As Applejack would say, Ponyville threw quite the shindig.
Considering its size, I had to admit that the farming town I now called home put on a decent Hearth's Warming festival. The houses were glamoured with strings of lights and tinsel, every storefront decked out in holiday décor, and the local leadership had organized a number of holiday celebrations and events. Smaller ones, obviously, than Canterlot's, but still respectable in their own right.
But that was all the festival was. Decent. Respectable. Good enough. Not the kind of verbiage I'd usually use to describe the most festive holiday of the year, second in popularity only to the Summer Sun celebration.
Ponyville tried, they really did... but it just wasn't quite right.
It was much like reading a sequel to a beloved novel that's clearly been written by a different author; despite matching in broad strokes, that only made the differences all the more impossible to ignore.
They had a parade, of course, but so much smaller. My parents and BBBFF and I would find a streetside spot to watch Canterlot's every year, and it never lasted less than three hours. Marching bands from across Equestria, enchanted holiday-themed magical constructs, and elaborate floats sponsored by noble families and wealthy businesses all competed to be the star of the show.
Ponyville's parade, in contrast, consisted of a dozen floats from local social groups, the ten foals that made up the Ponyville Elementary choir, and a sleigh pulled by eight Barnyard Bargains employees that ferried Filthy Rich in a Santa Hooves costume as he threw penny sweets to the crowd. It was over so quick I nearly missed it.
Their Fire of Friendship play was also... adequate, if noticeably lower budget than the ones my parents had taken me to in Canterlot. The story was largely the same (even if they did put a greater emphasis on Smart Cookie's role in the events) and the acting was good enough for seasonal enthusiasts.
It all felt so much... smaller, than the Hearth's Warmings I knew.
Not that that was Ponyville's fault, nor that of any of its ponies. All the locals seemed utterly satisfied with what the town organizers had pulled together. This was their Hearth's Warming. It just... wasn't mine.
But the biggest difference that I could in no way overlook, was that despite how they imitated the big cities' celebrations, Ponyville was, at its heart, a small rural farming community. Thus, most of its peoples' longstanding traditions were based around small, intimate family gatherings which their town planning took into account.
Rarity had whisked her sister off to Manehattan to meet their parents there, and Applejack had travelled with her whole clan to a holiday reunion in Fillydelphia. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy both had families in Cloudsdale, and immediately after the gingerbread house competition Pinkie had boarded a train to head off to a hometown so small it wasn't labeled on the library's maps.
And so, by barely after lunchtime on Hearth's Warming Eve, I found herself in my library, alone.
"We cooooould... make cookies?"
Alone save for Spike, of course.
"I guess," I sighed, not moving my chin from the small patch of windowsill that it had warmed to be reasonably-less-chilly than the rest. Despite the town's festivities and Spike's persistent attempts to cheer me up, everything still felt wrong. Off-beat. While I loved my new town and would never deny that it was maybe the second best thing to ever happen to me (the first becoming Princess Celestia's student), I just couldn't seem to overcome this cloud of melancholy.
This was, in a way, my first real Hearth's Warming away from home. Certainly I'd lived on my own for the past few years in the Tower on campus, but that was in Canterlot where home (and my parents) were never more than a short trot away.
I shifted slightly, letting my cheek slide onto a cold patch of wood. It gave me something to focus on beyond listing the ways the season felt so lacking.
It reminded me of the first Hearth's Warming after Grampa died. Dad and BBBFF tried to set up the model holiday train, but it felt wrong to do it without him. The train had been his thing and his absence was deafening. They left it unfinished and hadn't tried at all the next year.
"Okay... if you're not in the mood for cookies, we could read Twas the Night Before?" Spike offered. "Or maybe A Hearth's Warming Tale? It's a couple hours early but... maybe?"
"We could." But it wouldn't be the same without Dad to do the voices or BBBFF to playact the story as it happened. And it'd be with the library's copy of the book, not the family copy with the icing-stained pages from sticky hooves of years past.
Every tradition I had was tied to family, and lacking the latter made attempting the former seem... hollow. Insincere, even.
Spike didn't seem nearly as affected as I was, but that only made sense. He was so much younger than me, he probably only had solid recollections of the last five or six Hearth's Warmings. Enough for strong memories, but not really ground-in traditions.
It wasn't fair for me to drag him down into my malaise.
So I put on a smile and went through the motions, giving halfhearted answers to his suggestions and giving a perfunctory performance if he took the initiative on an activity. But I couldn't say my heart was in it. Hearth's Warming was here, but the spirit was absent.
