Manehattan was one of Equestria's largest cities, and had more than one hundred times Ponyville’s population. That fact was reflected in almost every aspect of Manehattan. The buildings were taller and larger, the streets were separated into roads for carts and the like and sidewalks for hoof traffic, and it seemed like there was an apartment building or hotel around every street corner. Above all else: Manehattan felt less personal than Ponyville.
The buildings were monoliths of concrete and glass, the streets were paved grey. There were so many ponies in Manehattan that they simply couldn’t know each other the way that everypony knew one another in Ponyville, making it feel like a city of strangers. But none of that was to say that Manehattan was without its charms.
To Apple Bloom, the practically designed structures were beautiful displays of architecture and construction. It may not have ended up being her special talent, but the fact that the Cutie Mark Crusader clubhouse was still standing strong was proof that her time practising construction skills were not wasted months. Although a part of Apple Bloom's appreciation of the city was probably just that it was a very different scenery than anything in Ponyville. The grey paved roads were a far cry from the beaten dirt streets of Ponyville, the familiar and personal marketplace was replaced by large stores that each stocked more than the entire market.
Manehattan was huge, scary, and cold. But it was also different, fascinating, and beautiful.
Walking through the snow coated city, Apple Bloom thought that somehow the weather and season actually made Manehattan feel warmer and more comfortable. The Hearth’s Warming decorations were no more colourful than they were in Ponyville, but they made the city feel so alive and festive with their contrast to the grey streets.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders were rarely apart for long, but it also wasn't uncommon for the Crusaders to not meet over the holidays. Scootaloo always spent them with her aunts, Sweetie Belle was fifty-fifty on if she spent them with Rarity or their parents, and Apple Bloom never imagined not spending them with her family. Sometimes the Apple Family would travel to spend the holidays with another part of the family, like when they went to Pinkie Pie's family's rock farm. It was for that reason that Apple Bloom and Big Mac were walking through Manehattan on the morning of Hearth's Warming Eve to meet up with their cousins.
“Apple Bloom!” Babs Seed waved to them from a nearby street corner. She was standing beside a streetlamp with a mare that was presumably her older sister. Despite the cold, neither of them were wearing scarfs or anything warm.
“Babs!” Apple Bloom called back as she ran over, Big Mac following behind her with a more reasonable pace.
When she was close enough, Apple Bloom jump-hugged Babs Seed and caused them both to fall onto the snowy sidewalk. Babs tried to wrestle Apple Bloom off of her, but couldn't best Bloom's strength; Apple Bloom had been doing farm work her entire life and Babs had not.
“Alright, Cuz, get offa me,” Babs said with a laugh, pushing Apple Bloom who let herself be pushed up.
Now on her hooves, Apple Bloom helped Babs stand up and brushed some of the snow off of her cousin's coat.
“Hello, McIntosh right? I'm Sunny,” Babs’ sister said, holding out a hoof. Sunny had a soft pink coat and a dirty blonde mane with a daisy hair clip on the left side. Her cutie mark was a similar daisy to the hair clip.
“Nnope,” Big Mac shook her hoof. His usual yoke was replaced with an ugly Hearth's Warming sweater patterned scarf, bright green base with white snowflakes, trees, and stars. He was also wearing simple saddlebags.
“We call him Big Mac,” Apple Bloom clarified for him, adjusting and brushing off her pink scarf and bow.
“Okay, Big Mac. And I take it you're Apple Bloom? Good to meet you, although I feel like I already know you with how much Babs talks about you,” Sunny ruffled Babs Seed's mane, causing the filly to duck away from her. “Where's Applejack? I thought she was supposed to be here too.”
“Oh, she got called away on a friendship mission with Fluttershy. She's not sure if she'll make it on time to spend Hearth's Warming with us, she always says ya can't rush friendship,” Apple Bloom said.
“Friendship mission? Is that a Ponyville thing?” Sunny questioned. “I don't think I've ever heard of it.”
