Home for Hearth's Warming
Spitfire was afraid of nothing and nopony – everypony knew it.
“Hey, Spitz?”
“Mm?” She shifted one page to the side, revealing the next underneath. There was always a next, especially at this time of year. Why nopony ever applied for leave on a timely basis, she couldn’t understand. It wasn’t like the date was a surprise.
“Are you, ah, doing anything for Hearth’s Warming?”
That made her look up. Fire Streak’s wingtips were twitching, a sure sign he was nervous. “Finishing up this mess,” she tapped the stack of papers, and smirked. “Here to add yours to the stack? You know you don’t have to, now that you’ve retired.”
She was still getting used to it, to be honest – seeing Crash’s vibrant coloration out of the corner of her eye instead of Streak’s muted oranges and whites as they blazed through the sky.
Still, there were benefits – no pesky fraternization clauses anymore.
“Great!” Streak said. “Then, want to join me for Hearth’s Warming?”
…Right. That’s what special someponies did with each other. Spitfire eyed the stack. It might take a few late nights to get through all the rest of the paperwork once the leave applications were approved, but it should be doable. And a quiet night celebrating together did sound nice.
She pulled open the drawer without looking, pulled out another leave form – this one blank – tilted her sunglasses down, and raised an eyebrow. “Just tell me where and when.”
“Fantastic!” Streak clapped his hooves, grinning so infectiously that Spitfire could feel a smile tug at her own lips. “I’ll let my parents know we’re coming!”
Nothing. And. Nopony.
“– Misty Fly’s still cutting her turn short on the third loop, and you just asked me about practice to distract me, didn’t you?”
“Noooooomaybe?” Fire Streak said, and nudged her subtly with his wing. “Did it work?”
“I’m not nervous.” Spitfire looked pointedly past him to the scenery flying past, and resisted the urge to stretch her own wings. She’d been to Manehattan plenty of times before for shows, and they’d agreed that a private car was wise – no point to giving the gossip rags free fodder – but it still felt different, with none of the other ‘Bolts around, joking and laughing and causing trouble that she inevitably had to put a stop to.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about the quiet.
“Of course not,” he agreed easily. Glanced towards the door – closed, and the corridor empty beyond the small inset window – and nuzzled her, just below the ear. “You’re the amazing, fearless Spitfire, captain of the Wonderbolts, what could my family possibly do except love you?”
“Don’t patronize me,” she grumbled, but couldn’t help the smile tugging at her lips. “So, your first season of teaching is done; found us any new recruits yet?”
Streak made a big show of considering the question. “I don’t know; a few have some promise. Might want to wait until their flight feathers grow in first, though.” He sat up suddenly. “I have some new pictures from the last class of the season – want to see?”
With a glance towards the door of her own, Spitfire nuzzled him back. “Do I have a choice?” she asked, amused, as he immediately turned to grab the pictures from his saddlebags.
“You know you want to critique their form some more.”
“They’re foals, they don’t have form yet.” But Spitfire settled in against Streak’s side and tucked her wing around his back. “Has that one – Blue something? – learned to stop immediately nose-diving, at least?”
“Wellllll –”
“Uncle Streak!!!” Spitfire tilted sharply out of the way as a streak of red-orange impacted Fire Streak in the chest, senses all sharpening as she tried to determine whether either of them were injured –
“Uncle Streak is here!” The pegasus filly – short-cropped blue mane visible for a handful of seconds before she blurred away again – shouted cheerfully. “And he brought his maaaaarefriend!”
Spitfire cast a look down towards the house below – rather larger than her home back in Cloudsdale, but then most of these suburban Manehattan homes were – and particularly, towards the yard half-full of foals, all now staring up at them.
“Fire Streak. Situation report.” Rubbing slightly at his chest but looking otherwise unharmed, he blinked at her. She resisted the urge to grit her teeth and tried again. “Are these…all…your family? Visiting for Hearth’s Warming?”
