Sweetie Belle studied the closet before her with narrowed eyes.
Well, to call it a ‘closet’ would convey so little. It was the capital-P Pit. It was where Order went to die an undignified and unpleasant death. Discord wandered by it every so often to take notes. Whole ecosystems flourished in the chaos of mismatched Daring Do books, miscellaneous stationery, and urgent paperwork. The cobwebs engulfing said paperwork were being compressed so hard by everything else, they were gradually turning into diamond. In its depths, she swore she could hear something growl.
It was Rainbow Dash’s supply closet in the School of Friendship, and as her newly-anointed teaching assistant, Sweetie had been vouchsafed the task of extracting a box of tinsel from it.
“How’s it going over there, squirt?” Rainbow Dash called. She was by the window, nursing a bucket-sized mug of coffee as she watched the weather team dust the school grounds with snow.
“Er,” replied Sweetie, contemplating her task. She tried to resist the urge to suggest that it might just be best to buy some new tinsel, burn the closet down, and start again from scratch. Rainbow Dash might be cool with that sort of suggestion … but Sweetie couldn’t be sure. “Just trying to find it. Is it near the back?”
“Sure hope not,” Rainbow Dash cheerfully replied, and then winced as thunder crashed just outside her window. “Oh, come on. That wasn’t even a thundercloud. How … how does Zephyr manage to be so terrible at this? Was he born that dreadful, or does he practise at it, or…?”
While Rainbow Dash was distracted, Sweetie leaned into the closet as close as she dared, and thought she caught sight of the edge of a pony-sized cardboard box. She summoned light to see by, and saw a label alleging it held tinsel. That was a start. Now came the extraction.
Sweetie gingerly gripped the box with her magic. Slowly and steadily would do it. She edged it out by about a centimetre.
Things rumbled within the closet, slowly, unsteadily, like a tectonic plate that had downed one cocktail too many. Sweetie’s gaze swivelled up to where the outermost layers were beginning to lean forward. She had just enough presence of mind to yelp and summon a protective sphere of magic around herself, just as the inevitable avalanche engulfed her.
After several moments spent in darkness, after the crashing had subsided, light broke in across Sweetie’s vision. Past the green haze of her shield, she saw Rainbow Dash sweeping aside the closet contents that had engulfed her. “You alright?” the pegasus asked.
Sweetie took a moment to wheeze in fresh air. “I think so.” She glanced round at the devastation. Amidst the strewn books and boxes and eldritch miscellania, colonies of spiders blinked in wonder at light and fresh air that had hitherto been the stuff of myth. Elsewhere, a disturbed book-wyrm had come tumbling out from a ravaged textbook. The little book-wyrm scrambled to its claws, gave Sweetie a peeved look, and screeched as it flapped its paper wings.
“And there’s the tinsel.” Rainbow snagged the box and heaved it free. “Good job, squirt. Finding things and not dying’s ninety percent of all teaching, I’ve learned. We’ll make faculty of you in no time.”
Sweetie accepted Rainbow’s hoof, and was pulled free of the wreckage. The book-wyrm, ousted from its cosy abode, decided it may as well alight on her withers for whatever adventure would follow. “I … um, I’ve not accidentally ruined any system you might have had for organising your closet, have I?”
Rainbow managed to look vaguely offended even as she laughed.
“Right. Good.” Sweetie breathed easy, and brightened up. That was one potentially-mortifying incident neutered, at least. She could still pretend to be a competent teaching assistant. “Should we clean this up before heading down?”
“Nah,” Rainbow replied. She made for the classroom’s door, pushing the box of tinsel along, and Sweetie followed. She was getting taller, and she didn’t have to hurry so hard to keep pace with the older mare these days. “Pleasure before business. We’ll cram this back into place later. Though when I say ‘we’, I mean I’ll delegate, and you’ll cram.”
“Oh.” Sweetie eyed ground zero. “Oh, goody.”
Rainbow Dash winked. “Hey, for what it’s worth, you’re somewhere up the chain of command above the students. You can delegate as well when the time comes.”
Sweetie knew it was so much hot air. If there was a mess around that needed clearing, Rainbow would wade in alongside her fellows, and would probably not-so-subtly show off by doing the lion’s share. But Sweetie humoured her. “Is making the students do all the heavy labour entirely ethical?”