“Eeyup,” Big Mac nodded.
Sunny thought about it for a few moments, wishing that the only member of the Apple Family that she had actually met before could have made it. The silence ended up being broken by her sister.
“Are we just gonna stand here all day?” Babs asked rhetorically, then started rushing down the sidewalk. “Let’s go!”
Apple Bloom quickly sprang into motion chasing after her cousin. Big Mac once more followed them with a more reasonable pace, but also made sure to keep them in sight.
Friendship missions, a duosyllabic cousin, and two young fillies. Sunny thought as she watched Babs take them on what was an objectively slower path to her and Sunny's apartment then just heading back the way they came. She ran to catch up to them, then matched Big Mac's pace. This should be a fun holiday. She thought, only slightly sarcastically.
Sunny and Babs owned the second floor of a three story condo building. They had four rooms: a central room, a reasonably sized but not huge kitchen, and two small bedrooms. It was not cheap, but Sunny needed somewhere that was good enough for both her and Babs to be comfortable.
There was a tree in the corner of the central room near a large window, decorated with lights and ornaments and with a few brightly wrapped presents underneath it, but the apartment was otherwise undecorated for Hearth's Warming. It was a fake tree, which Apple Bloom knew saved on both cost and cleanup but couldn't help feeling like it took a little bit away from the festivities.
“What should we do first?” Apple Bloom asked excitedly, eager to jump into the Hearth's Warming celebrations.
“We don't usually have much in way of planned activities for Hearth's Warming Eve,” Sunny said after locking the door. “But we have a few board games and some craft supplies-”
“Mostly left over from school projects,” Babs chimed in.
“So just pick whatever seems like fun to you,” Sunny finished.
“Let’s play a game!” Apple Bloom decided. “What games have y'all got?”
Sunny went over to a standing cabinet against one of the walls and opened it to reveal shelves of haphazardly stacked board and card games. A few games may have been an understatement. “We have most of the Hasbrony games, but we also have party games, wargames, and gryphon-style games. We have a good mix of cooperative, competitive, and even a few nearly interaction-less games.”
Babs Seed, seeing that Apple Bloom was overwhelmed by the choices, grabbed a game off the shelves. “Let’s play this one, I think you'll like it. It's a zompony survival game.”
With no objections and Sunny's go ahead, Babs set up the game on the table. After a brief explanation of the rules, and a reassurance that they would make sense once they got into the game, Babs gave out starting cards and the game began.
The overall goal they drew was to collect samples from a lot of zomponies by fighting them, each zompony had a chance to drop a sample. Each player also had a personal goal, with a low chance that one of them turned the player into a traitor. The first turn cycle was a bit rough because two of the ponies had never played it before, but by the end of the second round it was already going much smoother. They flipped over the third turn's goal, or crisis, and since Apple Bloom was first player she took charge of it.
“Failin’ this one would be real bad, so we need four medicine cards. Ah got one, what about y'all?”
“Same. Just one,” Babs said, looking through her cards.
“Nnope,” Big Mac rumbled.
“I have one. I’ll search the hospital with my nurse for the last one,” Sunny said, pointing to one of her survivors. She was the only player to have been lucky enough to find a third.
“Sounds good,” Apple Bloom agreed. “Ah’ll search the guard station and fight off zomponies in the colony.”
After putting her medicine card into the facedown crisis pile, Apple Bloom searched the guard station and got nothing of worth for her action. Still, maybe the junk card could help with a later crisis. With her other two actions she defeated two zomponies in the colony, and she managed to only take a single wound to her survivor in the battles but also did not get any samples.
With Apple Bloom’s turn over, Babs started with her actions. First, although not an action -was to spend two food cards to give the colony just enough food tokens to make it through the turn. Then she searched the school, hoping for another survivor but getting only another food card. She searched the school again, and got a book that made it safer for one of her survivors to fight the zomponies. She then used said book to safely fight a zompony and claim its sample. To end her turn, Babs gave her medicine to the crisis.
