity. It’s complicated. Maybe Twilight can help.

The assignment Miss Cheerilee gave the class should have been simple. But it got Sweetie Belle thinking about her Hearth’s Warming present for Rarity.

It’s complicated. Maybe Twilight can help.

My 2019 Jinglemas exchange story, written for wishcometrue. Thanks to ROBCakeran53 for pre-reading.

Featured on Equestria Daily!

Published 2020-01-08 00:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-01-08 00:30:01 UTC

The Joys of Homework on Hearth’s Warming

Big sister kind, big sister fair, oh do you ever see me there?
I sometimes watch you from the hall, but silent, like another doll,
Your thoughtful gifts all stitched with love, affection fitted like a glove,
But do you feel me standing near, the one who loves you back most dear?

“What do you think?” possibly poses a perplexing puzzle more so than a question that has a correct response, especially to a filly used to contemplating only the latter. And so Sweetie Belle tapped her pencil at her paper. She’d already erased her answer twice, leaving the end of the pencil in her mouth with a particularly acrid burnt-rubber taste, although the flavor rather reminded her of the poached remoulade gratin fricassee… Well, the list of words escaped her at the moment. Not that she knew what any of them meant, but if she’d dressed up last night’s attempt at a dessert for Rarity with a rich enough appellation, perhaps her sister would have liked it. With any luck, a cutie mark might even flicker-flash onto her flank for her food finesse.

But back to the matter at hoof: Miss Cheerilee liked to give them a thought-provoking question to address at the end of the day, when another proper lesson wouldn’t fit into the last ten minutes before the bell went bang and clang and rang, so instead she’d knead a little self-rising dough to leaven into the remaining time. Up on the blackboard, the tracings of a pure, pulverulent, powdery white residue spelled out: “What is a sister?”

Across the aisle, Apple Bloom had already filled one side of the page, and her monograph trickled down the back side with the speed but persistence of a glob of honey, likely with equal sweetness as well.

They didn’t have to complete such assignments, but teachers always knew the precise amount of staring that would inject a guilty shiver in a student’s withers before it travelled up the neck, made an about face, tumbled down to the small of her back, and struck base camp there until Miss Cheerilee finally walked off with a shake of her head. And so the clock on the wall stutter-stumbled a minute further and ensured Sweetie Belle would have to finish at home so she could submit it in the morning.

She’d already halfway stuffed the crinkly-cornered sheet into her saddlebag when the brassy note pealed, and immediately she sprung for the door, the curlicues of her mane bobbing and bouncing with each bound. “See you later gotta do something bye,” she called behind her to Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, who eyed each other with a pair of shrugs.

Sweetie Belle tottered and tilted on the front porch of the Golden Oaks Library before softly rapping her horn against the candle insignia on the door. The handle quickly blossomed with a petunia-purple pulse, and the door swung open.

“Sweetie Belle?” Twilight Sparkle asked. “It’s still during public hours for the library. You don’t need to knock.”

“I know,” Sweetie Belle replied, sinking to her haunches with a foreleg perked up, “but I wasn’t here to use the library.”

Twilight smiled a simple smile. Over the years, Sweetie Belle had grown quite accomplished with words, something that led to occasional ridicule from her friends, but with a silly swish of her tail, she noted that words often existed where they didn’t. For instance, Twilight’s smile said, “Please, continue.” Rarity’s often said something more akin to: “Please, continue, but make it quick, as I have a hundred things to do right now, and oh, did I send the correct dress out in that parcel this morning? I must have, because I distinctly remember it smelling of lilacs, like the ones on the table at my favorite restaurant, where I have a business lunch scheduled tomorrow at eleven sharp—Sweetie Belle? Where did you go?”

“I know it’s not a Twilight Time day, but would you mind giving me an extra lesson?”

For a second and three quarters, Twilight peered back at the quill laid across a scroll on her desk, but her smile soon expanded to include a warm hug. “Of course. What do you need help with?” A barely perceptible jolt rummaged through her knees, then Twilight beckoned her inside. “And please come in.”

So Sweetie Belle took her usual seat at her usual table in her usual corner of the reading room, and even though the words wanted out, she kept them in a neat little flock, like she could imagine Winona doing, until Twilight had requested her prize: “You look like something is bothering you.”

