The group had decided to take the trot through the Heart on their way out of Canterlot, because Hearth's Warming was about a moon away and there were worse ways to get gift ideas than by wandering around the capital's high-end shopping district. There would be enchanted window displays to inspect, along with fads which could be giggled at. And the most important thing was that they were doing it all together, because everypony had come through the just-completed mission intact and finished the royal debriefing without so much as the smallest degree of temporary hearing loss.
(Luna had been part of the debriefing. Temporary hearing loss was one of the lesser options.)
The weather schedule had dictated clear skies and crisp cold for the Heart on a late autumn day: something which encouraged shoppers to think of the winter to come. And there were plenty of ponies milling around outside the stores. They peered at the displays, they laughed as tiny animated figures committed wrapping indignities upon miniature presents, and some of them even planned to spend money. Eventually.
As for the stores themselves... nopony was really expecting all that much in the way of business on that day. It was a little early in the season for the true rush. Additionally, selling to customers had a certain basic requirement, and those shops within the Heart which possessed hard-won experience were desperately violating it.
Six mares traveled through the Heart, smiling and laughing and simply enjoying being alive. And all around them, just beyond the zone of awareness, doors locked, signs reading Closed For Upcoming Emergency were slammed against glass, and employees got their time cards stamped while there were still enough meshed clockwork gears to let that happen at all.
Bad Things didn't always happen. But It was about a moon before Hearth's Warming in the Heart, and the Bearers had been there before.
Business shuttered themselves. Gates slammed down, makeshift barricades went up, and two places failed to improvise portcullises. But the window displays continued their animations, because the mares would leave eventually and the real shoppers had to be encouraged.
That was the visual side of the enticement.
"I've heard that one before," the smallest of the mares muttered. "Hundreds of times."
"Twilight..." a white unicorn gently stepped in, "we are here to enjoy ourselves. Simply allow the ambiance to wash over you --"
"-- ambiance," the newly-identified little mare interrupted, "includes sound. And when it comes to Hearth's Warming, it's the same sounds. Over and over and over..."
There was also an audio portion. It drifted out from cone-shaped speakers above the doors, wafting through the air and clashing with that which came from the other stores in the depressing familiarity of a war which was never, ever going to actually be won.
It wasn't going over well.
(The little mare was only newly-identified for that tiny portion of the browsing crowd which was paying even momentary attention to events. Many of the stores had her picture hung up as part of a security room sextet, all labeled with Do Not Admit These Mares.)
"I don't like it much either," a hovering Rainbow admitted: the disgruntled words had to drop a fair distance in order to reach anypony's ears. "It's the same old songs every single year, because ponies have been singing and playing those songs ever since Hearth's Warming got started and they're not going to stop now." She snorted. "Maybe they think they're casting a spell."
That got Twilight's full attention: the little mare looked up. "A spell with verbal components? There's only a few workings which actually need them, Rainbow. Most of what you get with spoken words are mnemonics. Reminders to do things in the right order. It's a focus exercise with pentameter." Which was the real reason Zecora spoken in rhymes: a potion brewer who could match syllable count and terminal sounds on instinct wasn't going to lose track of a crucial mixing stage any time ever.
"A spell," the pegasus irritably repeated. "One which everypony has to cast together. Sing for your lives, every day in the last moon before Hearth's Warming, or there won't be a Hearth's Warming at all."
"Everypony," Twilight tried. "Unicorns, earth ponies, pegasi casting together. Rainbow, it doesn't work that way..."
"It's like the idiots who hang around the Factory at the start of winter and chant at the walls because they think they're making snowflakes."
Five mares blinked.
"Really?" Applejack carefully asked. The rope-bound tail managed a half-twitch.
"Yeah."
"When did that start? 'cause Ah don't remember anythin' like that from when we were up there. Not that we visited close t' winter, but Ah didn't hear nopony chantin' for nothin'."
"Last year, from what my parents said," Rainbow half-muttered. "I don't know how it got started. Probably just some stupid kids telling each other stories."
"...what do they chant?" Fluttershy finally risked.
"'Frosty shivers'!"
"...really?" the pretty mare echoed.
"Yeah." Disgruntled feathers rustled in mid-flap. "But it'll probably fade after another year. No way anything that dumb sticks." Another snort. "Which is kind of the opposite for the holiday songs, right? Because sometimes there's a new one. Something breaks through the wall of old and manages to, no offense Rarity, Twilight, horn in. You'll hear a few ponies singing it, and maybe some albums get on the turntable. But the only way it stays? Is if it's as stupid as everything else." The tail lashed. "Can we just move already? I don't mind looking at this stuff with everypony, but I want to get back into Ponyville a little after Moon gets raised."
"Why?" Applejack inquired. "Somethin' special happenin' tonight?"
"First tickets go on sale at Town Hall. For the Hearth's Warming Eve concert in the market square."
"They ain't even said who's gonna be performin' yet," the farmer pointed out. "Ain't seen One-Sheet One or Poster Two."
"Yeah," Rainbow admitted. "The mayor's probably still trying to find acts who'll fit into the budget. But you know how it is, Applejack. I either reserve my bench now, or I get stuck hovering at the back."
"Fair point," the farmer allowed. "Ah should go in with you. Put in mah own bits. But..." Lilting into the tones of teasing, "...why do y'even want t' go, Rainbow? Given what they're gonna be playin' --"
"-- it's not all holiday stuff! Lyra said she's working on something original! And for the things which are holiday..." Her voice dropped. "...it'll be the last time we hear them for nearly twelve moons. I just want to be there when the stupid things leave --"
"They aren't all stupid!" Pinkie called back her protest. (She'd gotten somewhat ahead of the others, all the better to check out the food displays first, and three extra stores had closed accordingly.) "They wouldn't have hung around for all of those centuries if the only thing they had going for them was that they were all dumb!"
The prismatic mane responded to the angry head shake through disordering itself. "You think so? Everypony, stop for a second. Don't move."
"Don't move," Rarity repeated. "A request for the herd, one which you are already and forever violating --"
-- Rainbow landed.
A quartet of cyan hooves slammed into the cobblestone streets. The sleek body went tight.
"Don't move," the weather coordinator ordered. "Don't talk, either. They're all around us right now, aren't they? Just -- listen."
They did.
The songs played. From a dozen cone-shaped speakers, from a hundred. Overlap failed to create blending. Familiarity separated out every last ingredient: something made all the easier when nearly every component had been around long enough to evolve its own species of mold.
One tune was about Charity Sprites. Everypony in the nation knew about Charity Sprites. The fact that they knew when somepony was sleeping or awake wasn't seen as much of an issue. The fact that they also knew exactly how much money you'd made in any given year was considered to be a greater problem, especially for those who were trying to keep a taxable portion of it away from the government. Because the invisible, intangible, and unstoppable spirits always collected the realm's share. Always.
There was a song about decorating edible holiday arrangements with boughs of holly. Twilight had never understood that. Even a small serving of holly berries was moderately toxic. Anypony eating them was risking vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration and extreme drowsiness. But on the bright side, whoever passed out probably didn't have to hear the song for a while.
One of the more recent compositions seemed to concern being trampled. By reindeer. A species which wasn't sapient, and therefore couldn't have any of its members explain why they saw trampling ponies as a suitable holiday activity. The ponies didn't seem to be getting much out of it.
The most ancient of the tunes was believed to predate the Nightmare, because it was all about having a dark-hued alicorn entering somepony's house at night to deliver gifts and, if the lyrics were to be believed, one of those gifts was a night spent in the carefully-described romantic company of the alicorn. The resulting lack of frost-rimed rampages in the current era had two possible explanations: either Luna had forgiven the singer long ago, or the elder sister had created some extremely complicated systems for preventing the younger from ever hearing the thing.