Sunny, for her part, started her turn by using her nurse survivor’s special ability to search the hospital more effectively than normal.
“I got the medicine we needed!” Sunny said happily, putting two of her cards into the crisis contribution pile.
“Nice! Now we just need more zompony samples,” Apple Bloom said.
For her other three actions, Sunny fought a zompony in the hospital for its sample and built a barricade in the way station after fighting a zompony that failed to give a sample. “Go ahead, Big Mac.”
Now free of obligation to look around for medicine, Big Mac searched the library. He must not have liked what he drew though, because he placed noise tokens on the location until he chose to keep the third card he drew. He used his second action to move cards from the waste pile to the discard, and his third was spent fighting at the library but no sample was claimed.
Apple Bloom and Babs set to work cycling the board once Big Mac's turn ended. Everything went smoothly until Babs picked up the crisis contribution pile and looked through it.
“We have a traitor,” Babs said, setting the four cards face up in front of her. There were three medicine, but in place of the fourth was a fuel card. “Big Mac didn't put any cards in, so he will have final say in if we exile anypony.”
“That means we fail the crisis,” Apple Bloom said, looking down at her survivors, both of whom would be lost when they resolved the crisis due to their low influence.
“Whenever you lose all of your survivors, you discard your cards and draw a new survivor,” Sunny explained to Bloom after she got rid of her survivors.
“Sorry, Bloom. I'll give ya the next survivor card I draw,” Babs Seed offered.
“Thank you, Ah can’t tell ya how much Ah need ‘em,” Bloom smiled gratefully. “And look, my new survivor is a dog!”
Big Mac leaned over and smiled. “That's cute.”
“Our new crisis is for fuel, but losing would just spawn in some new zomponies. Might actually help us to lose this one,” Babs said, setting the crisis card in its spot.
To start her turn, Babs used her book to safely fight a zompony in the school and lucked into a sample, putting them at just over half the required number. Her second action was to use her survivor at the colony to fight a zompony in the colony, no sample. Finally she searched the school, getting a food card that she put straight into the colony.
Sunny seemed to have decided that the colony was not the place for her pirate survivor, moving him to the guard station. Unfortunately, she rolled badly and the pirate got frostbite. Sunny clicked her tongue and discarded a medicine to heal him, then searched the guard station twice in a row. Her last action was to place-
“You're the traitor,” Apple Bloom realised aloud.
“What?” Sunny asked with a little laugh, apparently confused.
“You didn't search before using that medicine, which means that ya had to have it last turn,” Bloom said, pointing to the medicine in the waste pile. “Ah think you didn't spend it ‘cause ya wanted us to fail.”
Sunny's eyes flicked between the card and players, trying to come up with something to refute the argument. Then she sighed. “You got me, I was lazy. Should have used it after searching.”
“Eeyup,” Big Mac nodded.
“So we're voting her out?” Babs asked.
“Eeyup.”
Sunny was exiled from the colony, but her turn continued. Rather than place a barricade as she had been intending, she instead moved her nurse to the school to attack Babs’ survivor there. Her attack was successful, dealing one wound and taking one of Babs’ cards.
“All in on being a traitor, then?” Babs’ asked, clearly not actually upset as she gave a random one of her cards.
Sunny shrugged and took the card. “I know you don't have any medicine, and your survivor is easy to hit.”
The rest of the game went fairly smoothly, even with an exiled player trying to make them lose. They were playing with the new player victory condition and beat it on the last turn of the game. Because they beat the end condition, Sunny, being a traitor, lost. Of the other three, Babs and Big Mac met their personal victory conditions, but Apple Bloom's required her to have more survivors.
“That was fun, even if Ah didn't win mah goal,” Apple Bloom said genuinely, her slight bitterness that Sunny made her lose two of her survivors tempered by her enjoyment of the game.
