Babs and the Hearth's Warming Giftby scoots2ChaptersAn unexpected questionAn unexpected guestAn unexpected giftAn unexpected questionTonight it was only Babs, Gramma, Poppy, and the tree. Alicorn Night was the last day in the Hearth’s Warming season, celebrating the arrival of the two Princesses, Luna and Celestia, in Equestria, and the beginning of their harmonious rule. The traditional celebrations included a special cake, fireworks that lit up the night sky, and parties that lasted until morning. Fillies and colts were permitted to stay up as long as they wanted. The day afterwards, the decorations came down, school and work started, and everything returned to normal until Winter Wrap Up. Anisette Seed had retired to bed early, announcing that she had spent the last month cooking and baking, that she was done, and that anypony who woke her up would get a hoof to the ear. Nopony thought she really would do this, probably, but nopony wanted to try it. Babs’ older sister Avocado was at work. Alicorn Night was the best night of the year for tips, and she wouldn’t be getting home until early the next morning, with a saddlebag full of bits. Coconut would be leaving for work just as she came back. Milk runs, he informed them, didn’t stop just because everypony else was taking a holiday, and he would be doing what he did every morning: getting up in the small hours, wrapping a scarf around his head to keep off the cold, and pulling a cart full of heavy metal milk cans. So with one member of the family at work and two who had gone to bed, the only ones up this Alicorn Night were Babs, Gramma Seed, Poppy, and the tree. It wasn’t much of a celebration, but everypony seemed satisfied with it. The room was lit only by the tree and two lamps, which cast their glow on the worn red carpet. The Alicorn Cake sat out on the table, along with a few plates that Poppy would clean up later, probably licking off the last almond-laced crumbs. Poppy had his hooves up and was reading the New Yoke Post from cover to cover, something he seldom got to do. Gramma had her bobbin pillow out and was making hoof-crafted lace, while smugly reflecting that, judging from the party guests earlier in the month, at least she hadn’t let herself go like other mares her age. Babs, meanwhile, had crawled under the tree and was enjoying herself in a quiet way. Poppy had put some soft holiday music on the gramophone, punctuated with some booming noises from #3, the twins screaming in #4, and the occasional sound of giggling and cider bottles breaking in the alley. For the Broncs, it was practically silent. Then the tree said, “So how come we didn’t have, like, the whole family over for Hearth’s Warming?” Poppy jumped and bit his tongue. He’d forgotten Babs was under the tree. Gramma Seed looked up from her lacemaking and asked, “What was that, Babsy-Bits?” Babs groaned. “Ah, Gramma, not Babsy-Bits!” “Very well, Nutmeg Myristica.” Babs slapped her hoof to her forehead. This was the problem with being the youngest in the family. They’d already used up all the sensible names, like Coconut and Avocado, and gave you a dumb name, like Nutmeg Myristica. Then they realized that they couldn’t go around calling you “Nutmeg Myristica” all day, either, so they gave you a really dumb nickname like “Babsy-Bits,” because you were too young and too small to fight it. One good thing about the new school was that she’d left “Babsy-Bits” behind her. She was stuck with “Nutmeg,” but by gosh, they were not going to pin “Babsy-Bits” on her again. She’d made Coconut and Avocado promise not to call her that, and they never did, except when they really wanted to bust her chops or when they forgot. “Couldja please just call me ‘Babs,’ Gramma?” “You’ll always be my Babsy-Bits,” Gramma Seed said serenely. Babs knew when grown ponies were trying to change the subject, and simply asked the question again. “So, Poppy, why didn’t we have, like, the whole family over for Hearth’s Warming?” Poppy put his paper down and gesticulated wildly with one hoof. “What are you talkin’ about, Babs? We had the Seeds, the Pepitis, the Semillis, the Samens, the Zoymans—the house was packed. I thought your ma was gonna go nuts there for a minute or two. If we’d of had anymore family over, we would of had to break the windows.” The brown filly stuck her head out from under the tree, pink hair flopping over her face, and fixed Poppy with a one-eyed glare. “That was all the Seed side of the family,” she said accusingly. “There was prac’ly nopony from the Apple side of the family.” “They live a long ways away,” murmured Poppy, retiring behind the Post, which he was now using as a shield. “Your ma sent cookies.” “Not to the Pears, the Persimmons, or the Oranges. She didn’t send ‘em nothing. I saw the list, and they didn’t get even a card.” “And what, young filly,” asked Gramma Seed, sliding her glasses down her pale golden nose, “were you doing meddling with your mother’s Hearth’s Warming list?” “Meddlin’? I wasn’t doing no meddlin’.” “You weren’t doing ANY meddling, dear,” Gramma said patiently. She had not yet given up hope that her son and his children would lose the thick Broncs accent they had acquired, and speak with a cultivated Baltimare accent instead. “That’s what I said. I wasn’t doing no meddlin’. Ma was having me address everything with her 'til my mouth hurt. I know, ‘cause I hadda cancel two Cutie Mark meetings in a row and I dunno when we’ll get a chance to practice with the railway signals again. The Persimmons, the Pears, and the Oranges didn’t get nothin’. And the Oranges live in Manehatten, which is practically next door, so I just wanna know why they wasn’t even invited.” Poppy froze. Gramma Seed placed the lace pillow down and shifted uncomfortably, making her support saddle creak. Nopony said anything for a moment. Then Gramma Seed said, “Poppy, get the book.” “Are you sure, Ma?” he said uncertainly. “Poppy,” she repeated firmly, “get the book.” Poppy rose from his chair and trotted out of the room, shaking his head. The matriarch of the Seed family gazed down at Babs with such a wistful look in her grass green eyes that the filly slid out from under the tree and trotted over to her grandmother, who placed her hoof under her chin. “Babs, you never met your Grandfather Pepper.” It was a statement, not a question. Nopony ever mentioned Grandpa Pepper, who had died before Babs had been born. Gramma Seed sighed. “I think it’s time you met him now.” Author's Note A Twelfth Night story, or the Pony equivalent. Perhaps "sad" isn't as accurate as "sentimental" or "nostalgic," but if the reader hopes for a happy ending, I assure you that you will get one. The cover art is by DaughterofFantasy on DeviantArt, and I thank her very much for allowing me to use it. An unexpected guestThe book wasn’t a photograph album, like the seemingly endless number the Apples had. It was covered in tooled brown leather, with golden ornamentation, and it had odd things protruding out of it: photographs, newspaper clippings, ribbons, and faded sheets of paper Babs didn’t recognize. Gramma opened up the book carefully, and she could see one reason it wasn’t opened very often: it leaked. Tissues, pictures, and other memorabilia slid around and threatened to spill out. It also leaked dust, which tickled her nose, and she sneezed so hard that Gramma had to clutch at the book. The cider brown filly and the pale golden mare bent over it, while Poppy stood behind the sofa and leaned over to look. The very first thing in