(A few tattered pages in the Canterlot Archives suggested that either the original artist had somehow reached the modern day, or any attempt at professionally performing the song somehow came out exactly the same as every other. The most recent recording had been rendered by a mare who'd proudly told the world that her beauty secret was to find a cave full of windigos, then insult them in such a way as to require an eleven-moon thaw. Repeat as necessary, for what she claimed to be more than twelve hundred years. Nopony believed her: a total which precisely matched the number who'd been able to find her birth certificate.)
And then you had the one about a colt who wanted to purchase a set of silver shoes for his hospitalized mother. The song ended with the child discovering that his parent's left hind hoof had been amputated. This had created a choice of final stanzas. One described the attempt to return one of the shoes for a partial refund, with the other adding in a few specialized tools because the nails had to be pulled out of the detached keratin first. It was generally agreed that one version was the original and the other represented a parody, but nopony was entirely certain which was which.
Six mares listened to all of it, and winced in concert.
"Perhaps some of them were once pleasant within the ears," Rarity sighed. "Once. But... yes, I suppose repetition does breed discontent. Fashion cycles, and these -- do not."
"It's weird," Pinkie considered. "Really-really weird. I know every lyric by heart, but I don't think I'd ever really listened before. Not to the actual words."
"Which one did you get?" Rainbow checked. (Pinkie's ears were mostly rotated to the left.)
"The one about whether caribou know it's Hearth's Warming after all."
"They can't," Twilight immediately protested. "'Caribou' is the Muscree word for 'reindeer'. It's the same species, Pinkie. Reindeer can't think."
"I know! That's why it doesn't make any sense!" The baker paused. "It does explain why they wouldn't unwrap the cookies I made for them."
"You made --"
"It explains that part," Pinkie decided. "Not eating anything after I did it for them was just rude."
"...maybe they're sort of pretty," Fluttershy tried. "...the -- first time?"
"My first time would have been when I was three moons old," Twilight darkly considered. "So by the time I had the language skills to say what I thought, it was already too late."
"Ah ain't heard that one in a while," Applejack mused.
"Which, dear?" Rarity checked.
"The one 'bout the filly who's askin' her daddy not t' unwrap his present before mornin'."
"Truly? I don't believe I've ever heard it! The premise is actually rather sweet --"
"-- 'cause she don't want him drinkin' it with the rest of the pre-holiday stuff."
"...oh," eventually emerged from between tensed lips.
"It sorta goes downhill from there," the farmer sighed. "Okay, Rainbow, Ah take your point 'bout the old ones. Maybe they've been hangin' around a little too long. But it don't mean that there can't be a decent new one. Sayin' that only stupid sticks --"
"SHHH!"
The other five froze. So did several other ponies on the street. Twilight might have lacked the actual mark for her day job, but a librarian of experience demanding silence could still have a degree of effect.
"Um," Pinkie finally ventured as curls uncertainly swayed. "What are we shhhing about --"
"-- I lost it!" Twilight fumed. "I thought I heard something coming from -- no, there it is again!" Purple eyes brightened. "It's starting over on different speakers! Rotate your ears towards Barneigh's!"
They did.
It started off well enough, and that would ultimately become the pity of it. There was a little instrumental section at the start, something which served as musical enticement...
...no. It was more than that. For Twilight, the opening notes were oddly -- familiar. They made the fur of her ears tingle. They sunk into her brain, went directly past memory and activated her legs on the level of instinct, telling her to come closer. There was something calling, something wonderful just ahead and that had never been said of anything offered by Barneigh's, but her legs were moving anyway. It was music which reached past the adult and told an inner filly that all she had to do was get close enough, and her body kept shuffling forward with no input from the mind, sweet phantom scents beginning to swirl in her nostrils --
the fair, we're at the fair and I can have
-- and then the lyrics hit.
♪ WHAM! It's Hearth's Warming Eve!
WHAM! There's no time left to grieve!
WHAM! For my poor pet named Steve! ♪
Four slender knees spontaneously locked. The slim body dangerously swayed above them, nearly pitching into the street.
♪ WHAM! We all grieved for Steve! ♪
Phantom scents, which had almost reached the point of identification, instantly evaporated. Music vanished. Anti-notes inverted within her hearing, then attempted to annihilate sanity.
"All right," the little mare slowly said. "Two questions. What is that, and how do we make it die?"
The lyrics responded through becoming worse.
♪ WHAM! Steve's death's on reprieve! ♪
Pinkie looked thoughtful, in part because it was a good idea to have another expression cutting through the nausea. "I know these singers!" she exclaimed. "They're a duo! The Hoof Ridges!" Paused. "They haven't really caught on with most ponies. They don't have that one song which went really big. But I know their sound. They're a Mane Metal act!"
"Mane Metal," Twilight tried. It seemed important to keep Pinkie talking. In theory, if the baker talked enough, the song would be blocked out.
"They use their own hair to make the instrument strings. For the ones which have strings."
"Oh."
"With the other instruments, they just tangle everything in their manes and toss their heads around a lot," Pinkie added. "It works really well with the cymbals. Except for the concussions."
♪WHAM! Hearth's Warming Steve was the bees knees! ♪
The theory was wrong.
"Concussions would explain a lot about that last line..." Twilight decided.
Rarity was frowning. "They sound rather like you, Twilight."
"Rarity?" the little mare checked, because it was always best to verify whom you were about to have a huge fight with.
"Their accent," their expert stated. "You do have one, dearest. West coast, about two gallops inland. And theirs matches. I would imagine they are from your part of the realm. Do you not hear it?"
"No." Twilight didn't have an accent. Everypony else had an accent. So there was no accent within the stupid lyrics. Just stupidity.
But before the stupidity, there had been a few scant bars of true music. Something -- familiar. Enticing...
The designer shrugged. "And they also sound to be roughly your age. Did you know them?"
"I didn't spend a lot of time at home," said the former boarding school resident. "Mostly summers. Those were for other things, especially if Shining was there."
We'd go out together. He'd take me around. Try to make sure I got outside at all.
And there was that one day at the fa --
♪ WHAM! Oh Steve why did you leave? ♪
"And I didn't hang out with musicians," she added as the half-memory fell apart. "Or whatever these two are supposed to be."
♪ WHAM! Can I rhyme Steve with Steve? ♪
Rainbow softly groaned.
"I hear it starting up again behind us," the pegasus reported.
"...it's new," Fluttershy decided. "...it has to be. I get asked to train some of the birds, you know... background music for a few of the warmer stores. The ones which think it's better than albums and don't mind cleaning up. And some of the concert performers like having extra backups. Nopony's ever asked me for this..."
"Wait," Rainbow darkly said. "This is more than dumb enough to catch on."
"I hope not," Twilight sincerely stated. "I don't want to ever hear this again. Once is --"
♪ !!!WHAM!!! ♪
"-- bad enough."
"Other ponies seem to like it," Pinkie noted, nodding towards multiple passerby manes and tails, all of which were in the process of rocking out.
"Other ponies are stupid," Twilight retorted. "I'm with Rainbow. Holiday songs are proof of anti-evolution. Only the least fit survive. I don't want to hear this again. I wish I could stop hearing it now."
"I'm afraid you'll have to hear it again, dear," Rarity sighed. "If it does truly catch on -- and given that I hear it starting up again from that store, I feel it's more or less inevitable -- then we'll all have to hear it again and again and again --"
The little mare had a thought.
"-- I bet you're wrong."
And Twilight smiled.
Five mares blinked at her.
"We need a little more, sugarcube,"Applejack slowly said. "Y'what now?"
