New Year's Eve
Admiral Biscuit
I watched Cinder Glow to use her magic to lift up the calendar, getting a preview of the next month.
She’d never lift it far enough to see what the next picture was, so I wasn’t sure what motivated her to see if there was another month. Of course there’d be another month, there was always another month.
Well, except at the end of the year. Behind December was the wall, and it looked just the same as the wall everywhere else—everywhere that wasn’t under the calendar.
She looked at me curiously.
“It’s nearly the end of the year,” I told her. “So I’ve got a new calendar.” This one was goats in trees; I’d seen it in the store and found it hilarious.
Could Cinder Glow climb a tree? I wasn’t going to ask her. Hopefully the calendar didn’t inspire her to try.
She looked at the new calendar, then back at the one on the wall. I felt a tingling on my hands as she used her magic to take the new calendar from me, lift the old one off the wall, and hang the new one under the old one.
Still closed, so she wouldn’t be spoilered for whatever January’s goat-in-tree image was.
“Do you have years?”
Cinder shook her head, then moved a hoof in a so-so motion.
I thought back to what I knew about pony culture, and what I’d learned about kirin culture. Ponies, I knew, counted months as ‘moons.’ I’d assumed that when they reached twelve of them (or however many moons they had in an annual cycle) they’d count up a new year, probably right around the winter solstice.
But what if they didn’t consider it a new ‘year,’ just another month after the previous one? Not the new start that people had.
“So . . . do you just count moons?”
Cinder nodded.
“Does that mean that you don’t have any New Year’s celebration?”
Cinder’s ears perked. She loved celebrations and holidays, and went all-in on human holiday customs. “What about midwinter celebrations? Solstice celebrations?”
She nodded, and then pointed to her, me, and the couch. Then she hopped up onto the couch, made a sweeping ‘everyone’ motion, and lit a small flame from her horn, motioning it forward as if it were in place of the TV.
Then she made drinking and eating motions.
“So you all get together in front of a fire, and have a feast?”
Cinder nodded.
“That’s not so different than human customs,” I admitted. “Maybe not a fire anymore, nobody’s got a fireplace.” And I didn’t want to stay up all night with a bunch of randos, so the big group was really out. Unless Cinder really wanted to.
Assuming I got invited to a New Year’s party. “And there’s champagne, and in New York City they’ve dropped a big ball for the last century or so.”
Cinder raised her eyebrow and tilted her head, then made driving motions.
“No, we’re not driving to New York City to see them drop the ball. That’s too far.”
She frowned.
“We can watch it on TV instead.”
And with that, a plan was devised.
On New Year’s Eve, Cinder made dinner for both of us. She’d gotten addicted to watching cooking shows on YouTube and TV, and put those skills to practice in the kitchen. It had been a rough learning curve at first; she hadn’t known how to operate most of the appliances, and one of her favorite shows was British and gave their temperatures in Celsius, which had led to a few undercooked meals before I figured out what was going wrong.
On the plus side, she could boil water way faster than my stove ever could, using her magic.
It never ceased to amaze me as she worked, standing on her hind hooves, kitchen utensils pinched between her cloven hooves, pans and ingredients sometimes floating around in her magic.
She’d usually hum as she cooked, and sometimes even sing. I rarely understood what she was singing, since it was in her native language. Occasionally, it was a recognizable pop tune, although the lyrics weren’t right, since she couldn’t speak English.
I often became a kitchen assistant, doing the things she couldn’t—she was unable to use a can opener, although she’d tried.
As fun as it was to watch her struggle, or help her out, I’d bought her an electric can opener for Christmas, and she was putting it to good use.
After dinner, we sat on the couch and I turned on the TV, scrolling through the innumerable channels as I tried to figure out who was showing the New Year’s ball drop.
It turned out that all the big networks were, and they all had shows leading up to it, most of them with various musical performances and lots of retrospectives. Just about every big name was getting in on it.
Of course, we still had plenty of time to wait, so the TV stayed on as we settled into our evening routine.
By eight, I’d changed into my pajamas—something that Cinder didn’t need to bother with.
I checked the fridge to make sure that the champagne was still in there. It was a bottle of Korbel Brut; I had no idea if that was good or not. For fifteen dollars a bottle it probably wasn’t great, but decent enough.
Around ten, Cinder’s head started nodding. She didn’t stay up late—I’d noticed that she went to bed earlier and earlier as the nights got longer.
“Do you stay up until midnight to celebrate the new—the solstice?”
Cinder blinked and looked at me, then shook her head, paused, and then launched into a long bit of pantomime, punctuating it with words I didn’t know.
I eventually got the gist of it. “So you stayed up when you were younger but don’t any more?”
She nodded.
“But some ponies do stay up late to celebrate?”
Cinder nodded again, then covered a yawn.
“I feel you, sister.” I ran my hand through her mane, and then happened to glance at my laptop. “You know, we can have a fire, too.”
Cinder raised an eyebrow. She knew that we weren’t supposed to have fires inside.
A minute later, I’d found a YouTube channel showing a fire, complete with crackling noises. I set that up on the coffee table. It might not be warming, but it felt cozy.