Twilight knew how to play the game well indeed. She was a little sister, after all. “I’m trying to figure out what to get Rarity for Hearth’s Warming.”

And Twilight’s posture went from formal-dining-chair rigid to beanbag flop. “Oh, don’t worry about that so much. As long as you put some thought into it, she’ll like whatever—”

“I know that’s the standard line you’re supposed to give foals, but let’s face facts: that’s the lazy way out. I don’t want to give her something I won’t see again for five years until I’m picking through her closet looking for a dress to… borrow, and by that time, even I’m embarrassed by it, so I have to decide whether to put it back or throw it away, because in another five years, it might have gotten so bad that it’s at least become entertaining so she can put it on her work table, and whenever a client comes in, she can say, ‘Oh, that old thing? Just a silly gift I got from my sister long ago.’ Then they both laugh, because the client has kids, and she’s wearing an awful tie tack even though there’s no tie—”

Twilight cleared her throat. “I get the picture. If you don’t think you can find something, then you can always make her—”

With a frown, Sweetie Belle tried to levitate her saddlebag off, but most days, she couldn’t manage something that heavy, so it twitched and twittered until she resorted to shrugging it off. Then she concentrated hard, and the sheet of paper lurched and leapt, flitted and fluttered onto the table. It had worked!

An approving smile graced Twilight’s lips. “You’ve been practicing your magic!”

A creaky, rickety nod lolled about on Sweetie Belle’s shoulders. Grown-ups always liked to make a big deal when foals did something they were supposed to, like they didn’t expect it. “This is all I got so far,” she said, pushing the paper toward Twilight, the one completed verse nestled on top of a tangle of eraser marks.

“Ooh, poetry?” Twilight replied, sitting across from Sweetie Belle as if at a banquet table. “You could even make this into a song—you know, you have the most beautiful—”

Sweetie Belle’s horn hit the table top with a thunk. “Why does everypony want me to sing?”

Twilight sat stock still, her silent stare surveying the sunlit room in every direction but forward.

Once again, Sweetie Belle sat up and rested her chin on a hoof. “It’s complicated. Miss Cheerilee asked us what we thought a sister was, and… I’m trying to figure out how I feel.”

So Twilight smiled gently and slid the page to herself, not even using her magic. And she read. The smile lingered as an afterthought, and she scanned down the single solitary stanza, then her eyes clambered back up the uneven indentations to regain the heights of the opening line, took it all in a second and a third time. She sighed.

“You should make her something,” Twilight said.

How was that any better than finding some mindless trinket at the store? “They never turn out as nice as they looked in my head,” Sweetie Belle answered while giving herself a teeny noggin-tap. And that went for the ones that were good ideas in the first place! None of that macaroni-decorated nonsense that would make Rarity force a toothy smile as she immediately hatched a plan to sneak it into the trash as soon as she thought she could get away with it.

“I mean… make her something that only you can make.” Twilight gazed toward the ceiling, and her mind seemed to wander a few leagues distant, perhaps even a few decades. “And since you won’t make her a song—”

This again!? Sweetie Belle slouched and sagged, covering her face with both arms.

“—then why not some other form of entertainment?”

“Like… take her to a movie?”

Twilight giggled. “Actually, I bet she would enjoy that a lot. I did have another idea, though.”

Sweetie Belle sat up again. Funny, whenever she said that, adults usually started to tremble, but when a grown-up said it, ponies didn’t worry. Unless it was Pinkie. At what age would her ideas stop scaring ponies? “What’s your idea?”

“How would you like to learn some illusion magic?” Twilight said with a hearty nod.

But Sweetie Belle could barely even levitate anything yet. “Are you sure I could? In time for Hearth’s Warming, I mean.”

“We still have a few weeks,” Twilight replied as she put a hoof on Sweetie Belle’s shoulder. “I can help. If you come by for an extra lesson each day after school, I bet you could learn in time.”

“Really?” Sweetie Belle asked. “I haven’t learned any other magic that fast.”

“I believe in you,” Twilight said with a winning grin.

And Sweetie Belle immediately brightened up. “Okay!”

Only after she’d left and skip-trotted halfway home did she realize: “Wait, but what am I actually giving Rarity?”

Big sister sweet, big sister smart, forever toiling at your art,
But do you know your rarest gem is not some cloth with seam and hem?
The moment you forget your mask and turn from self-appointed task
To snicker at some foolish fun will far outshine the blazing sun.