"I bet you're wrong!" declared the part of Twilight which had been inadvertently trained by extended Rainbow exposure. "A real bet! With stakes! I bet I can go until Sun-raising on Hearth's Warming without ever hearing these stupid lyrics again!" More hastily, "But the bet doesn't start until tomorrow morning. Because being in the Heart right now shouldn't count. And I need to think about how I'm going to win this."
She knew she could win.
Her friends thought it over. Travelers gave the group some space. Two more stores finished closing, and their managers galloped into the basement to hide.
"Whom is this wager with?" Rarity tried.
"All of you!"
"And what," Rainbow surged towards the challenge, "do we get when we win?"
You're going to lose.
Twilight didn't know why she was so confident. Why she wanted to make the bet, and needed to win. But in the place which lay below memory, one last swirl of phantom scent wafted across time.
Make it big. They're not going to clamp their teeth on it unless I give them lots of room for a grip.
"I'll stop at Town Hall tonight," Twilight said. "Tell the mayor that we have a bet, but not what it's about." The voice of experience quickly added "And that it can't make any trouble. Just that if I lose, I'll volunteer to work the concert."
"An' how is that real stakes?" Applejack immediately pushed in. "Introducin' acts? Cleanin' up after? Servin' concessions? Ah don't see --"
Make it big...
"-- I'll work the concert," Twilight smiled, "as a background dancer."
The collective blinking went on for a while.
"Y'can't dance," the farmer plainly stated. "At'tall."
"I know!"
Slowly, Rainbow's lips began to twist into a new expression. Those who lacked experience with the pegasus might have described it as a smile.
"Yeah," the weather coordinator said. "Yeah. I could take that bet -- if I can put up with whatever's on the other side of the teeter-totter. So let's hear it, Twilight. Not that it'll ever happen, but -- what do you want from us if you win?"
When.
It's 'when' I win.
And she knew what she wanted. Knew it on a level below thought and memory.
"A sugared hay twist. A good one."
This time, Pinkie was the last to stop blinking.
"Twilight," the baker carefully said, "you've been complaining about sugared hay twists for nearly as long as I've known you." Paused. "Which starts from when we met, minus two weeks and seven hours, which is when you brought it up for the first time. How you're always trying new recipes, or asking Spike to try them because you're not a very good cook and when I think about how much chemistry you know, that's just weird. But you've always said that nothing's good enough! The sugar burns too dark, or soaks in too deep, or stays on the surface. Doesn't coat, doesn't caramelize, or does nothing but. The hay is wrong. The twist is too tight. You've found three dozen things wrong with them, and you keep trying them over and over, you buy them everywhere we find any, you've gotten them in different countries and you just say that nothing's ever up to standards! It doesn't match the --"
Which was when blue eyes went wide.
"-- first... one... you ever... oh, no..."
And Twilight grinned.
"When I win," she softly said, "we're going to plan a little road trip for next summer. All of us going together, and you'll have plenty of time to work out the schedule. We're going to my home. We'll be there for my town fair. And we can all do the rides, the booth games, attend the concert -- but we'll mostly be there for the food. To find the right stall."
She could almost hear music...
"And," the little mare slowly finished, "when we find that stall -- you're all going to buy me a sugared hay twist. From the first place I ever had one. From the only pony who ever did it right. Do we have a bet?"
♪ !!!WHAM!!! ♪
They worked out the rules during the train ride back. Twilight had (neutrally) officiated multiple bets for her friends, been a direct part of others, and understood that working out the precise rules for any given wager was very important.
She also knew she was the most intelligent pony in the group. It should have provided an advantage, but the other five minds had a way of ganging up on her.
Still... if she just thought it out...
"It has to be the lyrics," Twilight insisted as the lights of Ponyville approached. "Those opening bars are kind of nice --" far too good to have been part of that so-called song, almost familiar, and she briefly wondered where the performers had stolen them from "-- but they're also sort of generic. Something similar could lead off a lot of songs. So it doesn't count unless I hear a lyric. Something I can clearly identify as part of the song."
"You jus' want a warnin' shot," Applejack accurately accused. "Somethin' which lets y'clear the area."
That too. "Applejack --" Twilight prepared to argue.
"-- no, Ah'll let y'have that," the farmer grumbled. "But you're probably gonna wind up runnin' from false positives."
"And none of you can play the album around me," the little mare pushed on. "It can't be part of the Boutique's background music, Rarity --"
The designer shuddered. "Can not and will not."
"-- and you can't sing it yourselves, or tell anypony to sing it where I can hear."
"Doesn't stop somepony from deciding to carry a tune on their own," Rainbow smugly noted. "I don't even have to nose over a bucket. Especially this time of year, when there's carolers all over town."
"That's the chance I take."
"Have you seen how some of them work?" the pegasus smirked. "They're hauling gramophones in carts. They say it's their background track. If you wind up on the wrong street, it's gonna be surround sound."
I should try to find out what the album looks like. If I can spot it in a stack --
"...no telling anypony to sing it around you," Fluttershy thoughtfully said.
"Or paying them, or bribing, or anything else."
"...all right. But..." The one visible eye focused on Twilight. "...no hiding, Twilight. You can't just stay in the tree for the whole moon. You go around town normally. If you would have picked up something from a store, then you're the one who has to go in. You can't have Spike do everything for you."
"He always gallops down some of the errands --"
"-- and that's how many he'll do," Pinkie agreed. "Some. Your normal routine, Twilight. All of it."
...Sundammit. "Fine..."
"We're trustin' you t' call it on yourself," Applejack pointed out. "Can't exactly have somepony stay with you every hour, every day. Y'gotta be honest with us, Twi. Y'lose, an' you let us know first thing." Hard green eyes focused on narrow features. "Swear."
She swore.
And as the train wheels chugged on, she planned.
The first thing Twilight did when she got home (which was an hour later than she'd expected, as the mayor had oddly needed a lot of reassuring regarding the undefined wager) was to tell Spike all of the details. This got him firmly on her side (while preventing the others from recruiting him), because he absolutely wanted to go home for a week and the lead time from the win might be enough to let them arrange something with Shining.
Everypony. Everypony together at last, on her own ground.
She had to win.
(She was going to win.)
The first task was to secure a base of operations.
She could control the library. The tree had its own gramophone, along with a selection of albums which could be borrowed and, ideally, returned: the gramophone was theoretically present to let patrons Try Before They Not-Buy. So all she needed to do was kick in a No Outside Albums rule and, just in case somepony managed to smuggle anything past her, institute a mandatory headphones policy. Add a No Singing rule and the tree was covered. Frankly, given the town's collective proclivities, No Singing had been overdue.
Blocking off sound from the outside was harder.
Twilight asked Spike to stay in the bedroom, left the tree, backed off three body lengths from the door, and then sang at the top of her lungs. Each time he heard her was good for another three body lengths, along with an increasing number of spectators who were both wondering what was going on and, for the experienced, hoping not to become a part of it.
She got lucky. The words became unidentifiable before she reached the book fort -- which was still on library property. All she needed to do after that was establish a No Caroling zone.
Twelve signs was more than enough to ring the tree. Then Twilight thought about the average pony's reading comprehension skills and doubled the font size to create a No Caroling zone. A little further consideration added On Penalty Of and left it at that. The average pony's reading comprehension might be below what she deemed acceptable, but the typical imagination would see the partial line and come up with something.
Of course, there were those in Ponyville who were more powerful singers than she. But just about all caroling took place after ponies got out of Solar shift work and stopped before the majority of residents went to bed. When compared to the tree's late autumn hours, there wasn't very much temporal risk. And if she really wanted to, she could just trust that anything important would be loud enough to wake up Spike while she personally slept with co --
-- why did it just have to be sleeping?