“You can drift off if you want to,” I told her. “I’ll wake you up in time for the ball drop.”
Cinder nodded and laid her head down on my lap.
🥂🥂🥂
Between the turned-down TV, the faux fire, and the warm kirin napping on my lap, I fell asleep. I’d meant to stay awake, but it was well past my bedtime—just like Cinder, my days of pulling all-nighters, or even staying up to midnight, were in the past.
And it would have been an appropriate enough way to ring in the new year, I suppose. One of us would have woken up sooner or later; the couch wasn’t ideal to sleep on. At least not for me; Kirin didn’t sleep like humans.
Whether I was all the way asleep or just dozing, I don’t know. The last thing I remembered was a creepy AI Coke commercial and then Cinder was tapping on my shoulder.
“Just resting my eyes,” I muttered and wiped some drool away.
She wasn’t fooled.
Cinder motioned towards the coffee table, where she’d set two . . . I had some kind of flutes in my kitchen cabinets. I couldn’t remember why; maybe I’d bought them for a fancy party or maybe they’d come as a gift with a bottle or wine or something. They almost certainly weren’t proper champagne flutes, but they looked the part.
Cinder, of course, didn’t know what a champagne flute was, but she had picked what she felt was appropriate for the occasion: my ‘World’s Okayest Sister” mug and her Bob Ross “Happy Little Accident” mug. When hot liquid was put in it—or she held it with her magic for any length of time—a painting appeared on it.
I made a resolution that next year I was going to introduce her to Bob Ross’ Joy of Painting and see how she did.
She pointed to the TV, where the last ten minutes of the year were counting down.
I should have set an alarm on my phone.
I was still feeling muzzy as I reached for the laptop and turned the screen back on. Instead of the fire, there was a popup asking if I was still watching.
“I am now,” I muttered, and clicked on the button, and the fire resumed. “You know,” I told her, “One other tradition we humans have is that we make a resolution for the new year, something that we’re gonna do.”
Cinder quirked an eyebrow at me.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “Most of the time it’s something that is, uh, self-improvement. And you can keep it a secret. Some people think if you tell anyone your resolution it’ll fail, sort of like birthday wishes.”
She nodded. I’d explained birthday wishes for my birthday, so she understood that concept.
And it occurred to me that she hadn’t had a birthday . . . if they just counted months, it’d be unwieldy to have one every month. Although as a kid, I’d have loved having monthly birthday parties.
Cinder had her eyes closed in thought, and I realized she was thinking of a proper resolution.
I didn’t have one, besides the generic ‘improve myself’ ones. Eat healthier, exercise some more, read more books . . . I had been exercising more since I met her, and her weekly vegetarian meals were probably healthy. Then inspiration struck—she liked singing, and I liked her singing; maybe I should work up some courage and sing with her.
🥂🥂🥂
The two of us watched as the ball flashed through all its patterns. I knew that they’d been doing the ball drop for over a hundred years—was there ever a time when it was just a ball, or had it always been a technological marvel for its time? A century ago, did it just have a bunch of light bulbs screwed into it?
How long did they keep using the same ball? Was it a new one every year? If so, what happened to the old ones?
My phone was sitting on the couch, and I was sure that it held the answers, but now was not the time for them, not a few minutes before the New Year.
Now it was time to enjoy the moment, the crackling YouTube fire and the crowds of people watching the ball as the seconds counted down.
The TV had Cinder’s full attention; her eyes were locked on the screen.
At the two minute mark, I leaned forward and picked up my mug. “We don’t drink until midnight,” I said. “That’s the rule.”
Cinder nodded, and surrounded her cup with her aura.
One minute, and on the TV confetti started to fly, fluttering down like brightly-colored snowflakes, and the camera zoomed in on the ball, then panned over the audience.
45 seconds. She scootched over on the couch and nestled up against me, her eyes still focused on the screen. For a moment, her champagne wavered in her field, and then she transferred it to a hoof.
30 seconds. The suspense was starting to get to me. The crowd was getting raucous and the countdown began.
Petulantly, the digital clock on my DVD player switched over to midnight 24 seconds ahead of schedule.
Cinder caught that, too; she looked at me and frowned.
“That’s clock’s not right,” I said, and pointed to the TV. “That one is.”
15 seconds and they fell off in an instant, and then we were counting—me first, and then Cinder started counting down too, in her language.
We clinked our mugs at midnight, and Cinder slammed back her champagne. I guess she didn’t know she was supposed to sip it.
She wrinkled her muzzle and sneezed, then looked over at my mostly-full mug. I could see a moment of realization that she’d done it wrong, then she shrugged and nuzzled me.
I reached a hand for her floofy mane and then decided to go all in and nuzzled her back. Then I clicked off the TV because we really didn’t need that any more. I left the laptop fire on, though; it made the living room feel cozier even if it wasn’t giving off any appreciable warmth.
🥂🥂🥂
Once I’d finished my champagne, she got up off the couch and removed the old calendar from the wall, then opened the new one to January and the first of a year’s worth of goats in trees.
Author's Note
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