“So,” Twilight said, sitting up in front of Sweetie Belle like a swami about to deliver a distilled piece of terse wisdom, “illusion magic.” Then she leaned forward with a bubbly grin. “It’s actually pretty easy to learn.”

Sweetie Belle’s eyes had squinted before her brain even realized they should. “Then why haven’t we done any of that before?”

“A couple of reasons,” Twilight replied with a shrug. “One, I don’t see much practical use for it. A soldier might find it helpful for distraction or concealment, or an entertainer might put on a show with it. If, someday, you wanted to have some nice visual effects during a concert—”

“Again with the singing!?” If not for Owlowiscious nestled on his perch in a sweet, silky slumber, she might have screeched.

Twilight only giggled. “I just didn’t think you’d have much use for illusions, at least not now, for the kinds of things we’ve practiced during Twilight Time. Anyway. Two, not all unicorns are suited for it. They can cast it, but it just feels—” she circled a hoof in the air “—weird, so they don’t want to use it much.”

Sweetie Belle swallowed. What had she gotten herself into? “Weird?”

“It’s just…” Twilight let out a sharp sigh. “If it happens, you’ll know.”

Well, that did little to settle Sweetie Belle’s nerves.

“And three, it’s just one of those things that’s easy to pick up the basics but hard to master.” She leaned in even further and spoke in a hushed tone: “Trixie’s actually really good at it. One of the best I’ve seen. But don’t tell anypony I said so.”

After what that mare had done to Rarity twice now? Not a chance.

“Okay, so just clear your mind,” Twilight said.

Sweetie Belle closed her eyes, let her breath sashay slowly, softly, silently, until… well, what? She cracked an eye halfway open again.

“That doesn’t look clear.”

The eye snapped shut again, and Sweetie Belle concentrated on feeling her heartbeat, a thump, a bump, like Miss Cheerilee pacing around the classroom while they took a test—oh, they’d had one just the other day. Math, not her best subject, numb to numbers, as she liked to say. Give her a vocabulary test, and she’d take it gladly, even spelling, maybe history in a pinch—

“Neither does that.”

Yes, clear, clear, like the blackboard at the end of the day, when she’d clap the erasers, and all that chalk dust.

She sneezed. “Sorry, Twilight.”

“It’s fine,” came the reply from the void outside her head, a little more strained now. “Focus on a single image, one that doesn’t change, and keep it simple for now.”

Rarity’s workroom. A large table with cubbyholes containing cloth caches, a sewing machine stitching stately suits, ponyquins positioned in pretty poses, spools of thread, a hundred, a thousand…

Keep it simple.

An empty room with a large sturdy table. “Okay,” Sweetie Belle merely mumbled, the word lingering on languid lips, lest it totter her delicate balance.

“Picture it as if you’re actually there. Give it some depth, feel the air on your skin. Turn around and see it surrounding you.”

Still just a table, but the corner stuck out near her. She put an arm on it and peered at the familiar walls, or not so familiar while bereft of any accent or decoration. But keep it simple. A frosty tingle tantalized and tickled her coat—Rarity always set the thermostat low, since she could get all worked up in a moment of inspiration and would rather not break a sweat.

“Now push a little, with your horn. Never lose the sense that this is a real place, that you’re actually there, but give it a little nudge out of your horn, so the outside of your mind will look like the inside.”

Sweetie Belle frowned. Adults liked to tell foals to just do this or just do that, as if it were self-explanatory. But she took a breath and held it, like getting ready to blow bubbles, then gritted her teeth and bore down—

“Not so hard. It’s a gentle thing, like getting a tendril of dust to float away by puffing air at it.”

She eased back, and… then the strangest sensation, like a single raindrop landing on her horn, inching down it in fits and starts. It was all she could do to avoid scratching it, but once it got to the end…

Her teeth chattered. It felt like her horn was buzzing, and the floor swayed beneath her.

“Good. Now stay with me. Do you feel like you’re losing your balance?”

She nodded, but that only caused her head to swim more, and with her seeming to stagger back and forth, maybe Twilight couldn’t tell she’d done so. “Mmhmm,” she added as a precaution. Even Rarity’s workroom pitched about.

“That’ll mostly go away when you open your eyes. So go ahead and start—”

One eye parted.