“Oh!” He looked sheepish. “I guess I didn’t think about it. They’ll love you, though – see how excited the kids look?”
They were all still staring.
Spitfire was starting to understand why Fire Streak had taken to teaching junior flight school like a fish to water.
“I brought gifts for your parents,” she said pointedly. Her oversight, not having made sure she properly scoped out the ground conditions ahead of time.
“You did?”
She tilted her sunglasses down and looked at him. “I may not typically celebrate Hearth’s Warming, but I am familiar with the concept,” she said dryly. Had her reputation really gotten that bad? It wasn’t like she ever denied requests for leave in this season, even the late ones.
Everypony knew that nothing happened the two weeks around Hearth’s Warming, anyway; the one time her predecessor had tried to stage a holiday show, both the primary and secondary teams had almost rioted.
Streak rolled his eyes. “I do remember the pen you gave me last year,” he said. “And still use it. I just meant – you didn’t have to do that. I…may have brought enough gifts for both of us.”
Spitfire eyed his only-slightly-bulging saddlebags with new respect. “Show them to me once we get settled,” she said. And speaking of – she angled her wings, starting the slow coast down to the yard below. “And I expect introductions.”
“Oh! Well, you’ve already met Twister; she’s my sister’s youngest. Beside her is her brother Thunder Tail –”
Spitfire listened with intent. She could recite rosters and exercise schedules; recall minute details of choreography from any show they’d performed more than once in the past three years. This should be child’s play.
Besides, she had a reputation to uphold.
The trick, Spitfire decided about ten minutes in, was to treat this like an after-show press conference.
A horde of ponies all alternately clamoring for attention, chaos on the surface but with an underlying order to it once you learned the patterns. And herself and Streak at the center more often than not.
“Can you fly, like, really, really fast?”
“How did you and Uncle Streak meet?”
“How often do you two –”
“Not answering that one, there are foals here,” Fire Streak interjected, glaring at a mare with a beige coat and mane a few shades redder than his orange streaks. Sandy Rose, his maternal uncle’s eldest, two years older than him. Florist in Fillydelphia. “Also, it’s none of your business.”
…Streak really was cute when he got flustered. But while from the gleam in his cousin’s eye she seemed likely to let him off easy, he really should have known better than to wave forbidden information in front of the horde of foals surrounding them.
“The fastest,” she said with authority, bending down slightly to make eye contact with the foal who’d asked the question. (Silver Spirit, older brother’s youngest.) “At least, when I was your age; I’ve got the Young Flyers’ Competition medals to prove it.” A chorus of ‘oooh’s, eyes starting to turn towards her. “Though the newbie on the team – the one who replaced your Uncle Streak – claims she’s faster even than me.”
This prompted immediate protest, and Spitfire breathed an internal sigh of relief. Seemed that harmless controversy worked to distract foals as well as reporters.
“Does that mean she’s going to take your place as captain?” Another filly asked, eyes wide. (Solar Twirl, Twister’s twin, older by ten minutes.) “And make you retire too?”
Spitfire gingerly ruffled her mane. (Foals liked that, right?) “Nah, they’ll keep me around – I’m the only one willing to do any paperwork around there.” She shot Streak a glance and saw he’d already caught on and was nodding his vigorous agreement to any of the foals who looked to him for confirmation. “And what gave you the idea that Fire Streak had to retire? He just decided he liked riding herd on foals like you even more than being a Wonderbolt.”
Incredulous stares turned back in Streak’s direction, and Spitfire stepped nimbly back out of the spotlight.
The thing about press conferences, though, is that they had a defined end.
(And yes, there was always ‘just one more question, I’ll make it quick’, but Spitfire had learned early to schedule events assuming that a press conference would actually end somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour after whatever the calendar said.)
