Gabby pushed open the doors to the post office in a hurry, startling the mare waiting for her inside. “I’m not too late am I?”
Derpy looked to the clock. “Nope! You’re right on time!”
“Okay good. I was a little worried after I lost track of time there. The Cutie Mark Crusaders were holding a seminar on winter cutie marks, and I was helping with the ones that require flight since Scootaloo can’t-“ She cut herself off. “Anyway, we went a little long without realizing, and I had to rush over here as fast as I could!”
“That’s quite alright!” Derpy replied. “You were still on time, so what you were up to before doesn’t matter to us.”
“Okay, phew!” Gabby sighed in relief. “So how am I going to be assisting y’all tonight?”
Derpy stood up from behind the desk she was seated at. “You’re going to be helping me with delivering all of the last-minute packages before Hearth’s Warming tomorrow.”
“Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad.”
Derpy gave her a bemused look. “You’d be surprised. Hearth’s Warming Eve is widely regarded as the worst night of the year for Equestria’s couriering industry.”
“Oh,” Gabby said in a smaller voice than normal. “Why’s that?”
“It’s the day with the most packages, the most irate customers, and the biggest incentive to just go home and spend time with your family.”
“Oh,” Gabby said in an even smaller voice.
“Don’t worry, your help tonight is going to make it go by mush faster than usual. We all seriously can’t thank you enough.”
“Oh, well if there’s one thing I live for, it’s helping others!” Gabby said, suddenly feeling much more self assured.
“That’s the spirit!” Derpy said, offering a hoof bump, which Gabby returned. “How about we head into the back and see what’s waiting for us there.”
“Sounds good!” Gabby said.
Before either of them could move towards the door to the warehouse, a different pony opened it from the inside.
“You two ready? We just got them inside and the twins are starting to sort them out.” A brown pegasus said in a deep voice.
“We were actually just about to head in there ourselves!” Derpy said cheerfully. “Gabby, this is Wagon Wheel,” She gestured toward the other pegasus with a wing. “He’s the pony primarily in charge of hauling packages from the train to the warehouse here, and helping us out with the larger delivery items.” She then turned toward Wagon Wheel and held out her other wing towards Gabby. “Wagon, this is Gabby. She volunteered to help us out tonight.”
"Good we got a lot of packages this year. Definitely going to need the extra help. Come on back and we'll get started." He held the door open for Derpy and Gabby.
“Oh wow, that is a lot of them.” Derpy said as she walked through the door to the post-office warehouse.
“Up about 40% from last year,” Wagon Wheel said to her right.
“Oh dear, I hope it wasn’t too heavy to haul them over here from the train station!” Derpy looked at him in concern.
“It wasn’t so bad once Sealed got there with an extra wagon. Would've taken me two trips otherwise, and we'd be here even later."
"We're going to be delivering all of these?" Gabby asked from behind the two pegasi. "But there's so many! It's going to take all day, into tomorrow even!"
"Oh I doubt that. It goes by surprisingly quick once you get in the rhythm of it," Derpy reassured her. "We'll be done and back home before you know it."
"Right, okay." Gabby said, recentering herself. "This'll go by fast and everypony will get their packages before the night is over."
"Why don't we let them get started on the preparations and we finish up with introductions?" Derpy asked Gabby, pulling her attention away from the mountains of boxes filling up the warehouse.
Derpy led Gabby over to the back of the warehouse near towards rows of shelves. Two ponies who would be perfectly identical if not for the fact that one was a unicorn and one was a pegasus, were moving packages from a conveyor belt to various spots on the shelves at a breakneck pace. "These two are Shellsort and Quicksort. They're in charge of sorting the packages by district, so we don't have to spend so much time flying from one end of town to the other. Shelly, Quicky, this is Gabby. She'll be helping me deliver the packages tonight."
Gabby waited for one of the twins to acknowledge the introduction, but decided to take initiative after a couple seconds of silence. "Nice to meet you two!" She said as cheerfully as she could.
"Charmed." One of them said. Gabby wasn't entirely sure which one of them it was.
"Let's let them continue their work in peace. If they make any mistakes in their sorting, it eats up a lot of delivery time. I'll take you over to Sealed and then we'll probably be ready to start with the larger items." Derpy said, guiding Gabby away from the twins and towards a different corner of the warehouse.