There were times when the most obvious, mundane solutions were the best.
Twilight proudly trotted through a near-silent autumn-swathed town. Her bangs fell across her forehead and around her horn, part of her mane had been swept behind the ears, and long thin strands of white fabric hung down to her cheeks.
She presumed that most of the position-frozen spectators were staring at the strands. Twilight didn't exactly change her look very often.
The little mare spotted a familiar face. Diverted her course towards the stallion, going around the edge of the town's central fountain to do so. There was also a moment when she was effectively trying to hide behind one of Ponyville's public notice boards, which didn't do much when its wooden legs were longer than hers.
She peered up at the posted papers. The concert one-sheets were beginning to circulate, and Lyra was clearly on board. It was just as clearly a work in progress, because the headliner was listed as And Featuring A Surprise!. Twilight was almost certain that the average band name wasn't that weird.
Still, the notice board gave her a little concealment and given the subject she was about to raise, sneaking up on the target was just about mandatory.
And then she was in front of him.
"Hello, Mr. Turner," Twilight politely said. "Can we talk about your late fees?"
The Trottingham native tilted his head slightly to the right.
"Hwy dew yew haf cotton min pour ears?"
Time Turner watched the librarian's features twist with confusion. It was a very familiar sight for most Ponyville residents. The accompanying urge to take shelter mostly went away after a year or three.
"Could you say that again?" the little mare requested. "More slowly?"
He did.
"And exaggerate your lip movements."
This was attempted.
"Reading lips isn't as easy as I thought it would be," the librarian decided. "You look like you've got a hay twist stuck against your gums and I'm still not sure what you're saying." She sighed. "I don't think your accent is helping." Muttering a little, "Why does everypony else have an accent...?"
Time Turner, in the presence of a Bearer who was acting somewhat oddly, took the course followed by most of the town. He decided to go along with it for as long as possible, because that was usually the best way to spot when it was all about to go horribly wrong.
"Are you trying to find out what it's like to be hard of hearing?" he gently inquired. "As part of a lesson?"
"...repeat that?"
He did. Four times.
"Sure!" the little mare exhaled. "We can go with that! Empathy through partial sensory deprivation! I'm sure that's good for a scroll! Sometime! So about your late fees --"
The earth pony smiled.
His foreknees bent. The tail swept left, then right, and finally arched over his back. Brown ears dipped, swayed, and tilted.
Purple eyes widened. "Oh! You know how to sign!" With open delight, "Hardly anypony does! Because it's so complicated."
Time Turner politely nodded. His tail danced. Ears invented the waltz, then decided that wasn't good enough and graduated to full ballet.
"The dactyly species have their own versions," the librarian noted. "Those are supposed to be easier to learn. Because fingers can bend in more ways. But all we've got is leg, tail, and ear positions. And it all has to add up."
Another nod. He began to signal out another sentence --
"-- I can spot signing," the little mare sadly said. "But I don't understand it."
The stallion arched an eyebrow. Waiting.
"I've never had a reason to learn," she went on as a small right forehoof awkwardly scraped at the road. "I've never really known anypony with hearing problems, or who was mute. And... it's complicated." With a little sigh, "I know you're just trying to help. Giving me the full experience. But I don't understand what you're saying."
He offered her a wan little smile. Counted his exits, made sure he had at least three clear shots at the horizon, and considered abandoning all the weighty bits in his saddlebags along the way. Just in case he needed extra speed. Plus it would probably pay for the late fees.
"Can you teach me a basic sentence?" the mare hopefully asked. "Just so I can get the feel of it?"
Time Turner politely nodded.
"Okay!" the librarian gushed. "It should be something I'm going to need a lot. Especially for the next moon. Let me think... oh! 'I'm sorry, but I have cotton in my ears.' Can you teach me that? Oh, good! Okay, do it slowly and I'll mimic you. Tail... I might have to start doing some tail exercises... so that's 'I'? Good! But how do you sign 'ears'? Especially when ears have to do so much of the work -- oh! You just slam them down against the skull as hard as you can! Okay! I can do that! Here we go! 'I'm sorry, but I have cotton in my --'"
Spike carefully pushed the tweezers a little deeper into his sibling's ear canal. White wadding swallowed the tips, and he adjusted his position on the little stool.
"You really slammed it down there," the dragon said.
No response.
"Maybe you need tail exercises," he conceded. "But you just might have the strongest ears in town." Thoughtfully, "Maybe it's because you finally started listening to what other ponies said. And overdid it. I think you've got cotton jammed all the way to the tympanic membrane."
She didn't say anything. She just kept staring at the bathroom mirror. Watching him work without turning her head.
"I looked it up," Spike added. "To make sure I had the right medical term for 'eardrum'. I thought it would be more fun to say."
Dead silence. Reptilian lips were harder to read than equine, and he hadn't given her anything she could respond to.
"Especially when you can't correct my pronunciation."
He extracted more pieces of cotton from her left ear, working carefully and delicately. It was hard for unicorn magic to move something which the caster couldn't directly see, and it was best for everypony that Twilight didn't try to do anything with the inside of her own ears.
"Can you hear me yet?"
Nothing. He took out two more pieces.
"Now?"
Silence. Another three were removed.
"Twilight? Can you hear --"
The ear flicked against his scales.
"-- I heard you."
He exhaled with relief. "Thank Sun."
"No. Thank you, Spike. Just finish that side, and then you can start on the --"
"-- Twilight?"
"What?"
"You can really hear me?"
"Yes."
"Good. You know I love you, and I really want you to win this bet?"
"Yes."
"Good. You're still an idiot."
"...oh, shut up."
The temporary acquisition of a handicap had, in fact, been a very empathic experience. Twilight retreated into the basement to compose a scroll about that, because it struck her as a valuable lesson. Having some temporary extra security in the basement was just a side bonus.
Cotton wadding: not the answer.
Which, when considered within the privacy granted by bubbling lab equipment, told Twilight that she'd made a rather silly mistake.
She'd started with the mundane solution.
Having her tympanic membranes blocked by cotton produced hearing loss. Covering them with tiny shield domes didn't -- and that was a lesson in itself. Active coronas didn't block sound. A true shield would distort it somewhat, but just about any vibration which hit the outer surface wound up being reproduced from the inner. There were some fascinating implications in that, and Twilight had to postpone investigating all of them until after the bet had been won.
The important thing was that a shield didn't deafen whoever was within it. This had probably been a decision made by the original caster, it had echoed down to all those who'd performed the working ever since, and it suggested that a shield's outer surface had some way of detecting normal sonic vibrations.
She couldn't seem to prevent those tones from being passed to the inner surface.
She didn't have to.
"Twilight?"
The notes of Rarity's concern came through perfectly, and Twilight happily walked towards her friend, experiencing no trouble whatsoever in crossing the street.
...well, there were no problems in finding the space to cross. Ever since she'd implemented The Solution, ponies had been giving her a fairly wide berth. The act of walking, however, was requiring a progressive amount of effort.
Which didn't matter. It was working.
Worried blue eyes watched her move. The forward edge of Rarity's snout turned pinkish from radiated light, and then Twilight reached her friend.
"Hi, Rarity!" It wasn't quite gushing. Gushing took a surprising amount of strength. "Here I am, going about my normal day! And on my pre-holiday schedule, this is the one where I go out shopping! Picking up everypony's gifts! Normally!"
"Twilight," the designer cautiously began, "may I ask why you are --"
"You can trot along with me if you want," Twilight added. "For a while. But we'll have to split up at some point, because I did want to pick up your things today and you don't want to spoil your own surprise, do you? But that won't be for at least an hour. You're last -- nothing personal! I drew up a map of the town. For the most efficient shopping route. And your stuff was just at the end of the route. I already finished with Applejack."
