Queen Novo looked up from a quiet conference with her finance minister to see Princess Skystar barreling bombastically through the throne room. She didn’t appear to have factored in the effects of a potential collision when calculating an appropriate speed, and were it anyone else, the guards would have apprehended several things, beginning with her momentum and ending with her person.
“Moooooom!” she cried.
Novo held up a fin. “Protocol.”
“Um…” Skystar searched the ceiling for a clue. She never seemed to remember proper address. “Your Momjesty?”
Close enough.
“Guess what?” Skystar spouted, spinning a-twirl and a-whirl amid a flurry of bubbles. “Silverstream came back for winter break, and she told me all about a wonderful holiday they have in Equestria! It’s called Hearth’s Warming.”
“Sounds wonderful.” Queen Novo caught the minister’s eye and signaled a brief recess. “Did you want to go back with her after break and see it?”
“No, it’ll be gone by then.”
Ah. At least that called to mind some of the seasonal celebrations the hippogriffs used to observe before they took refuge under the water. As a child, the ornate dinners, the fancy outfits, the fun songs. It always made her feel… different than any other time of year. It was hard to explain why. Maybe because it seemed like life had just a few more possibilities on those days. Puff pastries, group games, decadent dresses. Even thinking about it had her feeling a tiny tad like a kid again.
“But Silverstream won’t be going back until then anyway. It might have to wait until next year.”
“No,no!” Skystar said, holding her pectoral fins to her cheeks. “Silverstream said she’d help me set everything up here! We can do our own Hearth’s Warming!”
“At her home? Or in your room? Either way, knock yourself out.” Novo turned back to the minister for a moment, but didn’t feel the telltale trail of water currents from a retreating Skystar. So she peered over her shoulder, and her daughter’s eyes had seemed to grow three sizes that day. “Ooookay. You want to do something in the ballroom? I suppose I can authorize that, as long as you leave the middle clear enough for traffic.”
Skystar shook her head and gave a toothy grin.
Novo rubbed her eyes as she flopped into her throne. “I get the feeling I’m better off not knowing.” She sighed a rush of water past her gills. “What will this involve?”
“Gifts.”
Nothing new there.
“Hot cocoa.”
Maybe they could rig something up by the volcanic vents, but water-based drinks always proved difficult. Vegetable-oil-based, fine, even better if they were denser than water, which also meant drinking them upside-down—oh! Like they used to do in school! When was that? Six or seven years old at most.
“Stairs!”
“Stairs?”
“Stairs.”
Novo squinted one eye. “You know, we have sloped paths all the way up Mount Aris. What’s so different about carving notches in them?”
“Stairs.”
Another sigh huffed out, this one with a great deal of bubbles. “Fine, stairs. Look, let me just send a scroll off to Princess Celestia and get a bit of background for myself. You watch over things here, and when I return, we can talk about what to do, okay?”
With a maniacal smile, Skystar rubbed her fins together. “Can I get started?”
“Yes—” her daughter raced off, but Novo grabbed her by the tail “—simple things only, for now. Don’t go nuts.”
“Oh, you know me, Mom—” Skystar blinked “—jesty.”
Unfortunately, she did know Skystar. She nodded to two of her guards, who hastened out of the room after her daughter. With any luck, they’d keep things from getting out of control.
So, pretty standard holiday. Food, gifts, decorations, songs. But the songs didn’t seem to apply well to an undersea kingdom, and frankly, neither did much else. If it took everyone going up on shore to celebrate it, then no harm done.
Novo swam back to her throne room, and for the couple of hours she’d been gone, nothing much had changed in here. No tinsel or lights, just that a ramp had been added to the throne, somehow with several dozen tiny steps hewn into it. As long as it could be easily removed tomorrow, no problem, though she didn’t relish the potential argument if Skystar decided they needed to become permanent.
Maybe they’d done more over in the town center, so she headed out the window, and—
A large, obviously waterlogged tree stood there with a number of glass globes attached to the branches, which were no doubt hollow, as most of them strained toward the surface. The rest had been weighted down with fishing sinkers to make them hang in the correct direction, but Skystar really ought to know better than to use fishing gear. Most citizens would feel skittish about it, if not downright offended. At least the hastily constructed brick hearth with a bit of glowing lava in it had been more reasonably adapted to underwater use, but it had also nearly lost its fierce orange color. Lava didn’t stay hot too long once it encountered water.
“Skystar!” she called in that unmistakable parental tone. Immediately, a fin waved madly from the middle of the crowd and its owner dashed up to meet her.
“Do you like what I’ve done?” she asked, her face betraying her obvious expectation of an answer.
Novo ran a heavy swish of water past her gills. “Well, let’s go over exactly what you have done.”
“Okay, I’ve got a choir ready to go on in ten minutes.”
“How’d you get enough that fast?”
“When the acting queen orders it, it gets done.”
Oh, good gracious. “To sing carols, I take it?”
“Yeah.”
“Which repel windigoes.”
“Precisely!”
“We don’t have cold weather down here. Even in winter, the water temperature is barely different than summer. What’s a windigo going to do to us?” Perhaps this could serve as a teaching moment, since Skystar would likely inherit the throne one day.
Skystar rolled her eyes up and thought for a moment. “I guess it’s more symbolic.”
“Fine, but don’t you think those fishing weights on the tree might spook some of the elderly citizens?”