it was a theatrical flyer from the Baltimare Sun. “And there he is,” said Gramma Seed. Babs didn’t see what she was supposed to be looking at, and then her father stabbed his hoof downward. “There. Right between the magician and the trained ewe act.” Pepper Seed, Hoofer. Babs’ jaw dropped. “Get right out of town.” “Don’t talk to your gramma like that.” “I wasn’t talking bad!” Babs shot back, turning to look at Poppy. “I don’t even know what a hoofer is!” “He was a dancer,” Gramma Seed said, flipping to another page. “A very good dancer.” “I’ll say he was,” Poppy put in proudly, leaning both front legs against the back of the sofa. “Signature moves, he had. Some of them dancers are out there, still tryin’ to do ‘em, and they can’t even come close.” A yellowed and cracked sepia photograph slid onto the floor. “Oh, I didn’t realize that was still in there,” exclaimed Gramma. “It must have been one of the things I took with me.” Babs scrambled off the sofa and peered down at the picture. A row of fillies looked shyly out at the camera, all wearing the same delicate white old-fashioned flower headdress. Under the picture, in faint pencil, were names: Magnolia Blossom. Tulip Tree. Sugar Pear. If you squinted a bit and used your imagination, you could just recognize Sugar Pear as the filly Gramma Seed had been. “Our cute-ceañera. We all had a big one at Miss Saddlebred’s,” Gramma said casually, peering over the tops of her silver framed spectacles. “That was my entire class. Afterwards, we slipped out and went to the Palace, which of course,” she added sternly, “no nice young filly would have dared to do.” Babs was tempted to say, “well, you did,” but decided that she’d better not say anything if she wanted to hear this story. “I’m afraid the magician wasn’t very good. Even we could see exactly how she performed every trick, and she was a unicorn, too, it ought to have been easy for her. Then Pepper was on. Oh, my,” the old mare said. “Oh, MY.” Gramma was too busy staring at the next picture to notice that Babs couldn’t see it, so she scrambled back on the sofa again. It was a black and white picture of a young stallion with his mane slicked down on one side, wearing a white bowtie and a smile that showed a lot of very good teeth. “He was only playing Baltimare for a week,” the old mare said, “and he was very worried about what my father would think. He didn’t think sneaking around was right, and I don’t think he meant to tell me when the theatrical engagement was over and he had to leave. I had to pack my schoolbags in a rush because--" “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the filly broke in, waving her hooves, “roll that back. Your schoolbags? And you was what age?” “As young as . . . no,” Gramma said, ruminating and looking up at the ceiling as though it would help her remember, “I must have been younger than Avocado. Fillies married much younger then,” she explained. “The real reason my father would never have given his approval was because Pepper was a dancer.” “An’ he was from the neighborhood, don’t forget that,” Poppy broke in. “He spoke all classy-like on account of being onstage, but he never forgot where he was from, and nopony else let him forget about it either. Not that it matters,” he added defensively. “As I was saying, I had to pack my schoolbags in a rush and gallop to the Baltimare train station. I barely made it. And I never regretted it. Not once.” Babs cringed slightly, thinking as she did so that Gramma’s story was getting incredibly sappy. It was the sort of story that Sweetie Belle or Apple Bloom might have appreciated, but that she and Scootaloo gagged at. Still, she thought, this wasn’t just some sappy story. It was Gramma, and that made it different. Besides, she could feel that the old mare next to her was sad, so she slid in closer until her pudgy side was comfortingly next to her grandmother’s, then poked her in the ribs with a sharp hoof. “So then what happened?” “Young fillies did not poke in my day, Nutmeg. I changed my name and we became a double act. Hold the book, will you? Poppy, if you would help me unfold this, please.” The ladylike mare rose from the sofa. She and Poppy took either side of a large theatrical poster, and carefully unrolled it. The poster was adorned with a silhouette of a dancing mare and stallion. The stallion was wearing a top hat and holding a cane in his teeth. FELDMAN’S FOALIES PRESENTS **The Syncopated Seeds ** Pepper and Coco de Mer In Chevaux de Paris Babs blinked at it, and said in a voice not unlike her cousin Apple Bloom’s, “Seriously?” Poppy hoofed her in the back of the head. “They was considered very sophisticated back in the day. Look at ‘em.” It was hard not to look at them—theatrical program after theatrical program, publicity shot after publicity shot, all featuring a filly-like young mare and a stallion with a dazzling smile, dancing in the rain with umbrellas or tapping around fireworks. She could not put these pictures together in her mind with the image of her sedate grandmother, making lace, stitching trim, or at the treadle of the sewing machine. Meanwhile, Poppy had raced over to the gramophone and flipped a different record on, while Gramma Coco nudged the rug with her nose until it rolled up. A pleasant baritone and a girlish soprano trilled— Oh, listen to the rain on the roof Head over heart, heart over hoof My darrrrling— —as her grandmother skittered across the floor, metal shoes clicking. “Buck and a wing, shuffle off to Buffalo, triple time step—you still got it, Ma!” Poppy cheered, as frantic thumps and yells of “Hay, cut that out!” echoed from below. “Oops,” Gramma said, as she bumped into the Hearth’s Warming tree. Babs lunged to catch falling ornaments as her father raced over to grab the tree itself. “In any case,” she said, blowing with effort, “we were rather popular. I had hoped that your great grandparents would come around, but I tried writing to them from every town and they never wrote back, not even when Poppy and Sesame were born,” she added sadly, as she resumed her seat on the sofa. “I suppose they must have told the entire family that I’d disgraced them, because I never heard from any of the Pears again.” “Or the Persimmons, or the Oranges,” said the dark stallion, spitting out pine needles from pulling the tree back into place. “They just wrote both of them off. How do ya like –" “Them Apples?” his daughter finished. “What, the Apples wouldn’t talk to Gramma either?” “You’ve met ‘em, and you know different,” he said, taking the dance record off the gramophone. “Not Granny Smith, not any of her kids. You know what they’re like. Family’s family to ‘em. But the Pears, the Persimmons, and the Oranges--“ “Pepper was in the theater,” Gramma Coco cut in. “It wasn’t acceptable. You have to understand their point of view, Poppy.” Poppy shook his head in a blur of brown mane. “No,” he said stubbornly, as he kicked the rug back into place. “No, I don’t gotta understand their point of view. Dad was the best. You know he was.” “Poppy,” warned his mother, “if you won’t be reasonable, I’ll have to show Nutmeg the photograph.” “Not that! No, Ma, c’mon!” The old mare pulled out another photo, and Babs trotted over to look. Two small fillies with long curly golden manes that did not quite go with their dark coats posed, holding hoops in their teeth. “Who’s the fillies?” Babs asked. Her father covered his muzzle with both of his front hooves. “One of them would be me. That was me an’ your Aunt Sesame. We hadda