“—Not yet. I just want to warn you first. Don’t be surprised to see the image in your head out here, too. If you lose your concentration, it will dissipate. So go slowly, and just expect that when you look, it’ll be the same as what’s in your head. Okay?”

Another nod, another minor wave of vertigo. And she opened her eyes slowly. Only a slit at first, dark, blurry, filtered through her eyelashes, but the same color as the workroom’s walls. A little more, and the table stood there, right next to her.

She tried, she tried so hard, but her heart quickened, and she broke into a big bumbling grin. “It worked!”

The library’s usual surroundings enveloped her.

“Ah, darn it!” she said with a stomp.

But Twilight positively beamed at her. “That was a really good first try! I’m proud of you!” With a feathery flutter, the envelope around her transfigured from library to wing, and Sweetie Belle instinctively nestled in. “Rarity’s design studio, right? But only the bare walls and table.”

“Mmhmm,” Sweetie Belle answered. Her equilibrium hadn’t quite returned, but if she kept her gaze fixed on the same swirl of floorboard, she could stay upright, though the wing braced around her did help.

“Did it feel like your horn was buzzing?”

Sweetie Belle began to nod, then remembered how it only sent her world spinning. “Yeah.”

“I was afraid of that. I get the same thing, which is why I don’t like casting illusions unless I have to. It’s pretty common, but it might get better the more you try, or you might simply get used to it.”

Her eyes had drifted shut again, and Sweetie Belle forced them back open with a gulp. “But what am I doing with this? Just showing Rarity I can?”

“Don’t worry about that for now,” Twilight replied with a squeeze of Sweetie Belle’s withers. “Step one is merely to get comfortable casting these images. C’mon—” she gave a slight tug “—I have some cookies and juice ready in the kitchen. I figured you could use a little energy after your first attempt. Let’s not push it for now, alright? We have time.”

“Okay,” Sweetie Belle breathed out, and as she stood on her own, she wobbled less and less. With a deliciously cool sigh, she followed Twilight toward the burgeoning smell of oatmeal raisin.

Big sister warm, big sister strong, I wish I felt like I belong.
Your self-assurance and your fame, your eminently earned acclaim,
But do you still have time for me, who loves with such intensity?
Lest I distract from stitch most true, I keep my arms from hugging you.

For a third day, Miss Cheerilee had scowled at Sweetie Belle for failing to finish her assignment. But she’d made progress, and that was the important thing, right? Miss Cheerilee had said she could see plenty written on the page, and that would satisfy the requirement. Then her scowl had changed. She’d told Sweetie Belle not to make too much out of it, that she should call it done, that she should shed the worry curling about her shoulders.

It wasn’t ready, not yet.

Twilight sighed again upon reading it. Sweetie Belle couldn’t explain why, when entering the library for her extra magic lessons, she always extracted that same sheet of ever-more-wrinkled paper from her saddlebag and pushed it across the table to her mentor. Maybe so Twilight would understand what her gift meant? Except Twilight hadn’t even told her what the gift was yet, and shouldn’t Sweetie Belle make that decision?

“Today, we’re going to add detail, just a little. Okay?” Twilight asked as she returned Sweetie Belle’s paper.

Sweetie Belle nodded while she still could without sending her tête teetering, tottering topsy turvy. Just her rotten luck that she’d suffer from that malicious malady.

She sucked in a deep breath through her nose and, letting it out slowly, emptied her mind. Nothing. No school, no Cutie Mark Crusaders, no Carousel Boutique. Just a particular pallid picture, like Rarity’s ivory coat. Nothing else. Nothing.

She squinted and crossed her eyes behind their lids, corralled up the image, gently ushered it toward the outside world, and—ugh, there went the buzzing again. A little wave of nausea rippled through her abdomen, but she gulped it into submission and opened her eyes. She almost gasped, almost lost it, but she clamped down on her heart and watched with forced disinterest as the completely expected tableau of dull walls and work table sat in place of the library’s interior.

“Good,” Twilight said. “Now just the table. What color is it? The storage slots, the shelf underneath.”

Sweetie Belle channeled her inner stoic and stared at the table as if it were the most common thing she’d ever seen, but of course it actually was, since she walked right past it nearly every day, but she’d made it, and it was working, and…

The table wavered, glitched. “Close your eyes,” Twilight said softly. “Find it again.”