“I always like this one. If you like we could play another, this or a different game, but we should probably have lunch first,” Sunny said, setting up to put away the game. “Babs, would you prepare the sandwiches? I’ll handle this.”
Babs got up and started towards the kitchen. “No problem!”
While consolidating game pieces and boards, Sunny confirmed that the meal was to her guests’ taste. “You two are alright with hay bacon sandwiches, right? We have some vegetables and other toppings as well. It’s nothing special, but it’s what we usually have.”
“Eeyup,” Big Mac put the location boards into the box, only for Sunny to slide them over from where he put them.
“Sounds great!” Apple Bloom said happily. She started stacking the item cards in the box, but again Sunny had to rearrange them.
Apple Bloom and Big Mac tried to help Sunny put away the game, but it was a bit too precise for them to actually help pack the box. Which they realised pretty quickly. Big Mac watched closely as Sunny carefully fit the various game pieces into the barely large enough box, hoping to be able to help her next time. Once the game was fully in its box and the lid was on, Sunny put it back in the cabinet it came from.
A few moments after the game was put away, Babs called from the kitchen that the sandwiches were ready to be made and all of them headed to the kitchen to get their lunch. They each made their own sandwiches and then moved back to the table to eat. Apple Bloom made two sandwiches, both hay bacon, lettuce, tomato, and cheddar on rolls with mayo spread. Babs Seed also made two, but her’s didn’t have tomato or mayo and instead had mustard. Sunny made just one, with hay bacon, lettuce, and tomato. Big Mac made three, one with just shy of everything on offer and two similar to Bloom’s.
The food was eaten over a conversation about Hearth’s Warming music. As it turned out, Babs liked performances with modern instruments while both Bloom and Big Mac preferred caroling. Sunny, for her part, could have done without them at all.
When the sandwiches were eaten and the messes cleaned, they decided to set up another board game to play. Rather than learn another new game they got the same one out again, Apple Bloom was determined to get a win and Sunny wanted to play as a normal player rather than a traitor.
Their second game went wrong from the start and they lost on their third turn, not half an hour in. With that disappointment they set it up again for another game, hoping for a better outcome. The next game did go much better, there were ups and downs, but they did beat the main objective and three of them won their secret objectives.
“I never pay enough attention to my secret goal,” Babs said, blowing her mane out of her eyes. “How ‘bout another?”
Sunny shook her head. “I have to make dinner, you can keep playing though.”
“Ya need help?” Big Mac asked while sorting out cards.
Sunny hesitated, clearly a bit uncomfortable about the idea of accepting help from her guests. Still, the dinner was difficult to make alone. “If you want to help, I could use it. But don't feel like you need to trouble yourself, you're our guest.”
“No trouble,” Big Mac rumbled, starting to take care of the game.
With a smile Sunny thanked Big Mac and continued packing the game.
With two of them working on it, the game was fully packed and put back in the cabinet fairly quickly and they were about ready to head to the kitchen.
“You two will be alright while we make dinner?” Sunny asked Apple Bloom and Babs Seed.
“We'll find something to do,” Babs said.
“Yeah, don't worry ‘bout us,” Bloom agreed.
After spending slightly more than half of her life raising a young filly, being told not to worry was one of the most concerning things Sunny could hear. Still, she trusted her sister to not do anything too crazy, and said something to that effect before she and Big Mac walked into the kitchen and left the fillies alone in the main room.
Babs Seed wasted no time pitching possible activities for them, but Apple Bloom was a bit distracted and not paying as much attention as she should have been. Most Hearth's Warming decorations didn't mean that much to Apple Bloom, they just helped make things feel festive, but there was one that she considered an integral part of the holiday.
“Do you have Hearth's Warming dolls here?” Bloom asked when she had a chance.
“In Manehattan? Sure, course we do,” Babs said with a shrug. “Don’t think we ever bought ‘em though.”