roll them hoops around and kick ‘em and jump through ‘em. But the audience,” he added proudly, “ate it up. Dad was smart. We played all of the towns on the circuit, big and small. Fillydelphia, Hoofington, Trottingham, even Canterlot. Then we got to Dodge Junction.” Coco de Mer Seed was still nervous before she went onstage, even though Pepper assured her over and over that she was a natural. She adjusted her pearls, checked her beauty spot, and sprayed another layer of lacquer over her mane. A hoof tapped respectfully on the door. “Yes, I’m decent!” she called. Her husband poked his head around the door, grinning. “You’re always decent, Coco. You’re almost too respectable to be married to a show stallion like me.” “Oh, stop,” she protested. “Careful!” she added and batted him on the nose with a powder puff as he leaned in for a kiss. “I just finished making up.” Pepper sneezed. “I noticed,” he said, after he finished coughing. “I just thought you’d like to see this.” He dropped a letter on the dressing table. “Guess who liked our screen test?” Coco squealed, dropping the powder puff and knocking over the manespray. “No!” she shrieked. “Not the Goldhooves! Oh, Pepper!” “I’ve been telling you all along that the flickers would need song and dance teams. Hay!” he added, as she flung her front legs around him, “I thought you just finished making up!” “Oh, Pepper, I can’t believe it! They really want us?” “They want us in Applewood as soon as the run is over. We’ll be on our way to Los Pegasus before the end of the month. Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sugar, your mane is coming down. We’ll have plenty of time to celebrate later. I’m on in ten and you’re on in less than fifteen.” She turned back to the dressing table to repair the damage as Pepper trotted to the door. The last she saw of him was the view in the mirror as he leaned against the doorframe. “I gotta say,” he said, with the trace of Broncs accent kicking in, “I gotta be da luckiest stallion in da world.” “Babs,” Poppy said firmly, “you ain’t never been in a theater, have you?” “No, Poppy,” the plump brown filly said, shaking her pink mane. “Not a real theater theater, just a movie theater.” “That’s right, honey, and you ain't never gonna be if I got anything to say about it,” he said, green eye to green eye. “And if you do go, you stay in the audience, you don’t go backstage, got that?” he added, poking her in the chest. “And if you still gotta be so stupid, and you gotta promise me you won’t be, remember that there’s a reason for every superstition in the theater. You don’t have real flowers, you don’t wish other ponies luck, and you never, ever, ever whistle on the stage.” “I still don’t believe he was the one who whistled,” said Gramma Seed, suddenly sounding very old. “Pepper knew better than that. He knew that was a signal to lower—to lower scenery.” “In front of a paying audience, too,” Poppy said, shuddering, “but who knows, that prob’ly was the way he’d of wanted to go.” He kicked at the rug, bitterly reflecting on the tragic accident that had ruined his childhood, and the accompanying headline, “Pepper Jelly At Dodge Junction Opera House.” “Pepper wouldn’t have wanted us to brood about it,” his mother said, briskly putting the pictures and clippings back into the book. “He spent his whole life making other ponies happy.” “And that was that, Babs,” her father said, settling back into his chair. “We left Dodge Junction and we left Dad there. And the Pears and the Persimmons and the Oranges—they didn’t bother coming to the memorial service, or sending flowers, and they didn’t even write.” His voice shook. “They never even asked.” “They didn’t have no time for us then,” Poppy added, swinging his hooves up on the ottoman and picking up the paper, “and I ain’t got no time for ‘em now.” Author's Note The song is a rough echo of "Rain on the Roof," from Stephen Sondheim's *Follies*. An unexpected giftThe pleasant holiday mood had been broken. The room seemed, on the surface, to be exactly the same—Babs on the worn red rug, Poppy in his favorite sagging brown chair, and Gramma carefully moving the bobbins on her pillow, making long strands of lace she would later stitch onto dresses—but some wet stains on her muzzle gave away that Gramma had been crying, and behind his copy of the New Yoke Post, Poppy was shaking with rage. Her favorite time of the whole year was slipping away in just a few hours, and somehow she’d ruined it by asking why more of the family couldn’t have shared it with them. Babs had never heard Poppy sound so bitter or so angry. He spent most of his time listening to ponies screaming at each other and saying things like, “All right now, break it up,” and “Uh-huh, lady. And then what happened after the cart entered the intersection?” in a calm, soothing voice. This was a Poppy she didn’t even recognize. Oh, well, she might as well enjoy the tree on this last night, before Poppy and Coconut hauled it away tomorrow. She swiped a miniature pie off the side table. The satisfying taste was pure Apple Family sweetness. She could almost identify which orchard the apples in the pie had come from. Their generous cousins had sent such a large box of delicious treats that it had driven Babs’ mother Anisette into a frenzy of competitive baking. Among the cakes, pies, cheesecakes, and Hearth’s Warming breads, surely nopony would have missed a small box of cookies. The apple smell was so suggestive of Ponyville that Babs remembered she hadn’t filed her report to CMC headquarters. She might as well plan it now, before she was put to work cleaning up from the holidays tomorrow. She stared into the glowing lights of the tree, eating the pie with one hoof and thoughtfully tossing a fragile Neightalian glass ornament up and down in the other. CMC Equestria Headquarters, General Chairmares Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle: CMC Manehattan Local 101, Babs Seed, President Winter Quarter Q4, Cutie Mark attempts: 5 Q4, Cutie Marks accrued: 0 Membership has been banned from New Yoke Stock Exchange (hay commodities fell by 800 points), and Maretropolitan Opera. Equine fly attempt partly successful. Suction shoes functional up to 14th story, which is pretty good for earth ponies, Scootaloo, and we could totally have made it down off of that ledge ourselves if Vice Pres. Cherry Blossom hadn’t panicked, so wings ain’t everything, just saying. Anyway, we ain’t got too far yet, but we got plenty more opportunities in Manehattan. Hope you can come for a visit soon. Maybe your very special talents would only come out in the city, and we could sure have fun trying, so ask your families if you can come. Hope you all had a great Hearth’s Warming season. I mostly did. Say, you ever figure maybe getting a cutie mark makes you stupid? My big sis Avocado keeps saying there’s a bunch of stuff I’m supposed to get later on, like what’s so interesting about colts or why wearing extra-high horseshoes is worth it and like that. I’m kinda thinking maybe being mad forever is one of them. See, the cool thing about you guys is that you said you were sorry for all that stuff that happened last summer, even though I started it and I was way more mean than all of you. I never would have guessed you’d have been my friends after that, but you are, and then we never talked about it again. All over and done with, like it never happened, so we can spend our time doing fun stuff instead. So I don’t get being mad forever. I don’t see being mad at Poppy or