Somewhere in all the rush, she and Streak had been shown to their room (his childhood bedroom, much to his chagrin and Sandy Rose’s clear entertainment), taken a brief break to catch each other up on what presents they’d brought, sourced wrapping paper for Spitfire’s (apparently Streak’s family wrapped everything and opened it on Hearth’s Warming Day? Seemed like a lot of unnecessary fuss, it’s not like who was giving the gift was a surprise), taken what Streak referred to as the “secret back way” back to the ground floor to deposit the presents (...they’d flown out the window) and hung their Hearth’s Warming dolls up alongside everypony else’s.
They’d squeezed their dolls together on a single hook because the number of dolls had clearly long since outstripped the available places to hang them. A call from the kitchen interrupted Spitfire’s contemplation of whether she found that comforting or stifling.
“...Yes, ma’am?” she said, stepping cautiously around a pair of infants hitting each other with blocks as she entered the kitchen.
(The blocks looked…squishy? And they didn’t seem upset? She assumed one of the other adults would have separated them if there was a problem.)
“Oh, just call me Cinnamon, dear,” Streak’s mother said, glancing up from her stirring. “Would you like to give me a hoof in here? You looked like you could use a break.”
Spitfire’s thoughts stalled. “Ah.” Like an unexpected updraft that could send her spiraling if she didn’t angle her wings just right. “I am not…”
Every spare inch of counter space had been covered with something in some state of readiness; Spitfire could recognize several varieties of cookies and a half-constructed pie but had not even the faintest clue what the gelatinous substance in the corner might be.
Cinnamon Twirl smiled. “Fire Streak warned me not to expect either of you to bring food.” She rolled her eyes. “As if, between his father and I, we don’t already cook enough to feed a small army. He’s always said you’ve never seen a schedule you couldn’t improve, though, and with Sky Chaser and his family coming in tonight after all, we’re going to need to find time and stove space for an extra pot of my husband’s stew somewhere –”
She gestured with a wing towards a notepad set precariously on the edge of the sink, covered in scribbles and a light dusting of flour, and Spitfire didn’t need to be asked twice. “Ma’a – Cinnamon,” she corrected herself, already starting to flip through, “it would be my pleasure.”
In hindsight, Spitfire should have expected that Fire Streak’s family would be the sort of family that would also put on the full Hearth’s Warming pageant.
With more enthusiasm than skill, for the most part, but with her belly almost too full of delicious food to fly, Streak’s wing laid lazily over her back and hers over his, and leaning her head against his neck, she decided it still ranked up there in the variations she’d seen.
A gentle nudge broke her from her half-listening reverie, and she blinked, noticing the room had gone quiet and dark, and everypony was looking at her again. “You don’t have to tell a story if you don’t want to,” Streak said quietly.
Even her thoughts felt sluggish. Right, another family tradition she’d been belatedly introduced to – as the winter closed in, before the Fire of Friendship lit, Streak’s family apparently told actual stories. She’d lost track about halfway through a rambling tale by his great-uncle.
She raised her head. “I could tell a story,” she said. “What does everypony want to hear?”
“Um…” Almost directly across the loose circle the family had formed, a dusky pink mare half-raised her hoof. (Rose Petal, Sandy Rose’s eldest, currently studying to join the weather team in Cloudsdale.)
Then lowered it, ducking her head as a handful of foals simultaneously shouted contradictory requests for tales of excitement, adventure, and aerial shows.
Spitfire let the shouts subside, waited a beat, then untucked a hoof to point it towards Rose Petal. “What story did you want to hear?” She asked.
“Oh. Um.” Rose Petal looked even more unsure, but swallowed and said quietly, “You’re the bravest pony I ever met. How did you – how are you –?” she gestured helplessly. “Sorry. That’s probably not…very interesting anyway…never mind.”
She could feel Fire Streak’s weight shift, could tell even without looking at his face that he wanted to leap across the circle and hug his cousin, and leaned into him subtly. I’ve got this.
(She hoped.)