That only made the nausea worse, but she did hover on that image anew. The table, with the cubbyholes. Nothing else. An eye cracked open, then two, and there stood the table, complete with the fabric storage slots. The top, not white. Change it to a beige or tan, then add the sewing machine. Bundles of fabric, one at a time. What order did Rarity keep them in? Black, then green—no, yellow, then green, blue, red—

“Careful,” Twilight said. “You have to build on it. Once you’ve got the table, you can’t forget it. It all has to stay in your mind’s eye.”

Right, when she looked, the far end of the table had disappeared. But her head felt hot now, and her horn buzzed worse than ever! Repair the table, now half the cloth had gone away, and the walls started to fade!

“Calm down,” came the gentle voice next to her ear. “Don’t overthink it. Just keep building the image in your mind. See it as if you were there.”

Another heavy breath, and her chest felt constricted, like she was buried in sand. But she pushed through, saw the table in her head and in her eyes and in the room, all there as it should be. The pull on the utility drawer, the rubber guards on the feet. Then she moved on to one of the posters on the wall, kind of art deco, in a black frame—

“That’s enough, Sweetie Belle. Just a little detail, I said.”

—the next one over, a Les Mareserables playbill—

“Sweetie Belle.”

—the inspiration board on its easel, the light fixture on the ceiling, Opalescence lounging under the window—

“Sweetie Belle, stop.”

—out the window! Hundreds of townsponies trotting to and fro, on each of the hundred heads, a hundred thousand individual hairs wafting in the whispering wind and… a-and—

She was shaking. No, somepony was shaking her. “Sweetie Belle! Stop!”

Her stomach lurched, and she lethargically looked at Twilight with several rapid blinks. “Twilight?”

“Are you alright?”

“Y-yeah,” Sweetie Belle replied, gripping her chair to keep upright. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Keep it under control. Remember, it’s just an image. Don’t let it take on too much of a life, or it’ll grab hold of your magic.”

Sweetie Belle blinked again and scowled. “Grab hold?”

With a frown of her own, Twilight knelt in front of Sweetie Belle’s chair and lightly touched her forehead. “It won’t do any permanent damage, but you’ll have a headache to remember.”

“Oh.” She actually felt pretty good right now. A little wobbly, but nothing hurt.

“See?” Twilight swept an arm around the room.

Wait, she’d lost her concentration. She didn’t even have Rarity’s workroom pictured in her head anymore, hadn’t kept the flow of her magic going. And yet she sat in Carousel Boutique, down to the little scratch on the windowsill.

“Oh,” she said again.

With a purple flash, Twilight took down the illusion for her, and a hefty weight lifted from Sweetie Belle’s neck. Only then did she feel like she might puke.

Big sister bright, big sister wise, with deepest oceans in your eyes,
The softest hug, the floral scent, all snuggled close and so content.
On winter nights, the coat of snow, with three blue diamonds set just so,
Can warm me more than any fleece and grant my heart unbounded peace.

Sweetie Belle thought her own voice sounded like somepony under hypnosis, but she had to keep calm, or everything would come crashing down. A perfect replica of Carousel Boutique now occupied the library, with all the right decorations and floorboards and wainscoting. Through the windows, she’d made it a foggy day. Better than trying to spend too much brainpower out there, a lesson she’d learned yesterday.

Her horn buzzed even worse. Knowing it would be unpleasant gave her enough dread, but exactly how unpleasant…

“Can you have Fluttershy come in and look at a dress?” Twilight said while scanning over the page Sweetie Belle still hadn’t turned in.

The tinny, tinkly tintinnabulation traipsed toward them from the door’s bell. If she thought getting the visual right was hard, she hadn’t been prepared for sound.

“Good,” Twilight responded. “Though I don’t think we should have you use sound for Rarity. That might be pushing it a bit.”

Sweetie Belle slowly glanced at Twilight. “You still haven’t told me what kind of gift this is all for.”

“The arrangement of butterflies in her cutie mark is a little off.”

Sweetie Belle blinked twice, then sluggishly looked at the offending pink pictograms. A little touch-up here and there, but now the far side of the room faded back to brown, with the reference section bookshelves and the staircase up to Twilight’s bedroom.

An arm reached around her shoulder. “You’re doing well. I’m proud of you!”

