//------------------------------//
// Verse 2 - The Spirit of Hearth's Warming Past 
// Story: Tales of Tiara: Scrooged 
// by Mudpony 
//------------------------------//

When Diamond Tiara awoke, it was dark.  She felt rested though, as if she had slept through the night.  A good night's rest, that is just what she had needed is what she told herself.  Now she could put all these strange thoughts behind her.  And yet she could not.  To have seen Silver Spoon again, and in such a state.  Had it all been a dream?

She stretched, then wondered about the dark.  By feel, she turned on the lamp at its lowest setting.  The clock showed that it was nine in the morning.  But then why was it so dark?  Surely at least some light should be coming in past the drapes.

Stumbling out of bed, she moved over to the window and pulled back the drapes.  Outside, all was as if it was the darkest hour of the night, a darkness pierced only by the light of the moon and some stars.  This came as quite the surprise to Diamond Tiara, I tell you, for she was sure it was morning, and yet the town was quiet.  There were no families taking walks together, no vendors hawking their goods, not even ponies running around with panicked cries; the latter being something the town of Ponyville was quite practiced at.

That lack of panic, as well as the lack of light shining out of the windows from houses made diamond Tiara look back at the clock.  Perhaps she had mistaken the time, she thought, only to see the hands spinning rapidly.  Nine became ten, which became eleven.  Onward the hands spun, past twelve, past one.  On and on until at last they indicated twelve once again.  Then the clock stopped, not slowly, not deaccelerating.  No, the stop was sudden and complete.

Cursing the cheap workmanship of the clock and the need to get it replaced, Diamond Tiara looked once again outside the window.  Nothing had changed.  Cautiously, she opened the window, shivering as a gust of cold air blew in.  She held an ear by the gap, so that she could better hear any hubbub that might be happening.  But the night was near silent, the only sound coming from the wind.

Puzzled, she looked again and noted that it did seem to be brighter than it had been before.  But it was not the sun that was the source, but the moon.  It was becoming brighter, as four stars spun around it, faster and faster, before it all flashed, bright as the sun, and went dark.  An evil sound, half laughter, half howl, the type of sound that would send shivers down your spine as if a rusty horseshoe were scraped along a chalkboard, pierced the air.  Shuddering, Tiara stepped back from the window.

It was then that a dark smoke raced down past the window, veered directly away, only to spin around again and come swirling into the bedroom, all the while continuing the horrid sound.  The smoke coalesced into a smaller space and began to form a shape, a pony like shape.  Not a regular pony like you or I, no, but the shape of an alicorn..

As any rational pony trapped with a alicorn smoke monster in a small room with no easy egress might have done, Diamond Tiara scrambled backwards as fast as possible, until she collided with a wall.  And even then, she continued to try to continue moving away.  Having an alicorn appear in your bedroom will tend to do that to most ponies.  Having this particular one appear, I tell you that any pony who says they would have reacted differently than Diamond Tiara is either insane or lying.

"Ah, my faithless subject, is that any way to greet the Queen of the Night?  Were you not told of my coming?" the alicorn asked, for it was all alicorn now, no longer smoke, with horn, wings, and a coat as black as the darkest night, while its mane was made of stars and the evening sky.  To complete the look, it wore armor made of cobalt.  "Don't you know who I am?"

"You... you're Nightmare Moon," Diamond Tiara stuttered.

"Oh, very good.  So you haven't forgotten me from my last visit here."

"Have you come to gobble me up?"

"What!?  No.  Gross."  Nightmare Moon spat to make clear her revulsion.  "Just gross...  That dreadful holiday, it makes a mockery of me, it does.  I swear that when I return again, that shall be the the second thing I abolish.  First the day and then that one night."  She threw back her head and laughed, sending shivers down Diamond Tiara's spine.  

"Now... where were we?  Ah, yes, we were just discussing if this is the proper way to greet a queen.  So, is it?"  Nightmare Moon looked pointedly at Diamond Tiara.

"Um, no?"

"No what?"  The pointed look became decidedly more menacing.

"No, Your Majesty?"

The menacing look was gone as quickly as it appeared.  "Much better.  And how should you greet your queen?"

"With a... oh."  Diamond Tiara stopped talking and prostrated herself before the Queen of the Night.

"Excellent.  Okay, let's get down to business then, shall we?  I, the Queen of the Night, will be serving as your Queen of Hearth's Warming Past tonight.  Any one question?"

"Hearth's Warming Past?  Are we going back to before you were-"  A glare from Nightmare Moon encouraged Diamond Tiara to pick her next words with care.  "Before you were unjustly banished?"

"Oh no, my dear.  Not my past.  Yours.  And that was two questions.  Has the educational system degraded so much in the last thousand years that ponies cannot even count to one anymore?  No, never mind, don't bother answering.  Don't really care, as I plan to shut the entire system down so ponies will have more time to revel in my glorious night.  We're off."