More thought, but that was a good thing. “I didn’t think of it like that. I guess anchoring down the apples in the bobbing bucket with fishhooks was a bad idea too.”
“I should say so! You want someone wearing a hook through the cheek?”
For some reason, that got her daughter laughing. “That’s trendy right now with the goth set. Haven’t you heard the band Queennovosrÿche?”
“Wait, there’s a band called that?” Skystar only nodded. Okay, maybe time to get the legal department involved. It briefly occurred to Novo to ask if they just might be the choir about to perform, but then she thought better of it. “Anything else?”
“I didn’t have a lot of time.”
“You still managed to do a lot.” Novo held back from adding “of damage.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“We did add some stairs to the throne.”
“I saw.”
Skystar’s eyes brightened. “Oh, and the gifts! All citizens were ordered to buy or make a gift for their assigned recipient, to be given after the concert.”
“The concert that begins in ten minutes.”
“Eight now.”
Novo cast a wary eye over the market district. Lines trailed out of every store, and a few had erupted into genuine scuffles. “And how long is the concert?”
One of Skystar’s fins lifted, then another, and then she brought her tail into the consultation before arriving at a total. “Maybe half an hour.”
“And everyone’s supposed to have a gift ready by then?”
A quick nod stirred the water.
“What if they can’t?”
Skystar grinned a little too maniacally. “We already had a few refuse. They’ve been promptly scheduled for execution.”
“Execution!?”
“Oh relax,” Skystar replied, waving a fin. “It’s just snowballs on the beach.”
“Still, it seems in poor taste. You actually got all this from Silverstream?” Not that Novo had spent much time with her, but she didn’t come across as the secretly villainous type. “Did she help you organize any of this?”
“Yeah, she’s… over… somewhere…” Skystar said as she peered around at the crowds. She beckoned madly, and finally, here came Silverstream.
“Your Majesty,” she said with a brief bow.
Some occasions call for choosing one’s words carefully. “Are you… okay with the preparations?”
For her part, Skystar looked timid for the first time today, but Silverstream piped right up: “Yes, I lent Skystar my photo album from school, and it has lots of stuff about Hearth’s Warming in it!”
“But do you know what’s actually being done?”
With a stutter-stop glance back at Skystar, Silverstram continued, “I was giving a bit of advice to some hippogriffs who didn’t know what kind of present to get.”
“Required present.”
“Required?” Silverstream held a hoof to her mouth. “Um… they shouldn’t be. But if I did a bad job supervising, I apologize. I spent most of my time building stairs for the throne—”
Speaking of supervision… “Where are the guards I assigned to you?” Novo asked Skystar.
“They…” A bit of a tremble faded into her voice. “They said they couldn’t abandon their duties to shop, so their only option under the rules was to arrest each other.” And she broke into a big grin. “Simultaneously, of course, since if one did it first, the other wouldn’t have the authority to arrest him back—”
“Oh good gracious what have you done?” Silverstream muttered into her fins.
Taking above-water form might help in having talons to tick things off a list, but Novo would have to make do. “Metal band with fishhook piercings?”
“Oh sweet Celestia,” Silverstream said. “She must have seen that photo we got a hold of: Headmare Starlight as a teenager.”
“Forced gift-giving or being subject to execution?”
Silverstream had no reply.
“It’s just a snowball fight on the beach,” Skystar mumbled.
“Do they know that?” Novo nearly shouted, pointing out the extensive lines at every shop.
“I… maybe?”
Alright. Damage control time. “The band is fine, I don’t care, they go on in eight minutes anyway.”
“Two minutes.”
“Fine. In two minutes, please have the band make an announcement that the gift-giving is only a suggestion, there will be a voluntary snowball fight on the beach for those who would find it fun afterward, we’ll put out some light refreshments, and just do the apple bobbing upside down so you don’t need hooks. Anyone desiring a piercing will be encouraged to go to a professional parlor, okay?”
Both nodded, and with Novo’s quick gesture, Silverstream swam off to make it happen. Okay, crisis averted. Almost: Skystar looked on the verge of tears.
“Hey,” Novo said, gathering her daughter up in a hug. “It’s going to be okay. Just listen.”
Skystar perked up an ear, but nothing. She buried her face in Novo’s chest until the pop of a loudspeaker activating made her jerk her head back up. A lot of the sound got lost in echoes, but the last part rang out clearly: “…And after the free performance, we’ll have a fun snowball fight on the beach, for all who are interested, ‘prisoners’ versus the rest, courtesy of Princess Skystar.”
“Skystar! Skystar! Skystar!” chanted the audience.
And now some tears did trickle out and drift off with the currents. “Thanks, Mom… jesty.”
“Just don’t take on more than you can handle, alright? When you’re out of your element, let your friends—and family—help you out. That’s part of the message of Hearth’s Warming, too, isn’t it, Skystar?”
Then the band cut in, and no hope of anything she said further being heard. She couldn’t have stopped it if she wanted to, not with how late in the process she found out about it, and judging by the lyrics, maybe she should have in the name of public decency. For a band named after her, they did have some rather vulgar things to say about their namesake, though… all at least complimentary. Very complimentary. She blushed.
Yeah, she still had it.
Author's Note
Normally, Jinglemas requests are for one or two characters to use. Sometimes, a request includes a preference for a genre to use or avoid. Well, I got one that spelled out what plot to use. Pretty restrictive, but I hope I came up with something enjoyable from it. Note the word count. Written for PacifistDoodl3r.