They walked along the conveyor belt for a few seconds before coming across Wagon Wheel and a dark grey earth pony. "Sealed, I have the volunteer here!" Derpy called out.
Sealed looked up from the clipboard she was holding. "Oh hey. Gabby, was it? Nice to meet you, I'm Sealed Envelope and I'm the postmaster of Ponyville. We're super thankful that you agreed to come help us out tonight." She said holding out a hoof for a shake. "We've got all the packages too large to fit in a saddle bag separated from the others already, so if the both of you are ready with, we can get started on that."
Wagon Wheel and Derpy both nodded, and headed over to another door leading out of the warehouse. Gabby made a couple tentative steps to follow them, but turned around a couple times in uncertainty of whether or not she should follow them. Only after Sealed Envelope nodded her head towards the door the other two went through did she scramble to get to the door as soon as she could.
Through the door was a tiny break room with a table, a couple chairs, a refrigerator, a microwave, and some hooks upon which saddlebags, safety vests, and hoofball caps were placed. Derpy and Wagon Wheel had already donned vests and hats, so Gabby went over to put some on as well. "Will we need the saddlebags yet?" She asked.
"Not until after all the large packages have been delivered," Derpy answered. "We usually do those first while we have the marepower for it. After that, Wagon usually goes home and Sealed goes back to her office to finish filling out all of the paperwork. The twins don't ever help with delivery unless there's something really heavy that needs more than 3 ponies."
"Why's that?" Gabby asked.
"Every second they're out helping with delivery is a second the rest of the packages aren't getting sorted, and that's kind of a big deal here in this job." Derpy put a hoof up to the door back out to the warehouse. "You ready?"
"I guess so." Gabby went to follow Derpy through the door. They came up to Sealed and Wagon who had all of the larger packages loaded into a large cart. They were both placing pins in various locations on a map of Ponyville that was hanging up on a corkboard. The map had so many markings in so many colors that looking at it made Gabby's head spin a little bit. The three ponies were discussing routes and stopping points, but Gabby couldn't make any sense of it. It was almost like they were speaking their own language.
Suddenly Derpy tapped Gabby on the shoulder. "We're about to head out, are you coming?"
Gabby blinked a couple times. She had apparently zoned out while staring at the map and missed most of the discussion. Although it wasn't like listening would have been much of a help, she was still a little embarrassed about missing it. "So uhh... Can we go over the plan one more time?" She asked sheepishly as they walked out of the back exit of the warehouse. Wagon Wheel was pulling the cart with all of the packages, and Gabby and Derpy were walking behind him.
"Yeah, it's a bit hard to understand if you don't know the specific lingo here. Every job's got some special words or names that they use on an hourly basis that don't make sense to anyone else. Basically we just outlined where we're going to station the cart, and which packages we're going to deliver at each station," Derpy explained.
"Oh, that doesn't seem so complicated. Why was there so much... uhhh... Jargon I think is the word?" Gabby asled.
"Mostly because we were trying to optimize the whole process. The amount of stations, and the location of each of them really goes a long way for making this part of the delivery go as quickly as possible. Having too few stopping points means we're carrying the packages a lot further than we really need to, but too many and suddenly we're eating up too much time moving the wagon further than we have to."
"Oh, so do you have some kind of system for that, to find the best spots?"
"Not really, we mostly just go by guessing and experience. We asked Princess Twilight if she could help come up with a way to find the best spots after her first winter wrap up here, but she said that any method for finding the best spots would take so long that it wouldn't end up saving any time at all. So we mostly just go by what we've learned from experience of doing this every other day."
"Alright, here's station 1," Wagon Wheel said, taking out a clipboard with lists of package numbers and addresses. "Why don't you two work on 1H137251p03 together and I'll get started on the lighter ones," He said, gesturing to one of the larger packages in the cart.
Derpy consulted the list to find out where the package was going. "Not too far, just a couple houses down," She announced. Derpy and Gabby took positions up on either side of the package and both lifted it on the count of 3.
"Which why are we going with this?" Gabby asked once they were a few meters off the ground.
"Left," Derpy answered. Both of them started going to their own left and ended up spinning a full 360º turn in place. "Oops, uhhh, my left, your right," Derpy said sheepishly.
The two carefully flew the heavy package for about 30 seconds before Derpy called out that they were at the right house and set it down on the step. Derpy knocked on the door, and a green earth pony mare answered the door almost immediately, startling Gabby.