“You've never had a Hearth's Warming doll?” Apple Bloom asked in disbelief. “But it's a tradition datin’ back ta Equestria's unification! They represent the founders of Equestria putting aside their differences to share in the warmth and comfort of the Fire of Friendship! We set ‘em up to remember that Equestria only exists because ponies are capable of great kindness and acceptance even in times of despair and hate.”
Babs Seed stared at Apple Bloom for a moment before blowing the mane out of her eyes in response to Bloom’s passionate speech. “Now you're making me wish we had some. But it's Hearth's Warming Eve, there's no way we could find any even if anywhere is still open.”
“That's alright,” Apple Bloom said, having already thought of a solution. “You said ya had a bunch'a craft supplies, right?”
A couple minutes later there was an eclectic collection of artistic materials laid out on the table. Most were remnants of tools from various school projects that Babs had to make at home, but there were some painting and party decorating supplies as well.
“If Pinkie and her family can make Hearth’s Warming dolls outta rocks, then we can make ‘em outta all this,” Apple Bloom said with a smile, looking over the pile in satisfaction.
Babs Seed was also looking over the pile, but definitely not in satisfaction. It was more because she had no idea how to turn the random things into anything vaguely resembling a pony. “So… where do we start?”
“First y'all need to choose what ya the main body of the body to be. Ah was thinkin’ these,” Apple Bloom held up from the bundle of colourful pipe cleaners that she was trying to untangle. “We’re really just makin’ little ponies, so do whatever feels right to you.”
In the pile was a blank canvas, stretched over a wooden frame. Babs picked it up and turned it over to get a better look at it. After a moment of inspection, she grabbed a flathead screwdriver -which was in the pile for some unknown reason -and started prying up the staples keeping the canvas on the frame.
While Babs freed and then broke apart the frame, Bloom managed to break apart the bundle of pipe cleaners. She chose a pink one, a red one, and a brown one and began weaving them together to make the main body of her doll. She took four more, two green and two blue, and used them to make the front and back legs of her doll. Finally, she took a yellow and a purple to form the doll’s head with.
Once she had broken the frame into pieces, Babs started using quick dry glue to reform the fragments into a vague pony shape. It took her longer than Bloom’s pipe cleaner pony and had no almost no colour, but she thought that it looked pretty good. And also liked the slight sheen that the glue gave it.
Since they both had dolls that sort of looked like a pony’s silhouette, they started decorating them. To Apple Bloom, the most important part was the cutie mark. She found a collection of beads in the pile and was creating two identical cutie marks that looked like Hearth’s Warming trees. It would take her quite awhile, but she felt that it was worth it. To Babs Seed, the most important part was making the mane and tail. The yarn in the pile would be too thick for her purposes, the floss was all the wrong texture, and the various pieces of cloth would fray unpleasantly. It wasn’t until she turned back to her doll that she realised what might both work and be stylistically pleasing: threads from the canvas itself.
About an hour later, Apple Bloom’s doll had two nearly identical cutie marks and Babs Seed’s doll had a canvas thread mane and tail. The mane and tail could actually be, with immense care, styled and coloured however Babs felt like.
For her doll, Bloom simply used the rainbow coloured yarn for the mane and tail, braiding them both for ease. Babs decided that her canvas pony’s cutie marks should be more abstract than what Bloom did, and painted a simple geometric pattern onto each of the doll’s flanks using six different bright colours.
With the two dolls complete, they exchanged them to get a good look at what the other had done.
“Babs, this is incredible,” Apple Bloom said, almost at a loss for words at the doll in her hooves. “Ah didn’t know ya could do so much with a canvas.”
Babs Seed laughed with a blush. “I wouldn't have guessed it either. But look at what you did, with mostly just these fuzzy wires!”
They exchanged dolls again, and then -in lieu of placing them on an actual hearth -put them on a shelf next to the tree. Just in time as well, because Sunny and Big Mac came out of the kitchen a few minutes later with dinner.