Coconut or Avocado, or you guys now, for more than a couple of hours, and not talking to you ever again—well, if that’s what growing up and getting a cutie mark means, maybe I don’t want to. Babs stopped writing the letter in her head. If she didn’t want a cutie mark, wouldn’t she stop being a Cutie Mark Crusader? No. This, she thought, tossing the glass ornament almost up to the ceiling and catching it again, was not a letter she was going to write. Poppy stole a glance over the top of his copy of The New Yoke Post. There was his youngest, playing with one of the family’s oldest ornaments. Right hoof, left hoof, right—no matter how breakable they were, they never broke and she never missed. The kid had a good eye and good reflexes. Great reflexes, like—no. “Sorry, Poppy,” Babs said, catching the ornament as she grabbed another pie. “I never should of asked. I wish I’d of met Grandpa Pepper.” “I wish you had, too,” Poppy said, his insides burning with shame as he dropped the paper. He shouldn’t have taken his anger out on his daughter. It wasn’t her fault for asking. “Dad was the best. You would of liked him. Everypony did what bothered to meet him. It’s why he was so popular, see. He was a great dancer, yeah, but he got out there on that stage and he liked you, an’ nopony could help liking him back. He was everypony’s friend before they even met him. After he was gone, we came here, ‘cause we didn’t have noplace else to go.” A great bubble of grief began to surface from within. He hadn’t talked about Dad in years, and never to his own children. Now he’d started, and he wasn’t sure he could stop. He was being rushed backwards in time to his own colthood, when he was even younger than Babs, a small, miserable bundle huddled nose to tail in the railroad car taking him away from Dodge Junction, and away from his father for good. “That’s how we wound up in the Broncs.” “At least you had here to come to, right? I mean, comin' here, there was a good side.” Good side? What good side?— —The train clicking, pulling him away from Dad, ka-chick, ka-chick, ka-chick. Ma and Sesame and him moving into the little walk-up, two rooms, five stories up, back to Dad’s family, who they didn’t even know. —The Seeds, Pepitis, Semillis, Samens, and Zoymans, who didn’t care if they hadn’t met them yet, because they were family. —Ma making lace and running the sewing machine day and night, making dresses for other fillies’ cute-ceañeras. Waking up hungry and going to bed hungry. —The filly at the corner bakery who slipped him cookies that he ate for lunch. —The letters that always came back from the Pears, Persimmons, and Oranges, who had forgotten Ma as though she’d never been born. —The boxes full of apples from the cousins who never forgot her. —Cold winter mornings, selling papers, dropping out of school to support the family. —Knowing the neighborhood so well that he could walk it blind, which came in handy for a police pony. —Anisette. Three beautiful foals. So, yeah. “Yeah,” Poppy said slowly, rubbing his hoof across his dark brown mane, “yeah. There was a good side.” “Anyway,” said Babs, “I just wanted to know, ‘cause I met the Oranges a couple months ago. At the reunion.” “You met the Oranges?” said Gramma, suddenly looking up from her lacemaking. “Did you like them?” Babs shrugged. “They was ok.” “They nice to you?” asked Poppy. “Yeah, I guess. They was ok. They asked where we lived and where I went to school an’ stuff, and they said ‘oh’ and that it was a pleasure and like that.” She lay back on the rug, juggling the ornament, first on her front hooves, then on the back, backwards and forwards, making sharp little clicks against her horseshoes: tappity-tap-tap-tap. “They got twins, Tangelo an’ Pummelo. Kinda boring ‘cause they’re colts an’ prac’ly still foals, but anyways still kinda cousins, and they kept wanting to talk to me an’ Apple Bloom, so I sent ‘em some cookies. And a box of matches. Relax, Poppy,” she said, as her father’s eyes bulged, “I’m just yanking your bridle. I only sent the cookies. I felt sorry for ‘em.” “You felt sorry for the Oranges?” Poppy said incredulously. Colts who probably lived on Park or Fifth? Babs felt sorry for them? “Well, yeah. Their mom doesn’t even bake.” Poppy chuckled. “That’s true. Your ma’s spice cookies are the best anywhere. I tell you, I sure was lu—“ The word froze on his lips: that cursed word “lucky” that he never used, because it brought such bad luck. “Yeah. I thought we was pretty lucky too.” Poppy’s heart sank. Oh, Babs, never say “lucky.” Sweetie, no. Babs balanced the ornament on one hoof and sat up. “The twins sent somethin’ back. I dunno what it is. I was gonna open it up when we was all together, only Coconut and Ma went to bed and Avocado went to work, and—“ she let out a breath and continued wistfully, “seems like we’re never all together at the same time for long. Go ahead an’ open it up, Poppy.” She put the ornament down and lay back down next to the tree. Poppy trotted over to the hall. A moment later, a burst of laughter echoed back to his mother. “Ma,” he called, “this is something you gotta see.” Poppy trotted back, four gold boxes of graduating size stacked high on his hindquarters and a card held in his teeth. Gramma Seed took it and read it while he slid the packages down his rump to the table. “Thank you for your continued patronage. We wish you and yours all the joys of this holiday season. Best regards, Stodge and Company.” “That’s a corporate gift if I ever seen one,” he said, tears stinging his eyes as he wheezed with laughter. “You mean they just grabbed it off of the pile without even telling anypony?” “Prob’ly,” Babs said, yawning. “That's the kinda thing they do. What’s inside?” Poppy pulled the lid off the boxes and whistled. “It’s nice. You had enough candy for tonight, though.” “Chocolates, Ma. The real fancy kind. Champagne. There’s silk scarves in this one,” he added in an undertone, so that Babs couldn’t hear him. “Don’t Babs even know the difference?” Doesn’t she know we don’t have much? Doesn’t she know that the cute-ceañera dresses her gramma makes are so expensive that only rich little fillies’ families can afford them? That Avocado couldn’t have one, and she wouldn’t have one herself? Doesn’t she understand that everypony in the family works hard all the time, and that’s why we almost never are all together? “It’s hard to tell,” Gramma Seed said, thoughtfully tying off some strands. “Sometimes I think she doesn’t know which ponies are rich and which ponies are poor, and sometimes I think she does, but it just doesn’t matter to her. It didn’t matter to Pepper, or to me.” “They’re just presents,” said Poppy, looking down into the chocolate boxes. “And she sent cookies to the Oranges ‘cause they’re littler than her an’ they’re cousins, and it’s Hearth’s Warming and she felt sorry for ‘em. Well,” he said, sighing, “she’s prob’ly right. You,” he added to the plump little figure, snuggled close to the tree, “are a very smart young filly.” But Babs was asleep. Author's Note I've never thought of Babs as the Orange's daughter. In fact, I was Babs-obsessed enough to ask: Is Babs the Orange's daughter? Yep, that was me. Still, she didn't say "no," right? And I thought this comic by supersheep64 was pretty darned funny. Manehattan is no longer safe Another inspiration for this fic was Italo Calvino's "Santa's Children," although there, the "poor children" do give the rich kid a box of matches. Dark comedy ensues. Anyway, I hope fellow Babsians enjoyed this. Trust me, reverse Babs pimpage shall happen.