She wriggled, just enough to visibly shift those items within her surprisingly-heavy saddlebags.
"Twilight?" Rarity started over.
"Yes?"
Several town residents went around them. The minimum distance seemed to be five body lengths. Then it became six.
Rather carefully, "Why are you glowing?"
Twilight beamed. Corona light bounced from her teeth.
"Because that's the answer!"
They were trotting through town together, with Rarity as the only mare who was willing to get that close. Or rather, Rarity had tried to trot. A certain forfeiture of speed was required to maintain at Twilight's left side.
"So I needed a sample," the little mare was happily explaining with horn, face, and body all aglow. "Which clearly meant getting the album itself! So I could play the opening bars -- just the opening bars -- under controlled conditions."
"Controlled conditions."
A certain, ongoing forfeiture.
"I never reached the actual lyrics, I promise!"
"I believe you," Rarity carefully tried, "but..."
"The cover art was stupid."
"Really?"
"It's just a bunch of swirling colors. It didn't exactly make me interested in hearing the whole thing. It doesn't even show what the singers look like. And for the one I obviously couldn't play -- well, the opening really doesn't match the rest of the song, does it?" Twilight mused. "It's like they took it from something else. And it's so familiar -- what's my left forehoof in?"
"Twilight?"
"I feel like I'm stuck."
Rarity looked down.
"It's a natural hollow between cobblestones. One of thousands in town."
"Oh. Huh." The little body struggled. "This one must have something wrong with it."
"And you say that because...?"
"I shouldn't be having this much trouble lifting my leg out of it -- oh, there we go! Anyway, I was going to the bookstore next." She turned in that direction, and pinkish light reflected off multiple store window. "That's for Rainbow. Did you ever think I'd be shopping for Rainbow's gifts in a bookstore?"
"Regarding the sample," Rarity carefully prompted.
"Oh, right!" The little mare giggled. "I don't know why I'm so distracted today. And a little unfocused. And hungry. And a little unfocused. And I think I'm repeating myself -- was that a bird flying by? Did you see the bird? I saw the bird. What kind of bird do you think it --"
"Spell. Research," declared a mare who both understood how to reach Twilight's central button and was currently trying to make a one-point landing on it with four desperate hooves.
"Right!" Twilight agreed, and the energy placed into the exclamation promptly cut her speed in half. Again. "A sample of the song! So I went to the album shop, and then I tried again at Barnyard Bargains. But I had to leave before I found it. Twice."
"...really. Then however did you manage to acquire a copy? Did Spike --"
"You know what stores do during the Hearth's Warming shopping season?"
"'Business' would be the hoped-for answer..."
"They play carols," Twilight said. "A lot of carols. So I had to evacuate before the 'wham!' got me." She paused to gather strength and when that didn't work, she simply used the time for admiring the steadiness of her body's glow. "Which happened a few times. You know, I think that song is catching on. When it really shouldn't. When it really shouldn't. Did I just -- oh, that's just emphasis! Most ponies really don't have much in the way of taste, do they?"
Rarity, who normally had a selection of five full dissertations on the subject ready to go at all times, said nothing.
"I wound up getting a copy from the Canterlot Archives," the little mare added. "Inter-library loan. Which was really for the best, because buying the album meant I would have been giving the Hoof Ridges money. And I thought... if a shield spell can know when an impact is from sonics, normal vibrations which it has to replicate or let pass through to keep the caster from being deaf to everything outside the shield... then maybe..."
The bookstore was slowly, slowly coming into sight. It was now possible to make out the speaker cones over the door.
"...I could get it to --"
Cones which suddenly projected some very familiar notes --
The glow around Twilight's body abruptly surged in intensity. The world began to blur.
"Rarity! Touch me!"
"Twilight? What's happening? Why are you --"
"-- just touch --"
But there was only a second in which to act, and Rarity hadn't moved.
Twilight desperately tried to jab a foreleg to the side. Make contact. But she was having trouble raising it, there was probably something wrong with the street again, and that meant it was so much easier to just slump over and let Rarity's larger form take her weight --
-- pick a destination --
--- her horn flashed. The world flashed.
And then they were eight blocks away, in front of Mr. Flankington's restaurant. As empty arrival spaces went, Twilight had judged that one to be fairly safe. Most ponies didn't like to get within scent range, and that wasn't the sense Twilight had been worried about.
"There!" Twilight exhaled on the third try. "It's easier to teleport somepony with me when we're touching, you know that. So when I say touch --"
"-- Twilight?"
The little mare thought about that, and did so while continuing to lean her glowing form against white fur. It was just easier that way.
"Yes," said a few lingering calories. "I'm Twilight. Why?"
"What just happened?"
"Isn't it obvious? I had to explain it before, but now that it's actually happened, anypony with a reasonable graduate-level education in advanced magical theory should be able to --"
"-- pretend I don't have that," the designer carefully said.
Twilight reluctantly dumbed it down.
"I set up a spell to detect the opening notes of the song," explained a still-conscious lecturing instinct as it cannibalized energy from all available sources. Education was just that important. "And twinned it to a teleport reaction. So when the working picks up on the carol, it gets me out of the area. Automatically."
Rarity's slow breathing seemed to indicate a certain degree of thought.
"Of course," Twilight added, "there's been a couple of times when it took me out of one danger zone and right into another. Because I'm trying to shop and that so-called music is just playing everywhere! So there were some chain teleports. I lost count of how many. Ponies don't have taste. Did you ever think about ponies not having taste?"
Silence.
"What do ponies taste like?" Twilight asked. "Have you ever licked one?"
This breath was deeper.
"The glow is the detection spell?"
"Yes."
"Which surrounds your entire body. Instead of simply being focused on your ears."
"Sound can come from any direction," Twilight patiently explained. "And I'm not trying to teleport my ears away without me. Which wouldn't work. You can't teleport part of an object. If I could, I would have left my ears at home and been safe. Except that would probably be too much like cotton."
Most of the planet abruptly tilted to the right. Rarity didn't seem to notice.
"Spells burn thaums," the designer said.
With some exasperation, "Yes. That's magic kindergarten stuff, Rarity --"
"-- thaums being the power behind a spell. And thaums are generated through the conversion of calories --"
"-- welcome to first-year," the librarian sarcastically declared. "By the way, since when did gravity in Ponyville become a variable? Because I'm completely sure the ground shouldn't be pulling this hard."
"-- how long have you had this spell running?"
"Hours." Paused. "I had to keep backtracking on the shopping route. To the start, obviously. As that was the ideal place to begin and I hadn't finished with Applejack's things yet."
"A constantly-operating working," Rarity softly considered. "Which, as something experimental, would generally be rather thaum-inefficient, and has already triggered multiple high-energy teleports. Twilight, when was the last time you ate?"
"...sometime?"
"Have you eaten anything since you left the tree?"
And now it wasn't just gravity. It was the atmosphere. Atmospheric pressure was about a fifth-bale across the body at sea level. Twilight knew that, and also knew nopony was supposed to actively feel that weight. The air was being very rude.
"No!"
"...no."
"Do you have any idea how many carols are playing around restaurants? I couldn't get close enough! We're just lucky Mr. Flankington isn't open yet and are you having any tunnel vision or is that just me?"
"Twilight --"
The glow winked out.
For all intents and purposes, fainting generally had the last word. Twilight, already plummeting into the comfort of a personal darkness, fully recognized that. It was just that when she was talking to Rarity, the faint wasn't supposed to be her own.
The sound produced by Twilight's slim body hitting the street had a minor resemblance to !WHAM! Her last conscious thought decided it didn't count.