We'd already set up a tree, but it was bare. We didn't own any decorations. All the ones I knew were on the family tree back in Canterlot. Or, more likely, still in the attic since my parents had decided to celebrate this holiday on a couple's cruise.
I wondered if they felt like this too; if their holiday felt hollow as they sipped spiced rum and watched a Mareibbean sunset.
Spike was just in the middle of trying to persuade me to have a snowpony-building competition (which would be a third less competitive without Shining Armor competing) when we were both startled by a clatter from down in the basement.
"What was that?" Spike asked.
"I don't know. It could be a burglar!"
Spike gave me a skeptical look. "A burglar? Who's going to burgle a library on Hearth's Warming eve?"
"I don't know, one that steals knowledge."
"That's not a thing."
"If I was a criminal, I'd steal books and knowledge."
"I... yeah, I could see that. But only from ponies that were treating the books badly?"
"Naturally."
"Right."
After our initial panic subsided, we both cautiously ventured down the stairs (Spike armed with a large rolling pin, just in case).
I had never had much use for the library's basement aside from storage, given it was already three-quarters-filled with clutter from previous librarians-in-residence, so the shadowed maze formed by the boxes was unfamiliar to me. But even then it was impossible to miss the tell-tale glow of a light coming from somewhere near the back.
"Who's there?" a surprisingly young voice called from the basement's depths.
Spike and I shared a disbelieving look before he answered. "I'm pretty sure that's what we're supposed to ask."
There was a sound of something shuffling around and shoving boxes out of the way for a few seconds until a gap formed between two teetering towers that let the light pierce through. I helped widen the gap with a bit of carefully applied magic until it was big enough for a vaguely familiar-looking filly to step through.
"Scootaloo?" Spike gasped, apparently more familiar with her than I was.
"Spike?" she replied. "Miss Twilight? What are you two doing here?"
"We live here," I reminded her.
Her eyes widened. "Ooooh, right. You do." Her wings twitched as she rubbed the back of her neck. "Sorry. My bad. The last librarian just worked here and locked up when she went home for the holidays. I'll get going."
"Hold on," I interrupted. I still had a lot of questions. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. First of all, how did you even get in here?"
She shrugged and gestured loosely behind her. "Through the book return bin."
I blinked in surprise. "We don't have a book return bin."
"You've got a trapdoor where one used to be. There's some bushes around it, but the chute's clear and leads down here. I left a pillow at the bottom."
That at least answered how she got in (and revealed something I was definitely going to have to look into later), but it was hardly the most pressing question. "Okay, but why are you here? Why aren't you at home with your parents? It's Hearth's Warming Eve! They must be worried sick about you!"
"Probably not." She shrugged again. "They're on safari right now. Or maybe an expedition in the jungle? I dunno. Either way, they're not home right now."
Warning bells rang in my head, but Spike spoke before I could. "And you got left behind?! Did they just board the train and not notice they forgot their kid?!"
Unexpectedly, she laughed. "Nah, this is pretty normal. Mom and Dad's jobs take them all over the world, so they're gone most of the year. I see them every six or eight weeks when they visit, but Mom's a big believer in 'Fillyhood Independence and Self-Sufficiency' and Dad's... forgetful, so it works out." Her ears lowered slightly and a bit of the casual optimism left her voice. "They always promise to make it home for Hearth's Warming, but I'm used to them missing it by now."
My heart clenched. I'd heard that they did things differently out in the country, but compared to Canterlot this was almost unthinkable.
"And you decided to break in here because...?" Spike pressed.
"This is where I normally spend the winter once the snow falls. There's a lady who comes around home once a week to clean and restock the fridge, but it can get chilly at night and I'm not good enough at cloud shaping to make the walls thicker." She spread her wings and gestured around. "But this place is always warm and no one ever comes here." She winced. "Well, until recently, I guess. I kinda just did my usual thing without thinking about it."
It was probably the book-preserving charms cast on the place that kept it temperature controlled, the logical part of my mind pointed out. The emotional part was busy drowning in sudden guilt for feeling so alone and listless on Hearth's Warming. At least I had Spike. She was spending the holiday completely alone.
And this was a normal Hearth's Warming for her!
Scootaloo forced the smile back onto her face. "Don't worry! You won't even know I'm here!" She gestured for us to follow as she hopped back into her alcove.