“Tell yourself it builds their moral fibre,” Rainbow replied. “And if you can’t tell yourself that with a straight face, just forget ethics and revel in your power. Come on. Pinkie Pie and Apple Bloom should have the trees wrangled by now.”
Outside, the colours of late afternoon painted the School of Friendship in shades of orange. Snow mantled the roof and grounds, whispering softly down through the sky except for where Zephyr’s cack-hoofed efforts elicited the odd bolt of lightning. As Sweetie trotted outside after Rainbow, the book-wyrm huddling under her hastily-donned scarf, she heard other voices from high up.
“Faster!” barked Trixie from the roof of the school, as she blew on a whistle. “Griffons who aspire to join the Royal Guard can circuit the school twice in under fifteen seconds, so I’m reliably informed!”
“But my wings feel like they’re filled with lead pudding and pain!” mewled Gallus in response.
“Do not question Equestria’s greatest and most sagacious guidance counselor! Faster, I say!”
Sweetie smiled and left them to it. She had trees to decorate, after all.
The trees were indeed being wrangled by Pinkie Pie and Apple Bloom. A copse of wandering pines, they’d mostly settled down by now, though a few were still ambling around on their roots to nose around odd corners of the courtyard. One of them, a feisty little sapling, seemed to be having great fun thwarting Apple Bloom’s attempt to corrall it. She’d lassoed one of its branches, and was digging a groove through the snow as it determinedly trundled onwards and pulled her along with it.
“Ftay ftill, ‘oo c’nfarned .. hey thr.” She nodded at Sweetie and Rainbow Dash as the sapling dragged her briefly by them, somewhat muffled by the rope. “J’ft tryin’ t’ g’t these here trees t’—”
She got no further, for at that point, another sapling snuck up, undid her bow with a snaking root, and trundled off. A torrent of muffled blasphemy at its expense immediately followed, and Apple Bloom took off after it, the first sapling now helplessly being pulled along in her wake.
“Pinkie!” Rainbow Dash called. “The trees are looking good!”
“Indeedy!” Pinkie rose from where she’d been sitting at the centre of the courtyard, next to the tallest dominant amongst the wandering pines and gurgling at it in fluent Tree. She winced a little, though, as she clutched at her heavily-pregnant midriff. “They don’t mind if we decorate them a little, if they’re guaranteed to bide somewhere with plenty of earth pony magic during the winter. Trees don’t mess around when they negotiate.”
The dominant thrummed with the satisfaction of a bargain well-struck.
“Any word from Rarity and Scootaloo?” Sweetie asked. They’d taken a train out to Vanhoover, where the Princesses — Celestia and Luna, rather, had last been sighted enjoying their decadent retirement.
“Yep! They sent a telegram back just five minutes ago. They managed to find Celestia and Luna in a bar somewhere, and Luna said the plan for her to float a little spare star above each of the trees was, quote, an exshellent idea, hic, never in our daysh have we heard a better idea from poniesh we love and reshpect more, let us shelebrate with more mulled claret, barkeep &c.” Pinkie smiled brightly. “So that might be happening tonight!”
The thought of Luna so tipsy that she was turning archaic again tickled Sweetie, and she wished she was there with Rarity and Scootaloo to witness it.
Truth be told, she wouldn’t have minded just being with Rarity.
She knew where she stood with Rarity. You couldn’t not know your own sister. Rainbow Dash was a bit more of a closed book to her; she was Scootaloo’s idol.
When all the Crusaders had applied for teaching assistantships at the School of Friendship, and had been told they’d start off assisting an existing teacher, Sweetie had privately imagined there’d be more appropriate match-ups made.
“Awesome.” Rainbow grinned. “Shall we get started, Sweetie? Levitate out some of the tinsel, and I’ll dress this one up.”
Sweetie dutifully opened the box and floated out a great coil of golden tinsel. Rainbow bit down on one end of it, and briefly became a gold-streaked rainbow blur in the air around the dominant pine. When she was done, the tree looked considerably more festive and also slightly stunned.
“Perfect,” Rainbow said, admiring her own handiwork. “Rarity couldn’t have done better. Once Luna floats a star over it and all the students come in with baubles tomorrow, there’s not going to be a more bedazzling bunch of trees in all Equestria. Starlight’s idea, you know. Getting everypony involved in making the school as festive as can be. Kinda sappy, if you ask me, but I guess sappy’s appropriate.” She nudged the tree with her forehoof and smiled expectantly at Sweetie. “Right? Sappy.”