So under the one hoof, the magical solution hadn't been all that practical. But under one of the other hooves, a day spent on mandatory bed rest had both kept her away from all carols and brought her that much closer to winning the bet, so Twilight was going to count the whole experience as a positive.
But she had to get back into her normal routine, because that was also part of the wager. And it was for a trip home and a real sugared hay twist. She could finally show her friends what the ideal was supposed to be like, followed by watching their faces as the true taste finally reached sweetness-blessed tongues. That was worth fighting for.
It was just a lot harder than she'd anticipated.
They were getting closer to the holiday. Just about every store was on carols full-time. Miniherds of singers wandered the town's streets and because ponies hadn't developed any musical standards while she'd been in bed, some of them were prepared to WHAM! Every hoofstep beyond the tree's borders was a risk. And without the spell running, she had to stay alert at all times. Be fully responsible for her own personal safety, when having the integrity of her ears guarded by magic would have been so much easier.
It wasn't fair. But then, very little was.
The tree was safe. Ponies weren't singing in the tree. They did talk about the holiday, and that was fine as long as they kept their volume down. But that didn't happen much. Excitement boosted decibels, and the locals were becoming very excited about the upcoming concert. The mystery of it seemed to have most of the town enthralled. Because there was a surprise coming up, and who didn't love one of those on a holiday?
Twilight. Twilight didn't. Especially when she kept getting surprised by those opening bars of music.
Applejack had been right: it did give her a warning shot. Precious seconds in which to escape. But that wasn't always possible on hoof. She'd been teleporting more than ever. Finishing her shopping without getting caught had taken multiple frequently-interrupted days and with the carolers now on the loose, any attempt to go outside --
-- no, she wasn't stressed! Why did everypony keep asking about that? Couldn't they just stick to the normal topics? To reuse the previous example, a lot of ponies had been talking about the holiday and concert in the library. But those who reached the desk usually changed the subject to 'Are you getting enough sleep?' Also, everypony in town had a cousin who knew a lot about getting stress creases out of fur. Twilight had been trying to draw up a family tree which would let it all be the same cousin, and was starting to think the roots weren't tangled enough.
She kept venturing outside the tree, because there were things to do. Friends to see, even if she was still trying to figure out how Rainbow and Pinkie could possibly have a cousin in common. And sometimes her friends came visiting. They usually found Twilight in the Periodicals section, because she'd taken to reading a lot of newspapers and, when the information available to the public hadn't delivered the desired results, followed that up by writing the palace directly to inquire about the international situation. It was crucial to learn whether there was anything outside the borders which the Bearers could personally resolve, because the realm clearly had a responsibility to help its allies. Also, being sent on missions was obviously a perfectly normal part of life and since Hearth's Warming was only celebrated in Equestria...
Twilight had sent off six inquiry scrolls. Luna had stopped responding after the fourth.
The bet wasn't stressful. It really wasn't and seriously, how intermarried was this town? But it did require a certain amount of near-constant attention. And leaving the tree put her in the danger zone, at constant risk of losing --
-- if she stayed in town.
The little mare had learned many lessons from her friends. One of the more subtle had placed her in the woods. Nowhere near the Everfree, of course: she was about halfway between Acres and cottage. Trotting across a portion of undeveloped land on a misty late autumn morning, because the library didn't need to be open for another hour and this part of the outside world was quiet, crisp, cold and, just as much to the point, a place where nopony lived.
She could breathe here, and proceeded to do exactly that. Trotted across chill soil as pure air warmed itself in her lungs, doing nothing more than looking at evergreens while she thought about life. And then thinking about life started to feel a little too complicated, so she switched to -- not thinking at all. Something which was still so hard for her, but... it had been a lesson from a friend. To let the world take over, allow it to take her away. Become a creature of the senses and in doing so, get out of her own head.
It wasn't easy. But it happened. She moved through mist and chill, allowing her eyes to do nothing more than guide the way. Her ears began to slow in their rotation (and why had some many ponies been asking if that was the result of an illness? Plus when Rarity began to ask somepony about eye twitches -- well, there was clearly a double standard at work there), threatened to do nothing more than tilt towards sounds.
Birds flew overhead. She could hear squirrels moving through the trees: securing food stores in anticipation of winter. There was a single moment when she glimpsed the back of a vole, and then it darted all the way into the burrow. And the world was serene and soft and almost still.
She was safe.
She smiled.
And blessed song drifted down to her.
Twilight looked up, saw a tiny light brown feathered body: one dusted with white speckles. A winter wren: friend and cottage had taught her that much. A natural singer, singing for her alone, tail held high as notes sounded from the tree branch it had designated as its concert hall.
She watched it, still smiling. And -- there was another one! Carefully dropping from the sky, alighting on the same branch. Matching the notes. Singing together, in perfect harmony. It was all about harmony, wasn't it? Perhaps the birds were friends. And that was another friend there, a fourth friend was swooping in from the west, and --
-- the notes were starting to sound a little -- familiar.
There were at least nine winter wrens now. Harmonizing. And Twilight suddenly remembered another lesson of the cottage, something she hadn't even been aware she knew: that winter wrens gathered in pairs and small family groups, but didn't really flock. And they stayed with their own kind, never really taking part in the avian riots which could break out when several species spotted the same source of seed. They certainly wouldn't hang around with the huge black raven who had just perched on the branch, landing at the center of over a dozen singing wrens who were all sounding out the same tune, and the raven looked down at Twilight, black beady eyes focused on her features and she remembered one last thing.
Winter wrens sang.
Ravens could imitate pony speech.
The largest beak opened.
"!WH -- !"
"...you said we couldn't tell anypony to sing it where you could hear," Fluttershy softly told her. "Birds aren't ponies. And I thought you'd try to get away from town at some point, especially after I saw you two days ago. So I gave them some training. It took a little time away from teaching them to back up a few of the concert acts -- do you know who the lead is yet? I don't. But I thought it was worth it."
"FLUTTERSHY --"
"-- and this is my examination room," the pegasus quietly continued. "And all I'm doing right now is giving this little poodle a checkup, but she's very nervous because she knows it's an examination room and she can smell everyone who's been scared before her. So I'm asking you to keep your volume down."
Twilight glared at her from across the examination table. It was a general principles sort of thing. Glaring at Fluttershy didn't do much. Trying to make it work across a black curly back and nervously-thumping tail wasn't helping.
"I barely got out of there in time!" Most of the decibels were implied.
"...I believe you." A little sadly, "So the bet is still going. I just wanted to try..."
"To sabotage me? To make sure I'd lose --"
"-- to end it," Fluttershy softly said. "Just... to end it."
"Why would you --"
The coral mane vibrated across the length of the word-stifling sigh. The poodle used the opportunity to check its own potential exits.
"-- because I know what a stressed-out pony looks like," her friend stated. "The mirror helps. Or I could just look at you. I thought if I had the birds create the loss, then you could just -- stop. Not worry about a silly bet any more, and just enjoy the holiday." A little more insistently, "The bet doesn't even matter. Twilight, we can all just --"
"-- so I have to watch out for birds now?"
"...just birds," completely failed to reassure her. "But I don't think I'll try again. I don't want you getting scared every time you see a bird. They might get hurt. Still..." Thoughtfully, "...if we were on the shore, I could ask seals. Did you know seals can --"
"-- that isn't fair!"
The poodle tried another tail thump.
"...I'm worried about you," Fluttershy said. "Worried enough to try that. And when it comes to fair, Twilight... it wasn't against the rules. It's too late to change any rules."
"You're right," the little mare pushed through her teeth. "But maybe there's still time to change something else."
"...what?"