The inside was almost more disheartening for how childishly earnest it was. There was a half-unwrapped bindle—nothing more than a large handkerchief tied around a stick—out of which spilled a small box of store-bought cookies, a pack of juice boxes, and a Power Ponies Holiday Special Edition comic. A single string of plain holiday lights was hung between the surrounding boxes, but it wasn't long enough so a piece of tinsel completed the encirclement. Taped against one wall was a paper cut-out of a tree, made of construction paper and barely taller than she was. It felt like I was looking at a scene out of a Clydes Dalekins novel.
"See?" she said, eyes bright. "I've got everything I need right here!"
It was that moment that did it. Seeing in her eyes that she genuinely felt that this was a good enough Hearth's Warming. A satisfactory holiday. Maybe it was arrogant of me to impose my ideas of a proper holiday's festivities on someone else, but if I couldn't make my holiday feel whole, the least I could do was make sure a little filly didn't spend hers like this.
"Nope!" I announced as I levitated the little pegasus into the air and wrapped all her belongings back in her bindle.
"What? No!" she cried, "I'll be quiet! I promise! I won't make a peep and I'll be gone before sun-up!"
But her protests fell on deaf ears as I navigated her through the stacks of boxes like so much luggage.
"That's kinda harsh, Twilight," Spike added as he scampered to follow me back to the stairs. "You don't have to kick her out."
I stopped. Was that what it looked like? "I'm not kicking her out, Spike." I floated the filly around so she could look me in the eyes. "But I'm also not going to celebrate Hearth's Warming while ignoring a neglected filly in the basement. If you're going to stay with us, then you're staying upstairs where you can celebrate with us."
Her eyes grew wide and a small glimmer of something stirred in their depths. "Wait, really?!" she asked, and my heart clenched again. That she'd be so shocked that somepony would even offer was heart-wrenching.
"Yes, really."
"Hey, yeah, that's a great idea!" Spike darted around me and rushed up the stairs before I got there. "We can do so much more with three ponies than with two." He gasped. "Oh! Twilight wasn't up for it, but maybe you'd want to make some cookies with me, Scootaloo?"
"I don't know how to bake."
"That's okay, I can teach you! Just not Mom's famous Pferlinerkransers."
I nearly missed a step. "Why not those?" They were my favorite!
"Because I don't know the recipe for them," he countered immediately. "She only shared it with you."
...I guess she had, looking back. Baking those had always been her and my special thing to do together during the holidays. Even if we disagreed over whether to include the hard boiled egg yolks or not.
We'd also made them with Grandma, back when I was very little, and I remember her and Mom arguing over the recipe too.
But Grandma had passed before Spike was hatched, so he'd only ever known them as Mom's cookies, not Grandma's. It was still "the family recipe" even though it had changed over the years.
"Why's your tree naked?"
The non sequitur broke me from my odd introspection. We'd left the stairs behind and reached the main floor already, with our bare tree on full display.
"Cause we don't have any ornaments," Spike answered as I set our guest back on the ground and placed her bindle of meager holiday supplies on the table. "Forgot to buy any."
Scootaloo looked at him like he'd just said the sky was plaid. "So make some. I always make mine."
"Ehhh..." he vacillated, "I don't think my fire's hot enough to melt glass. Probably not safe to try it in a tree anyway."
"Who needs glass? All we need is some paper and we can do snowflakes and paper chains. This is a library; you've gotta have some scrap paper around here somewhere."
"We might have something in the 'excessively-damaged books' cabinet," I offered. I was familiar with the concept of paper chains, though we'd never made them growing up. It would be good to put those poor books to some good use instead of just throwing them out.
"I'll go check!" Spike said with an eagerness I hadn't heard from him since the town's celebrations that morning. Whatever of my melancholy had rubbed off on him seemed to be gone now.
And, now that I thought about it, mine seemed to be waning as well.
This wasn't shaping up to be a holiday like I was used to... but that wasn't a bad thing. Traditions were like anything else: they grew and changed with each new iteration. Some things were lost, others preserved, others still arrived from different sources and merged together into something wholly new. Each tradition that I thought of as immutable had been, at some point, done for the first time and probably replaced some version of a tradition that preceded it.
A part of me still didn't like the idea of enacting changes from what it considered a "proper" and "correct" Hearth's Warming celebration, but it was a doomed protest when faced against the smiling face the small filly in my house, who had already begun chattering quickly with Spike about different activities they could do; some of which he was unfamiliar with, and some which she'd never heard of.
Even if my traditions had to change, at least I could ensure that a part of them would be passed on to become new traditions that others could pass on in turn.
Shaking myself from my wool-gathering, I left the two children to their discussion and went to the kitchen.
I needed to make sure we had enough hard boiled egg yolks to make the Pferlinerkransers the way I wanted them to be remembered.