Ugh, her horn felt awful. Twilight had said she might get used to it, and she could take it a little longer now. But this would be miserable to endure for… how long? Twilight hadn’t explained anything. “But what is this for?”

Twilight let out a sigh, a common enough occurrence lately. “Why did you want me to read what you were writing for your assignment?”

Sweetie Belle frowned, and half of Carousel Boutique went dark. Secrets were hard things for some fillies to keep. “I just wanted somepony else to know how I felt.”

“But why me and not Rarity?”

Adults always had to ask questions that made her really think. “Because…” Now it was Sweetie Belle’s turn to sigh. The table and cloth bundles and wall and the incessant buzzing all disintegrated, flaked away like old paint. In the utter stillness, her head resonating like a bell, a cold colorless clarity descended upon her. “Because I respect you. Because I can share things with you that are important to me.”

The gleam of the room’s single candle found a new source of reflection trickling down Twilight’s cheeks. “Thank you,” she said so softly. With pursed lips, a swallow, and a sniffle, she straightened up. “And Rarity?”

“I do want her to know, but I couldn’t—” Another chill spilled and thrilled down her back. Sweetie Belle’s own eyes teared up.

“You can make a trade-off—” Twilight sniffled again “—between detail and motion and effort. If you only do something like outlines, silhouettes, you can much more easily make a scene and keep it going, with lots of moving parts. Care to give it a try?” A tissue floated over from the desk, and Twilight blew her nose.

She knew. From the start, Twilight knew, and she’d had the perfect idea all along. “Please.”

A sister is a filly with the same parents as you.
A sister is family that is also a friend.
A sister is somepony you would love, even if you didn’t have to.
A sister is somepony you choose to love, because they’re super special to you.
A sister is somepony who makes you feel like the most important thing to them.
A sister is somepony like Rarity or Apple Bloom or Scootaloo or Twilight Sparkle.

The last verse didn’t need to rhyme or have a rhythm. It only needed a message. That morning, Sweetie Belle finally turned it in to Miss Cheerilee. Of course, they didn’t even have school on Hearth’s Warming, so she’d gone early to Miss Cheerilee’s house, thankfully finding her awake already. Her teacher had cried a little after reading it.

Sweetie Belle had also put a copy in Twilight’s mailbox, and another awaited Rarity at the breakfast table, before Sweetie Belle slipped back up to her bedroom. She’d thought the scent of coffee might wake her, but her overloaded, addled brain had done that job on its own, a good two hours early, plenty of time to make her deliveries well ahead of schedule. At least the scent told her when to come downstairs.

Rarity turned from her place at the table, still in her robe and slippers, and raised a questioning eyebrow. “Sweetie Belle? What a lovely poem you’ve written, but it seems a little—” she waved a hoof in the air “—longing. Were it a romance, I might even call it unrequited. Do… do you really feel like I treat you that way?”

With a small smiley-smirk, Sweetie Belle shut the doors, drew the drapes, darkened their dining domain until only the meagerest traces of sunlight remained. Then she sat on her haunches in the middle of the floor, cleared her head of all things mundane and exciting, of all things happy and sad, of all things heavy and light, and breathed. She breathed.

She breathed.

A lucid, liquid light looped lazily from her horn, swirled and whirled about the kitchen before it congealed and revealed a wispy white form. Like a misted cloud, vaporous puffs floated into the shapes of two fillies, one toddling toward the tub, another ambling after, helping the smaller one over the rim.

Swooshy swishes outlined them as they splished and splashed and splooshed and played their games, their underwater tea parties beneath the froth, swimming one-stroke laps. The purpley-blue-crested one garnished the two-toned with a soapy, sudsy beard before they finally settled into actual bathing, the elder instructing the younger on how to cleanse her mane properly. A soft kneading of shampoo and conditioner and conditioner again, and the smaller slouched and slumped as the methodical massaging made her dreadfully drowsy in the warm water just before bedtime. A little hug, then off to bed, sleepyhead.

Cirrus streaks rushed away, dispelled the scene and reformed into a spotlit stage, a troupe of ten tutu-ed filles, but one, resplendent in her finery, bedecked, bejeweled in her custom costume. Front and center, the filly traipsed and tiptoed, a bowed plié and a grand jeté. Aswirl and atwirl, on hoof pointe, and a dapper young mare in the audience responded with plaudits aplenty. The smaller curtsied and dove from the stage into the larger’s arms as the house lights shone brighter and brighter, everything awash, an explosion of white, leaving shards of snow drifting down.