It was funny, really: the way you could spend so much time in a given place and still not recognize fundamental flaws until circumstances made them blatantly apparent. For example, Twilight had spent many hours in the mayor's office. She'd never tried to track the full amount, but felt that the grand total probably came in at Too Much. And there were times when she suspected the mayor felt the same way.
It was inevitable, really. Just for starters, the local government hierarchy had placed the mayor as Twilight's immediate superior. Twilight had charge of the tree, but Town Hall funded the library. This had led to multiple conflicts, along with an oft-repeated series of plays. 'Budget: I don't have enough of it' was a seasonal production, while 'Why are remaindered sales necessary?' needed to work on a few lines before going on the road. By contrast, 'I swear that'll never happen again' was put on just about every week, with the exact plot required to reach that scene as a constant variable.
And then you got into Bearer activities. The mayor often had to be briefed about the palace-sanctioned ones, and debriefed after. However, 'general randomized chaos created by a sextet of mares who may somehow be Discord's collective successors' also fell under Bearer activities and since pretty much none of that was Princess-sanctioned, the mayor usually wanted to have a word. Several words, some of which were blistering. Most of the remainder would order said mares onto cleanup duty.
Twilight spent a lot of time in that wooden, well-paneled, slightly-too-dark office.
"...and this shows the obvious correlation between exposure to repetitive sounds and what had previously been suspected as completely spontaneous outbursts of holiday rage." Proudly, "I had to put in a lot of work on that one."
Blue eyes narrowed. Stared through small lenses, focused entirely on Twilight's face.
Her face. Not the chart which Twilight had needed so much time to draw up. Or any of the other charts. Or diagrams. Plus there was the projector. The older mare had spent the entire presentation in completely disregarding the projector. Although to be fair, the first ten charts were currently blocking that view.
Twilight had been in that office dozens of times and up until four days before Hearth's Warming Eve, had somehow completely overlooked that it just didn't have the space required for a truly effective multimedia presentation.
She decided to mention it.
"Have you ever thought about remodeling your office?" Twilight politely asked. "So it could take a few more charts. Twenty-five really shouldn't be overwhelming it. And I'm sure there's money in the budget. Somewhere." Hastily, "As long as it isn't pulled away from the library --"
"-- Miss Sparkle," the older mare carefully broke in. "I would advise you to reach your conclusion."
The librarian took a longing glance at the non-deployed three-dimensional multi-factor axis graph. It was still folded. She was reasonably confident of being able to unfold it, especially since she knew that one window could be opened.
"Now," the mayor added.
Twilight took a breath.
"The conclusion of my research," she said, "is that a pony who is exposed to an excess of holiday music has a one in five thousand chance to go mad."
Silence.
"Which is clearly enough to justify signing an emergency, fully-legal mayoral decree banning all such music from being played or sung in Ponyville," Twilight added. "I've drawn up a draft for you. And that means you could just sign it. Of course, you've got a lot more experience with laws than I do, so I was hoping you'd look it over first. Check for loopholes. I already closed the one about birds --"
"-- one in five thousand."
"The math proves it," said the little mare, who had seen the town's budgets repeatedly fail to properly accommodate the library's needs and thus had decided that the mayor couldn't be very good at math.
"You wish for me to ban all the performance, reproduction, and public rendition of all Hearth's Warming carols --"
"-- including from carolers --" Twilight helpfully noted.
"-- along with what would have to be shutting down the town's concert, refunding all ticket prices, and somehow figuring out how to deal with the performers who are already on their way here -- including the opening lead, whom we are so very lucky simply to have --"
"-- but they could spend the holiday with their families if we told them right now! -- oh, right. We'd have to tell them. Right now. So let's say if Spike sent them some scrolls --"
"-- over what you are describing as a one in five thousand chance."
"There's more than five thousand ponies in town," Twilight pointed out. "That just about makes it a guarantee."
The mayor's eyes narrowed a little more.
"If there was a food item which produced a bad reaction in one out of five thousand ponies," the librarian tried, "the manufacturer would have to reformulate. So if you look at music as food for the ears --"
"No," said Mayor Marigold Mare.
A little desperately, "I have more charts --"
"No."
Twilight took another breath.
"As a pure hypothetical," she began as the edges of her left eye began to twitch, "let's say that one pony out of five thousand happened to be me --"
"GET OUT."
And then it was Hearth's Warming Eve.
And her friends were all around her. Surrounding the little mare with the warmth of their bodies, along with the gentle love of their presence.
The jacket also helped a bit, especially when she was outdoors at night.
Twilight sighed with contentment. And all around the market square, thousand of ponies shuffled their hooves, snuggled close to keep warm, and looked towards the empty, well-lit stage. Trying to stare through the thick curtain which hid nearly all of it, as they waited for the holiday concert to begin.
"Thank you for getting me the ticket," the little mare told Applejack.
"Y'missed last year," the farmer pointed out. "Thought it would be more fun if'fin we all did it together for once. An' with everythin' that's been goin' on... Ah kinda figured you'd forget."
"I did," Twilight readily admitted. "I've had so much else on my mind." With just a little glare at Fluttershy -- it could be a little one, because it was almost over -- she added "And it's not like I could try to recenter in the woods..."
"...I didn't try again," Fluttershy softly said, and turned her attention back towards the stage. "Twilight... are you really okay for being here?"
"I think she must be," Rarity smiled. "I haven't seen her so relaxed in nearly a moon."
"I looked at the set list," Twilight told them. "For the acts which wanted them printed. There's some things I'd rather not have to hear, but -- it's not that song. And if anypony tries to perform it... I'll have some warning. I'll come back right after."
Just a few more hours. A few more...
A few hours. A few moons. And then...
...they would all be so happy...
A Hearth's Warming gift, given in summer.
"I'll be fine," the little mare confidently stated. Just fine. But -- Fluttershy, are you okay? There's a lot of ponies around --"
"-- you're all with me," came in tones of gentle reassurance. "It makes the crowd a little less scary. But I can only stay for the first act. Because by the third... well, that's when I need to be near the stage. With my birds, helping them do their part."
"I'll help clear a path for you," Pinkie warmly promised. "When it's time."
"If she goes on the ground!" Rainbow snorted. "I'll have to do something if it's an air path." The grounded pegasus glared up. "This is why I needed to buy a ticket. Too many pegasi in the air for this thing. I don't mind maintaining a hover, but you can't see from the back. Not with all of the flapping."
"Spike," Twilight worriedly checked, "are you warm enough --"
"-- I'm fine," her little brother assured her -- then yawned. "Just don't let me sleep through Hearth's Warming Eve Lipizzaner."
"I am," Rarity solemnly said, "not certain that's possible, Spike. Still -- that's the seventh act, yes?"
"Yeah!"
"Good. And have you happened to hear any fresh rumors regarding the first -- oh! I can see the mayor approaching the stage's side ramp! I believe this mystery is about to be solved...!"
The politician proudly trotted up to the center of the stage's forward edge, basking in the cheers. Some of them might have even been partially hers.
"Good evening, Ponyville!"
The stomping began.
"And a very good holiday to us all!" the mayor added. "For those who have been here before, and those who have only recently joined us. New to our town, and our traditions. I hope to see you settle into both."
More ponies cheered and Twilight, who felt as if her own welcome was ongoing, added her voice and half-effective little stomps to the herd.
"Of course," the mayor said, "there are a few ponies who are truly here for the first time. And that would include our opening act!" With open pride, "I can hardly take all of the credit for their presence here. My daughter asked me to reach out via our postal system, and they readily agreed to add our town to their tour of concert venues, fairs, and lollapaloozas. As with all of their priors, it was a commitment they vowed to keep." Teasingly, "Without demanding an increase in pay! Because I had the rare good fortune to contact them in the final days before they became somewhat more famous, and so I can introduce them to you now!"