Aloud, she said, “Well, it certainly helps to have been too stupid to realize I was supposed to be afraid.” A couple of startled, almost scandalized laughs. “My mom could tell you stories of all the things I jumped off as a foal.”
Still keeping the majority of her attention on Rose Petal, she pointed her free wing towards the largest cluster of foals and unleashed her drill sergeant voice. “Now don’t you lot get ideas. The hospital visits are not worth it.”
Voice gentler, she continued, “You don’t have to feel brave, to be brave. Other ponies can’t see inside your heart, they can only see your words and actions.” She hesitated, but – in this dark, quiet room, it felt right to admit it. “I still get a bit nervous before every show. There are a lot of things that can go wrong; ways that ponies can get hurt. But I trust in my team; in the ponies I love,” she leaned into Streak, “and in the audience’s goodwill. And I fly anyway.”
She could have left it at that. She wanted to, but she could feel where that desire came from; the place that told her maybe this show should be called off because everything wasn’t quite perfect; that wanted to stay safe.
She hadn’t gotten to captain of the Wonderbolts by playing things bucking safe.
“I was nervous when I first got here, too,” she forced herself to say. “I’m nervous now. Because this is not the sort of Hearth’s Warming I’m used to, and I don’t want to ruin it for anypony.” Streak’s wing tightened across her back, and he laid a hoof on one of hers. “But I’m glad your Uncle Streak invited me, and I’m glad I came. Even if I would have appreciated more warning that there would be quite so many of you.”
She waited for the scattered laughs to subside, took off her ever-present sunglasses, and smiled at Rose Petal. “Far as I can tell, I don’t need to teach you to be brave. By asking that question, even though you were afraid – you already are.”
Pink suffused the room, and Rose Petal slowly, hesitantly smiled back.
After the third time Streak’s tossing nearly knocked her off his comfortable-but-too-small bed, Spitfire took advantage of their long acquaintance and poked him in a particularly sensitive spot. “Either tell me what’s wrong or at least fret about it without moving,” she muttered sleepily.
He twitched hard, then fell still. Spitfire waited. “Sorry about…all this,” he finally said quietly. “I should have realized – you barely talk about your family – of course you would have expected something smaller –”
“Don’t let the nerves comment go to your head,” she said, snuggling in closer. “I’ve been to scarier press conferences.”
“By ‘scarier’, you mean for the reporters, right?” he asked lightly, and a burst of sudden warmth loosened the knot in Spitfire’s chest.
“Of course. What else would I mean?”
They drowsed in silence for a minute or two more. “Apology accepted,” Spitfire added. “Just make sure you prepare a proper report for me by next year. I want to know ages, favorite colors, hobbies –”
“Next year?” Fire Streak asked. “You mean –”
Spitfire noted the sudden fear that maybe he hadn’t been intending to – then cut off the thought there, called bullshit on it, and rolled her eyes. “You don’t think I’d have gone to the effort of learning everypony’s names if I’d expected it to be a one-time thing, do you?”
“...Wouldn’t you?”
Fair point.
“I guess you’ll just have to ask me again next year, then,” she said. “Now go to sleep.”
Being jumped by no less than five foals had been an interesting wakeup, presents had been unwrapped with great enthusiasm (and Cinnamon Swirl had been particularly pleased by the tea Spitfire gave her), and Spitfire had cheered along with everypony else as (by mutual agreement) an overwhelmed-looking Rose Petal raised the flag into a sunny, crisp Hearth’s Warming Morning sky.
Now, a few hours later, she sat on the roof, sipping hot cocoa from her brand new “Best Aunt!” mug, and occasionally calling flight corrections to the herd of pegasi chasing each other above her head.
The herd of…family, maybe.
A familiar warmth settled next to her. “Happy Hearth’s Warming,” she and Fire Streak said simultaneously.
“So…next year?”
Spitfire raised her mug. “Would be a shame to let this go to waste.”
She was looking forward to it.