"Oh thank you so much! I was beginning to worry that this wouldn't come in time for tomorrow." She said.
"Our pleasure," Derpy said, already starting to hover off the ground in preparation of getting back to the cart. "Happy Hearth's Warming."
Gabby blinked at how eager Derpy seemed to be to exit the conversation and head back to the cart. "That was a rather short interaction," She probed a little bit, trying to figure out why Derpy had suddenly changed from being so outgoing and happy to talk to almost blatantly leaving no room for conversation between her and the green mare without coming across as rude.
"It has to be. Especially today when we've got so many packages, if we stopped to talk with everypony who came to the door, we'd still be delivering packages tomorrow at sunset. On slower days we'd have a bit more leeway, but not today."
The two landed back at the cart. Derpy checked the list for a couple seconds, before selecting a long package from the cart. "Can you take this one to 2258 Fillydelphia Street? It's about two blocks that way and should be to your right."
Gabby grabbed the package and started flying in the direction Derpy had pointed. Once she had reached Fillydelphia Street, she made a right turn. She flew until she found house 2258, and set the package down. She took a moment to look at the package number. "3S337251p11?" She muttered to herself. "Why do they have to be so complicated?" She knocked on the door, but nopony came to answer it this time.
Derpy and Wagon Wheel were waiting for Gabby when she got back to the cart. "Are we already heading to the next spot?" Gabby asked.
"Yup, there weren't a lot of places around here with large packages today," Wagon Wheel answered.
They continued along those lines for the next hour or so. Taking the cart from station to station, delivering a few packages, then taking it to the next spot. Occasionally one of the packages would require two of them to work together to carry it, but it was fairly monotonous other than that.
Eventually, the wagon was fully emptied out and they headed back to the post office. The sun was beginning to get low in the sky by the time they arrived, and the weather ponies were putting the last of the clouds in place for the Hearth's Warming Eve snowfall.
When they walked back into the warehouse, Sealed Envelope came to greet them. "The twins and I have been working hard to sort out the smaller packages. I went ahead and pulled all of the zone 1 packages to the front of the line and we've got them all sorted out into 2 saddlebags for the both of you. We'll probably be done sorting by the time you finish with that. Feel free to take a short break before heading out." She turned to Wagon Wheel, "Wagon, I just need you to sign off on the cart, and then you can be done for the day once you're done with your break." She looked to address the whole group again, "The twins should be able handle the rest of them from here. I'll be in my office finishing up the last of the paperwork if you need anything from me."
Wagon Wheel wasted no time in walking over to the break room, but Derpy and Gabby were a bit slower. "Is she always so..." Gabby started to ask, before trailing off trying to think of the right word to describe Sealed Envelope.
"Business oriented?" Derpy offered. Gabby nodded. "Yeah, she's been like that for as long as I know her. Real workhorse right there. Loves her job, but has a bit of trouble interacting with other ponies outside of work. Even at some of the work parties, she just likes to pick a corner to stand in and watches the rest of us. She'll join in if we're playing a party game or something, but not much other than that."
Wagon Wheel was sitting at the table reading a copy of The Ponyville Press. There was a coffee machine Gabby hadn't noticed before going. She sniffed at the air a bit, the smell was definitely not coffee. "Is that hot chocolate?" She asked.
"Yeah," Wagon Wheel answered her. "I was going to have some before heading home. Want any?"
"Oh, sure! Thank you!" Gabby grabbed a cup. All three enjoyed their short break in relative silence. The only sound coming from the occasional rustling of Wagon Wheel's newspaper, and the coffee machine making gurgling noises every so often.
Once Derpy finished her cup, she looked to Gabby. "Ready to head back out?" She asked.
Gabby wordlessly answered the question by standing up and stretching. She made to grab the saddlebags she saw hanging from the hooks earlier, but was stopped by Derpy.
"The twins will have all of the packages sorted and packed into pairs of saddlebags for us already. We'll just need to grab them and go. It's a lot faster that way."
They exited the break room and made their way over to where the twins were working earlier. The shelves that had been largely empty when they first got there were now much more full. They would occasionally have to dodge a flying package carried by magic. They passed under Shellsort who was moving some of the packages around on one of the top shelves. Derpy stopped them at the end of one of the shelves.
