Biscuit?
Sane Marbles
Smolder couldn’t believe the string of bad luck she was having. It was almost unbelievable. Her day hadn’t started off so bad - it was the last day of school before winter break began, after all. Everycreature knows that teachers don’t actually bother to teach anything on the day before break starts. If only Headmare Twilight had been told about it. Headmare Twilight had assigned out some stupid assignment. It really wasn’t that hard to complete, but they did have to finish it before they went home. When the bell rang signaling the end of the final class, Smolder went to turn in her assignment on her way out the door. It was then that things started to go wrong
For most creatures it was a simple thing. At most it would receive a passing thought. There was just one problem. Smolder wasn't just any creature. Smolder was a dragon.
"Aaaa-choo"
A sneeze. When a dragon sneezes, there is one key difference that sets it apart from most other creatures. For when a dragon sneezes, there is fire.
A fire that quickly turned her ticket for two whole weeks of freedom from school into a small little pile of ash.
Her friends had offered to stay behind and wait with her while she quickly rewrote the two pages on what her holiday traditions were, but she had declined. As nice as it would have been, having them there would have made it take longer.
Thankfully it had only taken about 20 minutes to complete this time and she was quickly on her way out the door and heading over to the dorms.
"Oh, there you are Smolder!" A very chipper voice called down. "I've got a letter for you."
Smolder looked up to see a familiar face. It was Gabby, the official mail carrier of Griffonstone and unofficial mail carrier of the Dragon Lands.
"Whew. Am I ever glad to finally get this delivered," Gabby panted as she passed her a slab of granite with a short message scratched on its surface.
We takin nap.
Don't die.
Garble
"Well, looks like there isn't much point for me to head back to the Dragon Lands this year since Garble will be asleep"
"What about the Feast Of Fire and the rest of your family?" Gabby inquired.
"Once young dragons are old enough to start their first molt, dragon parents are done being parents. I really only ever went home to visit my brother during any of these holiday breaks we get here at the School Of Friendship. As for the Feast Of Fire, eh. I’ve never been able to come up with any really good stories that would have a chance at winning the pile of gems. There hasn’t been a story worth listening to in years, so there isn’t really a reason to go otherwise."
"Oh." The perpetually chipper griffon appeared to deflate at this. Sure most griffons were nowhere near as close to their parents like ponies were, but they would always at least acknowledge their offspring. “What are you planning on doing over your break then if you are not going back home?”
“I’ll probably go and spend it with one of my friends,” Smolder trailed off as the realization hit her. A desperate look at the clock tower confirmed the worst. There was a problem with this plan.
That is where the bad luck continued. That sun-scorched assignment had found another way to ruin her day. Since she had ended up staying late to redo the assignment along with the distraction of receiving a letter naturally had caused Smolder to miss the train. Yes, there would be other trains she could catch, but it would be much more difficult to find out which friends had room for a guest over their holiday break when her friends were no longer together on the same train. Normally it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Sandbar lived in Ponyville and his folks had made it quite clear that any friends of his were always welcome.
Life could never be that easy. This year Sandbar was gone. He had gotten permission to start break a few days early and his family had gone off to visit family in … in… some other pony place. Smolder hadn’t paid close attention to where Sandbar had said that they were going.
“Oh!” Gabby gasped. “You don’t happen to know where Spike is, do you? I was hoping to catch up with my pen-pal while I was in town.”
“Spike, Headmare Twilight, and a few of our other professors got called away for a friendship mission in the middle of the last class today. No idea where they might have gone off to.”
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Normally, Gabby was a very energetic, chipper and uncompromising friendly griffon. Most creatures that had met her would swear that nothing could change that. Most creatures had never seen mail from the Dragon Lands.
Dragons rarely wrote letters or sent mail of any kind. When dragons did write letters, they didn't use paper. They used rocks. Rocks were heavy. And it was not a short flight to Equestria from the Dragon Lands. She was not feeling very energetic after that flight.
Gabby was also not feeling super chipper. The rest of her family had come down with the feather flu, so being with her family for the Blue Moon Festival was not an option this year.
Despite having a dragon letter and not being able to see her family, there was at least one thing she could look forward to. The letter she had to deliver was going to Ponyville and that meant one thing. She would be able to visit her pen-pal Spike.
Gabby had always been one to make lemonade out of the metaphorical lemons that life loved to give. With lemons, you could do things with them. Make lemonade, flavor some water, you could even deter some insects, and use it for some cleaning. This time, life was playing dirty. Life wasn’t handing out lemons today. Life was handing out broccoli. Broccoli was, well, it was broccoli. There wasn’t much you could do with it. Broccoli would always just be nasty no matter what you tried to do with it.
Life had made one mistake. It had forgotten that this wasn’t just any creature. This creature was Gabby. Gabby had always been able to make lemonade out of those lemons, and just because life had decided to give broccoli instead was not going to be able to stop her. Gabby just so happened to like broccoli.
Gabby hadn’t realized it at first since she was still mentally thinking about her plans to meet up with Spike, but now since that was no longer distracting her, the worn out, almost defeated expression on Smolder’s muzzle was obvious. It was evident that Gabby might not have been the only one to have plans fall through today and there was only one way to find out.
“So,...” the smile started to creep back onto Gabby’s beak. “You don’t happen have anything going on for the rest of the day?"
“Eh, not really. I missed the train I needed and the next one won’t be here ‘till tomorrow.”
“I’ve got a great idea!” Gabby exclaimed “We should do something together. We could build a snowpony!”
“Sure. Not like I have anything better to do.”
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“You were right. A hot coco tea party is a lot of fun.”
“That life sized snow snowdragon that we made of the former dragon lord Torch was pretty epic.”
“Hehe, I don’t think ponies' reactions to it will get old.”
“Yeah, it is pretty funny to watch.”
“Another biscuit?”
Author's Note
I would like to make it clear that I have nothing against broccoli as I happen to like it as well.