An unexpected questionTonight it was only Babs, Gramma, Poppy, and the tree. Alicorn Night was the last day in the Hearth’s Warming season, celebrating the arrival of the two Princesses, Luna and Celestia, in Equestria, and the beginning of their harmonious rule. The traditional celebrations included a special cake, fireworks that lit up the night sky, and parties that lasted until morning. Fillies and colts were permitted to stay up as long as they wanted. The day afterwards, the decorations came down, school and work started, and everything returned to normal until Winter Wrap Up. Anisette Seed had retired to bed early, announcing that she had spent the last month cooking and baking, that she was done, and that anypony who woke her up would get a hoof to the ear. Nopony thought she really would do this, probably, but nopony wanted to try it. Babs’ older sister Avocado was at work. Alicorn Night was the best night of the year for tips, and she wouldn’t be getting home until early the next morning, with a saddlebag full of bits. Coconut would be leaving for work just as she came back. Milk runs, he informed them, didn’t stop just because everypony else was taking a holiday, and he would be doing what he did every morning: getting up in the small hours, wrapping a scarf around his head to keep off the cold, and pulling a cart full of heavy metal milk cans. So with one member of the family at work and two who had gone to bed, the only ones up this Alicorn Night were Babs, Gramma Seed, Poppy, and the tree. It wasn’t much of a celebration, but everypony seemed satisfied with it. The room was lit only by the tree and two lamps, which cast their glow on the worn red carpet. The Alicorn Cake sat out on the table, along with a few plates that Poppy would clean up later, probably licking off the last almond-laced crumbs. Poppy had his hooves up and was reading the New Yoke Post from cover to cover, something he seldom got to do. Gramma had her bobbin pillow out and was making hoof-crafted lace, while smugly reflecting that, judging from the party guests earlier in the month, at least she hadn’t let herself go like other mares her age. Babs, meanwhile, had crawled under the tree and was enjoying herself in a quiet way. Poppy had put some soft holiday music on the gramophone, punctuated with some booming noises from #3, the twins screaming in #4, and the occasional sound of giggling and cider bottles breaking in the alley. For the Broncs, it was practically silent. Then the tree said, “So how come we didn’t have, like, the whole family over for Hearth’s Warming?” Poppy jumped and bit his tongue. He’d forgotten Babs was under the tree. Gramma Seed looked up from her lacemaking and asked, “What was that, Babsy-Bits?” Babs groaned. “Ah, Gramma, not Babsy-Bits!” “Very well, Nutmeg Myristica.” Babs slapped her hoof to her forehead. This was the problem with being the youngest in the family. They’d already used up all the sensible names, like Coconut and Avocado, and gave you a dumb name, like Nutmeg Myristica. Then they realized that they couldn’t go around calling you “Nutmeg Myristica” all day, either, so they gave you a really dumb nickname like “Babsy-Bits,” because you were too young and too small to fight it. One good thing about the new school was that she’d left “Babsy-Bits” behind her. She was stuck with “Nutmeg,” but by gosh, they were not going to pin “Babsy-Bits” on her again. She’d made Coconut and Avocado promise not to call her that, and they never did, except when they really wanted to bust her chops or when they forgot. “Couldja please just call me ‘Babs,’ Gramma?” “You’ll always be my Babsy-Bits,” Gramma Seed said serenely. Babs knew when grown ponies were trying to change the subject, and simply asked the question again. “So, Poppy, why didn’t we have, like, the whole family over for Hearth’s Warming?” Poppy put his paper down and gesticulated wildly with one hoof. “What are you talkin’ about, Babs? We had the Seeds, the Pepitis, the Semillis, the Samens, the Zoymans—the house was packed. I thought your ma was gonna go nuts there for a minute or two. If we’d of had anymore family over, we would of had to break the windows.” The brown filly stuck her head out from under the tree, pink hair flopping over her face, and fixed Poppy with a one-eyed glare. “That was all the Seed side of the family,” she said accusingly. “There was prac’ly nopony from the Apple side of the family.” “They live a long ways away,” murmured Poppy, retiring behind the Post, which he was now using as a shield. “Your ma sent cookies.” “Not to the Pears, the Persimmons, or the Oranges. She didn’t send ‘em nothing. I saw the list, and they didn’t get even a card.” “And what, young filly,” asked Gramma Seed, sliding her glasses down her pale golden nose, “were you doing meddling with your mother’s Hearth’s Warming list?” “Meddlin’? I wasn’t doing no meddlin’.” “You weren’t doing ANY meddling, dear,” Gramma said patiently. She had not yet given up hope that her son and his children would lose the thick Broncs accent they had acquired, and speak with a cultivated Baltimare accent instead. “That’s what I said. I wasn’t doing no meddlin’. Ma was having me address everything with her 'til my mouth hurt. I know, ‘cause I hadda cancel two Cutie Mark meetings in a row and I dunno when we’ll get a chance to practice with the railway signals again. The Persimmons, the Pears, and the Oranges didn’t get nothin’. And the Oranges live in Manehatten, which is practically next door, so I just wanna know why they wasn’t even invited.” Poppy froze. Gramma Seed placed the lace pillow down and shifted uncomfortably, making her support saddle creak. Nopony said anything for a moment. Then Gramma Seed said, “Poppy, get the book.” “Are you sure, Ma?” he said uncertainly. “Poppy,” she repeated firmly, “get the book.” Poppy rose from his chair and trotted out of the room, shaking his head. The matriarch of the Seed family gazed down at Babs with such a wistful look in her grass green eyes that the filly slid out from under the tree and trotted over to her grandmother, who placed her hoof under her chin. “Babs, you never met your Grandfather Pepper.” It was a statement, not a question. Nopony ever mentioned Grandpa Pepper, who had died before Babs had been born. Gramma Seed sighed. “I think it’s time you met him now.” Author's Note A Twelfth Night story, or the Pony equivalent. Perhaps "sad" isn't as accurate as "sentimental" or "nostalgic," but if the reader hopes for a happy ending, I assure you that you will get one. The cover art is by DaughterofFantasy on DeviantArt, and I thank her very much for allowing me to use it.