Sunny led the way to the kitchen. Big Mac stopped in the doorway and took in the room in a way he had not been able to when preparing his lunch. It was a moderately sized kitchen complete with a stove, two piece fridge and freezer, a sink, and a good -but not great -amount of counter space. Big Mac guessed that most of the apartment's price was to pay for the kitchen.
“If you can handle shaping the bread for its rise, I'll work on the stew. Sound good?” Sunny offered, while gesturing to the tasks.
“Eeyup,” Big Mac said, walking over to where the bowl of bread dough was setting.
Alright, let’s do this, Sunny thought while prepping the counter for her to work on the vegetables for the stew.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” Sunny asked Big Mac after a few minutes of working on the meal in silence.
“Nnope.”
Yeah, I don’t know what I expected. Sunny took a bag of carrots out of the fridge and started cleaning them. “You really have nothing to say, nothing to ask? Just us here.”
For a moment it seemed like Big Mac wasn't going to respond as he kept shaping the dough. “Ah find words tend ta’ get in the way of expressing mah thoughts.”
“I can understand that. At least, to a degree. But I do also enjoy a good conversation,” Sunny began peeling the carrots, glad that she had spent the bits on a vegetable peeler so that she no longer had to use a knife.
Big Mac thought for a moment and must have agreed with her, because he soon spoke again. “Could Ah ask ‘bout your mark?”
“My cutie mark? You’re asking why it’s not an apple.” It was not a question, Sunny had met members of the Apple Family before and it was always one of the first things she was asked.
Big Mac nodded.
“It’s pretty simple: Babs and I are half sisters, we share a father but not a mother.” Sunny said while cutting carrots into little disks after removing either end of each carrot. “In truth, you and I aren’t related at all.”
“Ah disagree,” Big Mac said, stopping what he was doing to turn towards her. “You an’ Ah are family. Blood ain’t everything.”
Sunny froze mid slice and turned her head up to look into his eyes, and saw only sincerity. Sunny returned to cutting the carrots.
“You Ponyville Apples are something else,” Sunny said with a sigh, but she was smiling. “Neither you or Applejack realised that you didn’t know my full name before counting me as family.”
Sunny turned away from him to dump the carrot slices into the rest of the vegetables and mix them together, and Big Mac took it as a sign that their conversation was over despite his curiosity. He turned back to the bread, and he picked up a knife to score the top of the loaves.
They worked quietly for a few minutes. Big Mac put the bread in the oven and was making an apple butter while Sunny was stirring the stew after putting it on the stove.
“Sunflower Seed, by the way,” Sunny said casually and suddenly while she started mixing hay bacon pieces into mashed potatoes. “My name is Sunflower Seed.”
The Hearth's Warming Eve dinner was complete and laid out on the table. There was a pot of vegetable stew, two loaves of bread with one cut into slices and a dish of apple butter beside it, and there was a bowl of restaurant style mashed potatoes. It was not what Apple Bloom or Big Mac usually had on Hearth's Warming Eve, but it looked delicious nonetheless.
For Babs Seed and Sunny, it was just more than they would usually make in both quantity and variety.
The four of them each got their meal, the fillies first, and they were sitting in the same position as when they were playing board games. They were talking over dinner, just about whatever. Babs was watching in amusement as the other three debated if apple butter or honey made a better cornbread topping, and no, they did not have any cornbread at the table.
Most families considered Hearth's Warming Eve to be little more than the precursor and setup for the day itself, Babs knew that it was exactly how most of the Apple Family treated it. But it wasn't like the holiday magically made the memories special, it was the ponies that did that. Looking around the table, Babs Seed couldn't help but feel that the Hearth's Warming Eve she celebrated with her sister and cousins was the greatest gift the season could bring her.
Author's Note
For those curious: the game they play is Dead of Winter.
I was asked to write a cozy and wholesome slice of life story about Babs Seed and Apple Bloom, and I am honestly pretty happy with what came out.
Happy Hearth's Warming and Jinglemas Fluttercheer, and I hope that you enjoyed your gift.