"Somepony who jus' hit it big?" Applejack whispered.
"So they still fit in the budget!" Pinkie enthused. "We are lucky!"
"Or perhaps I've said enough," the mayor laughed as the stomping and calls for music became all the louder. "And I should just let the rising curtain say the rest for me. Fillies and gentlecolts --"
The earth pony turned, galloped off the stage as the curtain rose, all of the stage lights went up, and bright lumens glinted upon beautiful background dancers and a still-vacant bird perching area and a pair of frost-tipped, overlong, oddly-weighted stallion manes --
-- Twilight squinted. Tried to focus, as the stomps reached their maximum. Stared through the lights, trying to see what was making the multihued hair hang so oddly.
"HELLO, PONYVILLE!" screamed the slightly taller stallion.
"YOU DON'T WANT TO WAIT ANY LONGER, RIGHT?" the smaller performer decided. "NEITHER DO WE!"
Which, perhaps, was why they didn't even bother to warm up. The opening bars would have just taken too long.
They both tossed their heads. The dangling cymbals clashed.
♪ !!!WHAM!!! ♪
Five mares spontaneously pulled back. The dragon risked expending a single second on a faceclaw. And then six sets of eyes desperately sought a small, suddenly-absent body --
-- Rainbow, who had the best eyesight and the eternal option for an aerial view, was the first to spot Twilight. Who was pushing her way through the narrowest of spaces, with head down and eyes half-closed. Heading off to her doom.
And also to dance. In public.
It was the same thing, really.
"Thank you for coming with me," Twilight said for the sixth time, as the combined light of summer Sun and friendship mutually warmed her fur.
"Ain't nothin'," Applejack beamed as she pushed forward: the largest mare in the group had taken the lead, all the better to make a path through the masses teeming about the crowded fair. "Ah don't mind seein' somepony else's hometown. Y'all have been putterin' around mine long enough. Time t' return the favor, right?"
"Our hometown," Rarity primly corrected.
"But I lost..." Twilight repeated. This was also for the sixth time, if you were counting from when they'd left her parents' house.
"So why couldn't we decide to go on our own?" Pinkie warmly asked. "We don't have to do things just because somepony wins a bet!"
"...and I'd like to try a sugared hay twist," Fluttershy softly said, doing so from somewhat above the group. It was rare for her to attempt a semi-mobile hover, but there weren't very many pegasi living in the area. There was more room in the air. "...a proper one."
"We could make it a contest," Rainbow grinned. "You try one. Then Applejack tries ten. And we'll see if I can finish trying them before she does --"
"-- no bets," Applejack called back. "Not on this trip. Y'promised." The orange mare briefly reared up, going vertical just long enough to peer over the crowd. "An' Ah think Ah jus' saw the food stalls up ahead."
"Fine," the weather coordinator grumped. "Just because you know you'll lose... Spike, I can feel you shuffling around."
"You keep changing the angle on your spine," the little dragon complained. "I'm trying not to grab your mane."
"If you have to? Do it. Stay on my back. There's too many ponies. I don't want you getting stepped on."
And then there was one more voice. The tones she knew best of all.
"He can ride with me for a while," Shining told them. "I'm used to it." A strong neck arched forward, and the white chin gently rubbed against a purple horn. "Same way I'm used to finding Twilight in a crowd. It takes years of experience to look that far down..."
"Oh, shut up," Twilight failed to grumble.
Together. We're all together.
When viewed in that context, the dancing had been worth it.
Her big brother chuckled. Pulled back a little, then reared up.
"Those are the food stalls," somehow came across as a military scouting report. "Twilight, can you smell them?"
Twilight took a long, slow breath. Scents danced within her snout and this time, they were real.
"It's..." Another luxurious inhale, and she dared to let herself believe. "Applejack, can I put my forehooves on your back? Boost myself up? I need to see."
"If y'can reach that high," the farmer teased. "Go ahead."
She did. Looked out across hundreds of merrily-chatting ponies (who did so with no accent at all), tried to focus --
"It's the same stall," whispered tones of purest wonder. "The same pony running it. The same little bells on the top. I'm this close..."
A sugared hay twist. A good one. After all these years...
They're all going to love it.
I know that.
"We can get closer," Applejack promised her. "All the way."
Twilight dropped back down. The group resumed their travel.
"As many as y'want, Twi," Applejack told her. "An' if you don't ask for the exact recipe, Ah will. Maybe he'll tell."
"And once you're happy," Pinkie smiled, "we can do the rest of the fair!" Happily, "I was told there would be rides. And games!"
"And a concert," Rarity added.
The words had a sudden -- tension.
"I know about the concert," Twilight tightly said.
"Dear --"
"-- they booked it moons in advance," the librarian said in a too-calm voice. "They're keeping their commitments. Even when they're more famous now. That's -- nice."
"But they're here," the designer pointed out. "You're okay with --"
"-- I don't have to be there when they play."
"True..."
"I could if I wanted to," Twilight added.
"...that might not be the best idea," Fluttershy half-whispered. "Not after --"
"-- they never got the restraining order in place."
Nopony said anything.
"I would have been fine if they hadn't come out for the third encore."
Anything at all.
"One in five thousand ponies, upon being exposed to an excess of holiday music, goes mad," declared the little mare. "I proved that. The judge at my trial believed every chart. So it was the third encore. Not me."
Shining, who'd been carefully maintaining that sort of silence for years, was an expert.
They were almost up to the stall. The one and only home of the perfect sugared hay twist.
"And it's not like they'd be performing -- that -- in summer," Twilight added as sweetness swirled in her snout. "So I wouldn't have any reason to --"
The bells atop the food stall rang.
The notes were fully familiar. They made the fur of Twilight ears tingle. They sunk into her brain, went directly past memory and activated her legs on the level of instinct. They made her rear back. And she did so at the exact moment when she realized where the opening bars came from, where they had always come from, been stolen from, during the instant when sugar and sweetness turned into ashes and vomit within nostrils and memory, as a sudden potentially permanent nausea surged --
Some of the concert attendees had a hard time agreeing on exactly what had happened. Several were hyper on sugar from the hay twist stall, a few had been drunk, and none had been planning on becoming witnesses.
Several reported spotting repeated flares of pinkish light. Most of those had been going backwards, trying to shake the pursuit of two desperate pegasi. A few agreed that the yellow one had, in fact, been going that fast and since none of them were Ponyville residents, they hadn't known about the short-term speed of panic.
A number thought they'd seen shards of a darker pink, more solid illumination. It had been falling shards because the stallion hadn't quite had the time to truly get a shield together and for what he had been able to manage, the small galloping purple missile had gone right through.
Several dozen had felt the heat of blazing rage race past their flanks.
But there was some consensus on what had happened once the mare with the glowing white eyes had reached the stage, launching herself with horn ablaze into what would soon be a debris field of instruments, local backup dancers, and Metal instruments which were no longer attached to Manes. (The Manes turned out to be wigs.) A few had spotted the Hoof Ridges starting to pull back, already trying to retreat -- but most had naturally been focused on the mare. The blazing horn, the glowing white eyes, and the scream of incandescent anger which had become its own song.
"YOU RETROACTIVELY RUINED MY FILLYHOOD!"
That was what most of them thought she'd said, and there was enough agreement for the jury to accept it as proof of temporary insanity.
But there had been hundreds of witnesses. Just as many reports, with no universal agreement -- except for a single detail.
The sound which had arisen when she'd reached the stage. Flinging herself directly into performers and instruments and local tales of legend for centuries to come.
♪ !!!!!WHAM!!!!! ♪