An unexpected guestThe book wasn’t a photograph album, like the seemingly endless number the Apples had. It was covered in tooled brown leather, with golden ornamentation, and it had odd things protruding out of it: photographs, newspaper clippings, ribbons, and faded sheets of paper Babs didn’t recognize. Gramma opened up the book carefully, and she could see one reason it wasn’t opened very often: it leaked. Tissues, pictures, and other memorabilia slid around and threatened to spill out. It also leaked dust, which tickled her nose, and she sneezed so hard that Gramma had to clutch at the book. The cider brown filly and the pale golden mare bent over it, while Poppy stood behind the sofa and leaned over to look. The very first thing in it was a theatrical flyer from the Baltimare Sun. “And there he is,” said Gramma Seed. Babs didn’t see what she was supposed to be looking at, and then her father stabbed his hoof downward. “There. Right between the magician and the trained ewe act.” Pepper Seed, Hoofer. Babs’ jaw dropped. “Get right out of town.” “Don’t talk to your gramma like that.” “I wasn’t talking bad!” Babs shot back, turning to look at Poppy. “I don’t even know what a hoofer is!” “He was a dancer,” Gramma Seed said, flipping to another page. “A very good dancer.” “I’ll say he was,” Poppy put in proudly, leaning both front legs against the back of the sofa. “Signature moves, he had. Some of them dancers are out there, still tryin’ to do ‘em, and they can’t even come close.” A yellowed and cracked sepia photograph slid onto the floor. “Oh, I didn’t realize that was still in there,” exclaimed Gramma. “It must have been one of the things I took with me.” Babs scrambled off the sofa and peered down at the picture. A row of fillies looked shyly out at the camera, all wearing the same delicate white old-fashioned flower headdress. Under the picture, in faint pencil, were names: Magnolia Blossom. Tulip Tree. Sugar Pear. If you squinted a bit and used your imagination, you could just recognize Sugar Pear as the filly Gramma Seed had been. “Our cute-ceañera. We all had a big one at Miss Saddlebred’s,” Gramma said casually, peering over the tops of her silver framed spectacles. “That was my entire class. Afterwards, we slipped out and went to the Palace, which of course,” she added sternly, “no nice young filly would have dared to do.” Babs was tempted to say, “well, you did,” but decided that she’d better not say anything if she wanted to hear this story. “I’m afraid the magician wasn’t very good. Even we could see exactly how she performed every trick, and she was a unicorn, too, it ought to have been easy for her. Then Pepper was on. Oh, my,” the old mare said. “Oh, MY.” Gramma was too busy staring at the next picture to notice that Babs couldn’t see it, so she scrambled back on the sofa again. It was a black and white picture of a young stallion with his mane slicked down on one side, wearing a white bowtie and a smile that showed a lot of very good teeth. “He was only playing Baltimare for a week,” the old mare said, “and he was very worried about what my father would think. He didn’t think sneaking around was right, and I don’t think he meant to tell me when the theatrical engagement was over and he had to leave. I had to pack my schoolbags in a rush because--" “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the filly broke in, waving her hooves, “roll that back. Your schoolbags? And you was what age?” “As young as . . . no,” Gramma said, ruminating and looking up at the ceiling as though it would help her remember, “I must have been younger than Avocado. Fillies married much younger then,” she explained. “The real reason my father would never have given his approval was because Pepper was a dancer.” “An’ he was from the neighborhood, don’t forget that,” Poppy broke in. “He spoke all classy-like on account of being onstage, but he never forgot where he was from, and nopony else let him forget about it either. Not that it matters,” he added defensively. “As I was saying, I had to pack my schoolbags in a rush and gallop to the Baltimare train station. I barely made it. And I never regretted it. Not once.” Babs cringed slightly, thinking as she did so that Gramma’s story was getting incredibly sappy. It was the sort of story that Sweetie Belle or Apple Bloom might have appreciated, but that she and Scootaloo gagged at. Still, she thought, this wasn’t just some sappy story. It was Gramma, and that made it different. Besides, she could feel that the old mare next to her was sad, so she slid in closer until her pudgy side was comfortingly next to her grandmother’s, then poked her in the ribs with a sharp hoof. “So then what happened?” “Young fillies did not poke in my day, Nutmeg. I changed my name and we became a double act. Hold the book, will you? Poppy, if you would help me unfold this, please.” The ladylike mare rose from the sofa. She and Poppy took either side of a large theatrical poster, and carefully unrolled it. The poster was adorned with a silhouette of a dancing mare and stallion. The stallion was wearing a top hat and holding a cane in his teeth. FELDMAN’S FOALIES PRESENTS **The Syncopated Seeds ** Pepper and Coco de Mer In Chevaux de Paris Babs blinked at it, and said in a voice not unlike her cousin Apple Bloom’s, “Seriously?” Poppy hoofed her in the back of the head. “They was considered very sophisticated back in the day. Look at ‘em.” It was hard not to look at them—theatrical program after theatrical program, publicity shot after publicity shot, all featuring a filly-like young mare and a stallion with a dazzling smile, dancing in the rain with umbrellas or tapping around fireworks. She could not put these pictures together in her mind with the image of her sedate grandmother, making lace, stitching trim, or at the treadle of the sewing machine. Meanwhile, Poppy had raced over to the gramophone and flipped a different record on, while Gramma Coco nudged the rug with her nose until it rolled up. A pleasant baritone and a girlish soprano trilled— Oh, listen to the rain on the roof Head over heart, heart over hoof My darrrrling— —as her grandmother skittered across the floor, metal shoes clicking. “Buck and a wing, shuffle off to Buffalo, triple time step—you still got it, Ma!” Poppy cheered, as frantic thumps and yells of “Hay, cut that out!” echoed from below. “Oops,” Gramma said, as she bumped into the Hearth’s Warming tree. Babs lunged to catch falling ornaments as her father raced over to grab the tree itself. “In any case,” she said, blowing with effort, “we were rather popular. I had hoped that your great grandparents would come around, but I tried writing to them from every town and they never wrote back, not even when Poppy and Sesame were born,” she added sadly, as she resumed her seat on the sofa. “I suppose they must have told the entire family that I’d disgraced them, because I never heard from any of the Pears again.” “Or the Persimmons, or the Oranges,” said the dark stallion, spitting out pine needles from pulling the tree back into place. “They just wrote both of them off. How do ya like –" “Them Apples?” his daughter finished. “What, the Apples wouldn’t talk to Gramma either?” “You’ve met ‘em, and you know different,” he said, taking the dance record off the gramophone. “Not Granny Smith, not any of her kids. You know what they’re like. Family’s family to ‘em. But the Pears, the Persimmons, and the Oranges--“ “Pepper was in the theater,” Gramma Coco cut in. “It wasn’t acceptable. You have to understand their point of view, Poppy.” Poppy shook his head in a blur of brown mane. “No,” he said stubbornly, as he kicked the rug back into place. “No, I don’t gotta understand their point of view. Dad was the best. You know he was.” “Poppy,” warned his mother, “if you won’t be reasonable, I’ll have to show Nutmeg the photograph.” “Not that! No, Ma, c’mon!” The old mare pulled out another photo, and Babs trotted over to look. Two small fillies with long curly golden manes that did not quite go with their dark coats posed, holding hoops in their teeth. “Who’s the fillies?” Babs asked. Her father covered his muzzle with both of his front hooves. “One of them would be me. That was me an’ your Aunt Sesame. We hadda roll them hoops around and kick ‘em and jump through ‘em. But the audience,” he added proudly, “ate it up. Dad was smart. We played all of the towns on the circuit, big and small. Fillydelphia, Hoofington, Trottingham, even Canterlot. Then we got to Dodge Junction.” Coco de Mer Seed was still nervous before she went onstage, even though Pepper assured her over and over that she was a natural. She adjusted her pearls, checked her beauty spot, and sprayed another layer of lacquer over her mane. A hoof tapped respectfully on the door. “Yes, I’m decent!” she called. Her husband poked his head around the door, grinning. “You’re always decent, Coco. You’re almost too respectable to be married to a show stallion like me.” “Oh, stop,” she protested. “Careful!” she added and batted him on the nose with a powder puff as he leaned in for a kiss. “I just finished making up.” Pepper sneezed. “I noticed,” he said, after he finished coughing. “I just thought you’d like to see this.” He dropped a letter on the dressing table. “Guess who liked our screen test?” Coco squealed, dropping the powder puff and knocking over the manespray. “No!” she shrieked. “Not the Goldhooves! Oh, Pepper!” “I’ve been telling you all along that the flickers would need song and dance teams. Hay!” he added, as she flung her front legs around him, “I thought you just finished making up!” “Oh, Pepper, I can’t believe it! They really want us?” “They want us in Applewood as soon as the run is over. We’ll be on our way to Los Pegasus before the end of the month. Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sugar, your mane is coming down. We’ll have plenty of time to celebrate later. I’m on in ten and you’re on in less than fifteen.” She turned back to the dressing table to repair the damage as Pepper trotted to the door. The last she saw of him was the view in the mirror as he leaned against the doorframe. “I gotta say,” he said, with the trace of Broncs accent kicking in, “I gotta be da luckiest stallion in da world.” “Babs,” Poppy said firmly, “you ain’t never been in a theater, have you?” “No, Poppy,” the plump brown filly said, shaking her pink mane. “Not a real theater theater, just a movie theater.” “That’s right, honey, and you ain't never gonna be if I got anything to say about it,” he said, green eye to green eye. “And if you do go, you stay in the audience, you don’t go backstage, got that?” he added, poking her in the chest. “And if you still gotta be so stupid, and you gotta promise me you won’t be, remember that there’s a reason for every superstition in the theater. You don’t have real flowers, you don’t wish other ponies luck, and you never, ever, ever whistle on the stage.” “I still don’t believe he was the one who whistled,” said Gramma Seed, suddenly sounding very old. “Pepper knew better than that. He knew that was a signal to lower—to lower scenery.” “In front of a paying audience, too,” Poppy said, shuddering, “but who knows, that prob’ly was the way he’d of wanted to go.” He kicked at the rug, bitterly reflecting on the tragic accident that had ruined his childhood, and the accompanying headline, “Pepper Jelly At Dodge Junction Opera House.” “Pepper wouldn’t have wanted us to brood about it,” his mother said, briskly putting the pictures and clippings back into the book. “He spent his whole life making other ponies happy.” “And that was that, Babs,” her father said, settling back into his chair. “We left Dodge Junction and we left Dad there. And the Pears and the Persimmons and the Oranges—they didn’t bother coming to the memorial service, or sending flowers, and they didn’t even write.” His voice shook. “They never even asked.” “They didn’t have no time for us then,” Poppy added, swinging his hooves up on the ottoman and picking up the paper, “and I ain’t got no time for ‘em now.” Author's Note The song is a rough echo of "Rain on the Roof," from Stephen Sondheim's *Follies*.
An unexpected giftThe pleasant holiday mood had been broken. The room seemed, on the surface, to be exactly the same—Babs on the worn red rug, Poppy in his favorite sagging brown chair, and Gramma carefully moving the bobbins on her pillow, making long strands of lace she would later stitch onto dresses—but some wet stains on her muzzle gave away that Gramma had been crying, and behind his copy of the New Yoke Post, Poppy was shaking with rage. Her favorite time of the whole year was slipping away in just a few hours, and somehow she’d ruined it by asking why more of the family couldn’t have shared it with them. Babs had never heard Poppy sound so bitter or so angry. He spent most of his time listening to ponies screaming at each other and saying things like, “All right now, break it up,” and “Uh-huh, lady. And then what happened after the cart entered the intersection?” in a calm, soothing voice. This was a Poppy she didn’t even recognize. Oh, well, she might as well enjoy the tree on this last night, before Poppy and Coconut hauled it away tomorrow. She swiped a miniature pie off the side table. The satisfying taste was pure Apple Family sweetness. She could almost identify which orchard the apples in the pie had come from. Their generous cousins had sent such a large box of delicious treats that it had driven Babs’ mother Anisette into a frenzy of competitive baking. Among the cakes, pies, cheesecakes, and Hearth’s Warming breads, surely nopony would have missed a small box of cookies. The apple smell was so suggestive of Ponyville that Babs remembered she hadn’t filed her report to CMC headquarters. She might as well plan it now, before she was put to work cleaning up from the holidays tomorrow. She stared into the glowing lights of the tree, eating the pie with one hoof and thoughtfully tossing a fragile Neightalian glass ornament up and down in the other. CMC Equestria Headquarters, General Chairmares Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle: CMC Manehattan Local 101, Babs Seed, President Winter Quarter Q4, Cutie Mark attempts: 5 Q4, Cutie Marks accrued: 0 Membership has been banned from New Yoke Stock Exchange (hay commodities fell by 800 points), and Maretropolitan Opera. Equine fly attempt partly successful. Suction shoes functional up to 14th story, which is pretty good for earth ponies, Scootaloo, and we could totally have made it down off of that ledge ourselves if Vice Pres. Cherry Blossom hadn’t panicked, so wings ain’t everything, just saying. Anyway, we ain’t got too far yet, but we got plenty more opportunities in Manehattan. Hope you can come for a visit soon. Maybe your very special talents would only come out in the city, and we could sure have fun trying, so ask your families if you can come. Hope you all had a great Hearth’s Warming season. I mostly did. Say, you ever figure maybe getting a cutie mark makes you stupid? My big sis Avocado keeps saying there’s a bunch of stuff I’m supposed to get later on, like what’s so interesting about colts or why wearing extra-high horseshoes is worth it and like that. I’m kinda thinking maybe being mad forever is one of them. See, the cool thing about you guys is that you said you were sorry for all that stuff that happened last summer, even though I started it and I was way more mean than all of you. I never would have guessed you’d have been my friends after that, but you are, and then we never talked about it again. All over and done with, like it never happened, so we can spend our time doing fun stuff instead. So I don’t get being mad forever. I don’t see being mad at Poppy or Coconut or Avocado, or you guys now, for more than a