Against a snowbank in the dying evening gloom, the misty sketch of a filly slumped into the soggy snow, sorrow unspoken, her sled all broken. A shiver-shake, a teary quake, she shuddered in place until a curl-tailed shadow stood over her, bent low beside the sled wrecked to genuflect and gave the filly a kiss next to her bruised horn, another on her skinned knee. Laughter of fleeing colts echoed across the embankment, one last snowball flung skyward, landing with a plop. But in the cold: warmth. A puff of steam from the elder’s nose, a scarf floating from the unblemished neck to the scraped and scratched, a cozy, rosy embrace, whispered words in her ear. What they said was lost to the wind, but they stood, the filly borne on the young mare’s back, and headed toward the flicker-glow in the window for hot cocoa.

A moment’s pause, then the filly-shaped swish bolted from her room, the loose end of her nightgown trailing in the hallway, then leapt onto an elegant canopy bed. The occupant tore off its sleeping mask, hugged the sobbing shape close, as the imaginings of a clawed beastie burgeoned from her mind, flickered on the wall. The reclining figure rubbed the other’s back, will o’ wisp filaments tracing from her horn to tie up the shadowy projected bogeymare, subdue the stubborn scaremonger, and relegate it to its fate, no longer this night to dare affright. The threat all gone, the filly laid her head down, lost her frown, her breath coming slow, the pillow below cradling her in bliss. Only sweet dreams caressed the somnolent pair, snuggled with care, minds unaware of the evils that jittery thoughts invent.

The silhouette cloud clambered forward another year, clothed and clad in sheep’s wool. The photographer’s flash framed the pair, who giggled and trotted townward for ice cream, as big as their heads! No magic today, food on their face, but no disgrace, just two of them having fun to run, run, run...

The diaphanous duo plunged ahead from the mud pit, one in disguise but betrayed by her eyes beneath the western hat jouncing and bouncing on her head with each stride beside her filly compatriot. A-stomp juicing grapes, chicken coop escapes, a pie down the hatch, then step-for-step match to keep their egg in place—off to the race! Lest their strength diminish, they leapt for the finish… The deception revealed, a horn concealed, but the filly squealed! Spectacular, securing the Sisterhooves second-place spot, and on the first try!

Darkness, creeping inward, and an elegant tent stood in a murky cave. By campfire light, a ghostly fright, but goblins and ghouls no longer scare the mist-form mare, so they toasted their marshmallows and laughed into the night. As long as they had a wagonload of comforts from home, nothing would interrupt them from enjoying each other.

The larger one stood tall, with the small one gazing up, up, into deep blue eyes, arise, idolize, to impossible height, out of sight, and the filly hugged her near, most dear, so desperately clung to her, but Sweetie Belle’s horn buzzed terribly, fizzled out, the scene gone black, leaving her panting on the floor and quaking, quaking, quaking.

Ivory hooves scooped her up and held her. One curtain parted to the prodding of Rarity’s magic, enough to light the room dimly. Sweetie Belle had never seen Rarity cry before, not like this. Upset or sad or angry, sure, but now, not holding back, pushing the tears out because they meant more that way. She wept freely, her mascara tracing dusty streaks down her face. “How did you learn to do all that?” she warbled, already shaking her head at the impossibility of it.

“I love you so much, Rarity,” Sweetie Belle said through her gasps for air. It was the only answer she could give. “I wanted to show you what you meant to me.”

“Th-that’s your Hearth’s Warming gift to me?”

“Yeah. Do you like it?”

On her shoulder, Sweetie Belle could feel Rarity’s head nodding over and over and over, but no words came.

“I’m beat, though. Tomorrow, could we see if I might earn a cutie mark for getting spa treatments?”

“Of course,” Rarity replied with a giggle, her voice almost back to its normal pitch. “I assume I should thank Twilight for helping you with that? I’m amazed with what you were able to learn so quickly.”

Sweetie Belle reached a noodle-limp arm around Rarity’s withers. “You’re the best sister ever.”

Rarity shook her head. “Impossible,” she said in a breathy whisper. “The top spot is already taken.”