"Here's the saddle bags for our first zone. I'll take this one, and you can take the other one." Derpy hoofed Gabby one of the pairs of saddlebags that bulged out with packages. There was another list of package numbers and addresses for each saddlebag resting on top of them. The last stop the two of them made before heading back out into the cold was to grab a map for Gabby. Sealed Envelope had been kind enough to label each of the 7 zones they divided Ponyville into so that Gabby wouldn't waste time looking for a house outside of the zone it was in.
"Um, Derpy? Could you please stay with me for this first one, just so I can get the hang of things before going off on my own?" She asked nervously.
"Oh sure, I'd be happy to. We're going to start over on this end and and make our way towards this point," She explained, pointing to different spots on the map.
Once they made it to the zone, they began delivering the packages. They criss-crossed between both of their halves of the zone several times instead of doing one and then the other. Gabby got lost a couple times, and tried to fly out of the zone completely once, but Derpy was always able to help her get back on track. But as they worked their way through the zones Gabby made less and less mistakes, until by the time their saddlebags were empty, Gabby felt confident enough to take on the remaining work without a guide.
When they went to grab their saddlebags for zone 2, Quicksort stopped them for a couple minutes as she and Shellsort finished sorting all of the rest of the packages, but they were back outside before too long.
It was fairly monotonous work. Consult the list for the next package. Find the package at the top of one of the two sides. Fly over to the correct house. Set the package on the doorstep. Knock on the door. Repeat. Over and over. Gabby wandered into zone 3 once and had to fly high above the town to reorient herself back into zone 2, but was able to get back into the rhythm pretty quickly after that. The only breaks in the monotony was when a pony answered the door, and Gabby had a quick exchange with them before heading to the next house.
Gabby had just emptied her saddlebags when Derpy came up to her with her next pair of saddlebags for zone 3, and it started all over again. They worked like that for the rest of the day. They took another short break after finishing up zone 5, by which time even Sealed Envelope had gone home. By the time they finished the seventh and final zone, the sun had long since set and the twilight gave way to the night.
"I seriously can't thank you enough for helping me out tonight," Derpy said as they were finishing off the last of the hot chocolate in the break room. "If you hadn't stepped up to help me tonight, I don't think I would've gotten back home before midnight. I'm sure you'll understand if you ever have children of your own, but you only get so many Hearth's Warming Eve's with your kids while they're still living under your roof. I'd hate to have to miss any of them."
"Oh, it was nothing too major," Gabby dismissed. "I'm happy to lend a helping claw to anyone who needs one."
"Don't try to downplay it," Derpy said. "I'm seriously so incredibly thankful for your help."
"Oh, uh... You're welcome, then!" Gabby said, hiding her embarrassed blush behind chugging the rest of their hot chocolate.
Derpy finished off the last of the last of the paperwork and started to close down the post office. They didn't say anything until after all the doors were locked and they were stood outside the front door. The weather ponies had finally allowed the clouds to release their snow. The slowly falling snowflake combined with all of the Hearth's Warming decorations wrapped around the houses made for a gorgeous night.
"What are your plans for the rest of Hearth's Warming Eve?" Derpy suddenly asked Gabby.
"Uhh... not much. I was probably just going to head back to my hotel room and curl up under the covers with a good book." Gabby replied.
"You mean you're not going to spend Hearth's Warming Eve with anypony?" Derpy asked, concern showing all over her face.
"Well um... Hearth's Warming's not really a thing in Griffonstone, so I wasn't really planning to-" Gabby answered before getting interrupted.
"Why don't you come over for dinner then? I'm sure Time Turner and Dinky would be happy to have you join us." Derpy offered.
Gabby was stunned. "Oh, I would hate to impose-"
"Nonsense. You wouldn't be imposing, I'm offering. I would hate for you to be all alone on Hearth's Warming Eve."
"But surely I can't just... barge in on your family like that!"
"If you really don't want to join us, or have other plans, that's fine. But you are totally and completely open to come over for dinner and maybe some games tonight if you want to."
"Well... uh... oh, you know what? Sure. I'll do it!"
"Yay!" Derpy cried in triumph, and gave Gabby a quick hug. "Come on, I bet Time Turner has almost finished preparing all of the food. If we go fast, I bet we can get there while it's still hot!"
The two new friends flew back through the snow to a night of good food and great company.