couple of hours, and not talking to you ever again—well, if that’s what growing up and getting a cutie mark means, maybe I don’t want to. Babs stopped writing the letter in her head. If she didn’t want a cutie mark, wouldn’t she stop being a Cutie Mark Crusader? No. This, she thought, tossing the glass ornament almost up to the ceiling and catching it again, was not a letter she was going to write. Poppy stole a glance over the top of his copy of The New Yoke Post. There was his youngest, playing with one of the family’s oldest ornaments. Right hoof, left hoof, right—no matter how breakable they were, they never broke and she never missed. The kid had a good eye and good reflexes. Great reflexes, like—no. “Sorry, Poppy,” Babs said, catching the ornament as she grabbed another pie. “I never should of asked. I wish I’d of met Grandpa Pepper.” “I wish you had, too,” Poppy said, his insides burning with shame as he dropped the paper. He shouldn’t have taken his anger out on his daughter. It wasn’t her fault for asking. “Dad was the best. You would of liked him. Everypony did what bothered to meet him. It’s why he was so popular, see. He was a great dancer, yeah, but he got out there on that stage and he liked you, an’ nopony could help liking him back. He was everypony’s friend before they even met him. After he was gone, we came here, ‘cause we didn’t have noplace else to go.” A great bubble of grief began to surface from within. He hadn’t talked about Dad in years, and never to his own children. Now he’d started, and he wasn’t sure he could stop. He was being rushed backwards in time to his own colthood, when he was even younger than Babs, a small, miserable bundle huddled nose to tail in the railroad car taking him away from Dodge Junction, and away from his father for good. “That’s how we wound up in the Broncs.” “At least you had here to come to, right? I mean, comin' here, there was a good side.” Good side? What good side?— —The train clicking, pulling him away from Dad, ka-chick, ka-chick, ka-chick. Ma and Sesame and him moving into the little walk-up, two rooms, five stories up, back to Dad’s family, who they didn’t even know. —The Seeds, Pepitis, Semillis, Samens, and Zoymans, who didn’t care if they hadn’t met them yet, because they were family. —Ma making lace and running the sewing machine day and night, making dresses for other fillies’ cute-ceañeras. Waking up hungry and going to bed hungry. —The filly at the corner bakery who slipped him cookies that he ate for lunch. —The letters that always came back from the Pears, Persimmons, and Oranges, who had forgotten Ma as though she’d never been born. —The boxes full of apples from the cousins who never forgot her. —Cold winter mornings, selling papers, dropping out of school to support the family. —Knowing the neighborhood so well that he could walk it blind, which came in handy for a police pony. —Anisette. Three beautiful foals. So, yeah. “Yeah,” Poppy said slowly, rubbing his hoof across his dark brown mane, “yeah. There was a good side.” “Anyway,” said Babs, “I just wanted to know, ‘cause I met the Oranges a couple months ago. At the reunion.” “You met the Oranges?” said Gramma, suddenly looking up from her lacemaking. “Did you like them?” Babs shrugged. “They was ok.” “They nice to you?” asked Poppy. “Yeah, I guess. They was ok. They asked where we lived and where I went to school an’ stuff, and they said ‘oh’ and that it was a pleasure and like that.” She lay back on the rug, juggling the ornament, first on her front hooves, then on the back, backwards and forwards, making sharp little clicks against her horseshoes: tappity-tap-tap-tap. “They got twins, Tangelo an’ Pummelo. Kinda boring ‘cause they’re colts an’ prac’ly still foals, but anyways still kinda cousins, and they kept wanting to talk to me an’ Apple Bloom, so I sent ‘em some cookies. And a box of matches. Relax, Poppy,” she said, as her father’s eyes bulged, “I’m just yanking your bridle. I only sent the cookies. I felt sorry for ‘em.” “You felt sorry for the Oranges?” Poppy said incredulously. Colts who probably lived on Park or Fifth? Babs felt sorry for them? “Well, yeah. Their mom doesn’t even bake.” Poppy chuckled. “That’s true. Your ma’s spice cookies are the best anywhere. I tell you, I sure was lu—“ The word froze on his lips: that cursed word “lucky” that he never used, because it brought such bad luck. “Yeah. I thought we was pretty lucky too.” Poppy’s heart sank. Oh, Babs, never say “lucky.” Sweetie, no. Babs balanced the ornament on one hoof and sat up. “The twins sent somethin’ back. I dunno what it is. I was gonna open it up when we was all together, only Coconut and Ma went to bed and Avocado went to work, and—“ she let out a breath and continued wistfully, “seems like we’re never all together at the same time for long. Go ahead an’ open it up, Poppy.” She put the ornament down and lay back down next to the tree. Poppy trotted over to the hall. A moment later, a burst of laughter echoed back to his mother. “Ma,” he called, “this is something you gotta see.” Poppy trotted back, four gold boxes of graduating size stacked high on his hindquarters and a card held in his teeth. Gramma Seed took it and read it while he slid the packages down his rump to the table. “Thank you for your continued patronage. We wish you and yours all the joys of this holiday season. Best regards, Stodge and Company.” “That’s a corporate gift if I ever seen one,” he said, tears stinging his eyes as he wheezed with laughter. “You mean they just grabbed it off of the pile without even telling anypony?” “Prob’ly,” Babs said, yawning. “That's the kinda thing they do. What’s inside?” Poppy pulled the lid off the boxes and whistled. “It’s nice. You had enough candy for tonight, though.” “Chocolates, Ma. The real fancy kind. Champagne. There’s silk scarves in this one,” he added in an undertone, so that Babs couldn’t hear him. “Don’t Babs even know the difference?” Doesn’t she know we don’t have much? Doesn’t she know that the cute-ceañera dresses her gramma makes are so expensive that only rich little fillies’ families can afford them? That Avocado couldn’t have one, and she wouldn’t have one herself? Doesn’t she understand that everypony in the family works hard all the time, and that’s why we almost never are all together? “It’s hard to tell,” Gramma Seed said, thoughtfully tying off some strands. “Sometimes I think she doesn’t know which ponies are rich and which ponies are poor, and sometimes I think she does, but it just doesn’t matter to her. It didn’t matter to Pepper, or to me.” “They’re just presents,” said Poppy, looking down into the chocolate boxes. “And she sent cookies to the Oranges ‘cause they’re littler than her an’ they’re cousins, and it’s Hearth’s Warming and she felt sorry for ‘em. Well,” he said, sighing, “she’s prob’ly right. You,” he added to the plump little figure, snuggled close to the tree, “are a very smart young filly.” But Babs was asleep. Author's Note I've never thought of Babs as the Orange's daughter. In fact, I was Babs-obsessed enough to ask: Is Babs the Orange's daughter? Yep, that was me. Still, she didn't say "no," right? And I thought this comic by supersheep64 was pretty darned funny. Manehattan is no longer safe Another inspiration for this fic was Italo Calvino's "Santa's Children," although there, the "poor children" do give the rich kid a box of matches. Dark comedy ensues. Anyway, I hope fellow Babsians enjoyed this. Trust me, reverse Babs pimpage shall happen.