Nightmare Moon's horn glowed, and Diamond Tiara could feel magic working upon her.  She tried to cry out, but no longer had the option, for she no longer had a body.  Her consciousness was trapped within a cloud of smoke like the one Nightmare Moon had entered her room as.  Panic filled her and she lashed out, or would have, if she had a body.  The only thing that stopped her from sinking into a complete panic was that she could somehow sense what was around her, almost as if she could see, though it was not seeing like she was used to.

"Relax," Nightmare Moon's commanded from inside her mind.  "I am your guide, so do be a dutiful little subject and trust your queen to guide you well."

She felt her cloud body pulled, gently at first, but picking up speed, as Nightmare Moon's own cloud swirled around her, pulling, prodding, and guiding.  The distance travelled was short, yet it felt strangely long, as if they had travelled in a world built to a giant scale.  Out of her room, down the stairs, and into the living room.  As her body reformed, Diamond Tiara breathed a grateful sigh of relief at being corporeal again.  A quick check of herself revealed everything was inorder, where and how it should be.

Fiercely determined to let Nightmare Moon have a piece of her mind, horrid monster of legend or not, she rounded on her companion and froze.  Nightmare Moon stood with her nose inches from a small filly, barely four or five years old.  Diamond Tiara's eyes nearly popped out of her head as she recognized her younger, blank flank self.  Her head spun around as the implication of her own self being that young hit her.  And sure enough, there sat her father, with a foreleg around a mare, her mother, watching their foal play.

Hesitantly, Diamond Tiara reached a hoof toward her mother, only to have Nightmare Moon push her hoof down.  "They cannot see or hear you, my little pony.  This is the past and the past cannot be changed.  Do you remember when this is?"

"Barely.  I was so young.  If I am right, then this... this is the last Hearth's Warming Eve I would ever spend with my mother.  She was so beautiful, I'd almost forgotten what she was like."   Diamond Tiara looked back towards her younger self, then returned her gaze to her parents.  "They look so happy.  I was so happy.  I cannot believe I had forgotten this."

And so the queen and her subject sat and watched for a while, as Tiara's parents watched their filly play.  Shortly, the younger Tiara got tired and cuddled up with her parents, demanding they read her a story.  Diamond Tiara's eyes welled up and she wiped away a tear.

"Come.  It is time to go," Nightmare Moon said, as she got to her feet.

"Please, my Queen, can we not stay and watch a while longer?" Diamond Tiara asked.

"Do not test me, little one.  We have more to see and we must go."  With that, Diamond Tiara again found herself trapped in smoke.  Again, Nightmare Moon's cloud pulled and guided her.  To the door and outside they went, down the streets, faster than Diamond Tiara had ever moved, and yet again there was that strange sense as if things were taking longer than they should.  Into the main part of town they moved, moving swiftly down roads and alleys, turning so often that Diamond Tiara lost track of where exactly in Ponyville they were.

At last, they rushed up a walkway, between the crack under a door, down a hall,and into a room.  This room was smaller than the living room she had been in, but not by much.  A dining room table sat in the center of the room, and around it sat four ponies.  Two were older, obviously a couple, and the other two younger, though obscured by the back of chairs.

"Silver Spoon's home," Diamond Tiara said.  "I haven't been here since..."  She lapsed into silence.

"So, when is this?" asked Nightmare Moon.

"You don't know?" Tiara asked.

"Maybe I do, and maybe I don't.  That is not relevant.  What matters is whether or not you know and that your queen asked you a question."

Diamond Tiara walked around the room, getting a better view of the fillies and the food upon the table.  "This is the first Hearth's Warming Eve after I met Silver Spoon.  My dad had to go out of town on business and so I had to spend the week with Silver Spoon and her family.  I didn't want to go at all.  But after the first night, I didn't want to leave."  

She continued to circle, slowly, stopping occasionally if something triggered a memory.  At last, she found herself beside Nightmare Moon again.  "Tell me, Queen, what sort of father leaves his daughter with ponies she barely knew for the holidays?"

"One in pain, one without someone he feels he could open up to.  Isn't that always how these things happen?" Nightmare Moon replied.  "You suffer, and you think she doesn't really care, that you don't have someone who is always there, willing to listen, really listen.  And then you are alone," Nightmare Moon spoke quietly.  The two ponies sat in silence, each lost in their thoughts, until Silver Spoon's mother brought out a plate with a fruitcake on it.

"Oh, I remember this," Diamond Tiara said, gesturing toward the table.  "Silver Spoon's aunt made it every year.  It was the worst ever.  But watch, I'll pretend to like it."

And it played out just as Diamond Tiara said it would.  The eager young filly took a big bite of the fruitcake, ignoring Silver Spoon's attempted warning, and her cheeks puffed out as she almost gagged on the revolting taste.  Noticing Silver Spoon's parents looking at her, she swallowed with the gusto of a pony who had not eaten in days and rubbed her stomach, telling her hosts how delicious it was.  Viewed with the experience of additional years, Diamond Tiara could see that it was, all in all, about as convincing as a three bit coin, but it definitely deserving of high marks for effort.  Silver Spoon's parents definitely were not fooled she could see now, but they played along as if they were.  Her younger, more innocent self believed them.  Diamond Tiara could not help but smile at the childlike innocence of it all.