Sweetie didn’t answer right away. It was a nice idea. She wondered if Starlight Glimmer had had it by herself, or if one of the teachers had suggested it. It sounded like a Rarity sort of idea.
Rainbow cleared her throat. “...You gonna laugh at your mentor’s hilarious pun, or—”
“Oh. Oh! Right, the pun. It was very good.” Sweetie glanced around for the nearest tree. “Shall we do the next one?”
“Not sure that was sincere, but whatever,” Rainbow grumbled, though she helped push the box of tinsel in the direction of the nearest tree regardless.
The tree, which had seen the en-festive-ing of its dominant and seemed in no mood to don it now its gay apparel, edged backwards suspiciously.
“So,” Rainbow remarked, a shade too casually as they pursued the tree across the snowy courtyard, “you, uh … how are you liking your first day of being a teaching assistant?”
“It’s okay? I guess?” Sweetie puffed as she put her weight into the box of tinsel. “Mostly it’s just been induction, and you telling how I should make every lesson be an outdoors one in the fresh air whenever possible, and telling me that the first rule of teaching’s always to seek forgiveness rather than permission from Starlight, and —”
“No, no, that’s the second rule. The first rule’s ‘When in doubt, say you’re improving their moral fibre.’ Works for Wonderbolt cadets, works for Friendship students.”
“Right, sorry. Telling me the various rules, and … well, helping decorate the trees.” Sweetie sighed. “I guess once the students are in tomorrow for the last couple of weeks of term, there’ll be more actual teaching stuff.”
The book-wyrm on her withers flapped and screeched, agitated.
“Actual teaching stuff’s more your game, then? Lesson plans, supervising classrooms, lending a helping hoof to confused folk, giving it all meticulous care and attention, that sort of thing?”
Rainbow glanced at Sweetie, and when Sweetie met her gaze, she realised that Rainbow was giving her a shrewd look. As if she knew Sweetie’s thoughts. A pony might know you better than you knew them.
Sweetie nodded. And Rainbow’s shrewd look was replaced with a knowing smile. “And you’re wondering why you’ve been assigned to me, I’m guessing.”
Rainbow getting at the nub of the issue shouldn’t have been such a relief, yet it somehow was. Sweetie breathed out, as the little book-wyrm crooned. “Honestly. Yeah. It’s … it’s not that I don’t want to learn from you. You’re awesome—!”
“You hear that word applied to yourself for years upon years, and you apply it to yourself for even longer, but somehow it never gets old.” Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and preened. “I don’t actually give my students extra credit if they call me it, but oh, it’s tempting to. Sorry, you were talking.”
“...Right. You’re a great pegasus and a great teacher. But … I guess I just assumed I’d be learning under Rarity, and Scootaloo would get you. That’d seem to fit.”
They’d pursued the tree up against one wall, where it found no way out, even when it insistently prodded the stonework with a root. Turning on them, it accepted its lot and stood tall, dignified in defeat.
“We chatted about it, all of us and Starlight and Trixie, and even Twilight when she could spare the time for a meeting,” Rainbow said, in no apparent hurry to begin festooning their quarry. “And it was decided we’d rotate you all between us. I’d get you for a couple of months, into the new year. Then you’d go to Applejack, and then Fluttershy, and so on. Give you time with all of us.”
“Why?”
“Dunno.” Rainbow shrugged. “But if I had to guess, maybe, maybe you’re meant to learn from each of us and how we deal with our classes. Pick up all our good qualities, and learn to ignore our bad ones. Be even better than us, in time.” There was a pause, and then Rainbow scoffed. “But I don’t buy that.”
“You don’t?”
Rainbow snorted. “What could I teach you? You’re already awesome, the three of you.”
And Sweetie, though she tried very hard, couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
After a while, Rainbow coughed. “Well. Anyway. Enough mushy stuff. Between my seat-of-the-dress-ing and your meticulous-ing, the class isn’t going to know what’s hit it. And neither’s this tree. Want to get the tinsel out?”
Sweetie coughed, shaken back to reality. She ventured a wicked grin at Rainbow even as she opened the box, and the book-wyrm reared with triumph. “You bet.” There came muffled country-style cursing from behind them. “And, ah, shall we go help Apple Bloom after? I think the saplings are working as a team.”
Rainbow grinned right back, crouched, and whirred her wings. “Once we’re done here, race to her.”
And with that, Sweetie cast the tinsel high.