"Mommy, can Tia and I play upstairs?" Silver Spoon asked, coming to her friend's rescue, as little Tiara waged an internal war between taking another bit of fruitcake out of politeness and shoving her plate as far away as possible.

Silver Lining looked over to her husband for approval, and with a nod from Sterling Silver, she gave the foals permission.  The two bounded out of their chairs and raced off to Silver Spoon's bedroom, skidding around corners in their hurry.  Silver Lining just shook her head and smiled, while Sterling Silver reached over and helped himself to the rest of Tiara's fruitcake.

"Heh, he actually likes the stuff.  Must be an acquired taste or something," Diamond Tiara said.

"Or perhaps there something to be said for it, and you were just too small minded to recognize it.  There is value in most things, even if most cannot see it.  Just consider how no pony appreciated my beautiful night, when they should have.  They really should have," Nightmare Moon said.  She turned and followed the path the fillies had taken, up the stairs and to Silver Spoon's room, and Diamond Tiara followed there.

There, the two fillies sat playing with a dollhouse as little foals are prone to do, alternately arguing and agreeing on the actions of their respective dolls.  The dollhouse was brightly colored and almost large enough that both fillies could have crawled inside it.  It was opened up, so that the fillies had easy access to the rooms inside, each room decorated with its own wallpaper and miniature wooden furniture.

"A present from my dad.  The biggest and best dollhouse he could find in a Canterlot toy store, I guess.  Must have felt guilty about not being there or something.  Silver and I played with that thing for years, until one day we were feeling a bit destructive and took hammers to parts of it while 'remodeling'.  I don't think I've ever seen my father that mad before.  He gave the dollhouse away to an orphanage," Diamond Tiara said.

"Custom made, actually."

"Custom made?"

"Yes, he had it modelled after the first house your mother and he lived in.  Had it ordered months in advance."

"Oh.  I never knew that."  Diamond Tiara sat pensively, watching her younger self play while the scene of her father's anger from years ago replayed in her head.  "I guess that explains why he got so angry.  He never seemed to mind if I broke any of my other toys.  Just bought me new ones."

The two little fillies had finished playing the dollhouse in the meantime.  Silver Spoon rummaged through a drawer and triumphantly held up a pair of scissors.  Little Tiara clapped and the two ponies hopped on the bed.  

Diamond Tiara watched with interest and indicated the fillies to Nightmare Moon.  "We became blood-sisters this night."  She watched as Silver Spoon attempted to cut herself with the scissors.  "Safety scissors.  No match for foalish determination though."

The duo watched as the young fillies completed their ritual.  By the time they were done, drops of blood had splattered on the bedsheets and there was a trail to the bathroom as the two fillies went looking for bandages.  Once bandaged up, the two newly bonded sisters resumed their playing with the dollhouse.

Diamond Tiara smiled at the memory playing out before her.  "We got so much trouble from Silver's parents for that.  I swear she wasn't allowed to have scissors in her room for years after that.  But we didn't care.  Not in the slightest.  Tomorrow, my dad will pick me up and I won't want to go.  I'll tell Silver Spoon that I wish I could stay here forever."

"And will you?"

"No, Your Highness, tomorrow I'll... she'll go home.  But in this moment, we pledged to be friends forever.  And tonight, we'll come up with our signature shake.  Bump, bump, sugar lump, rump!  It was the happiest I'd been since..."  Diamond Tiara stopped, not wanting to discuss the unhappy thought.

"Ah, yes.  Happiness ends, the ones you love leave, and then forever alone.  Easier to just be alone to begin with.  Come.  We have seen what we came to see.  It is time to go."

Diamond Tiara felt her body became gaseous and the tugging of Nightmare Moon upon it.  Rather than give into it, she willed herself to stay here.  To her surprise, she found herself staying in place, until she felt a surge of rage from Nightmare Moon and she was jerked harshly away.  Determined to have her way, she willed harder, but to no avail.  Nightmare Moon's will overrode her own and she found herself pulled along.  For a while longer, she struggled, but realizing the hopelessness of the situation, she quit the struggle.

Through Ponyville they raced once more, this time towards the outskirts and then out of town. Farmland lined either side of the road and Nightmare Moon dove underneath a familiar sign, streaming through the keyhole of a house next to a red barn.  There, Diamond Tiara found herself once more within her body and facing a rather irate Nightmare Moon.

"Do not do that again," Nightmare Moon commanded.  "I am the Queen of the Night, the Bringer of Darkness.  You are nothing, an insignificant speck of dust upon the surface of the moon.  This night, I rule.  When I say we go, we go.  Is that clear?"

Diamond Tiara glared back.  "Crystal."

"Good.  Now, do you know where and when we are?"

Diamond Tiara looked around.  She already knew they were at the Sweet Apple Acres.  The barn had been enough to tell her that.  Though the barn had been rebuilt multiple times through the years, it always wound up looking the same, a signature trademark of the farm.  Unfortunately, that same look meant it was little help with identifying the when.

And so she looked around the room, taking in the wooden paneling, the quaint frames with pictures of various Apple family members inside.  Hearth's Warming decorations were placed throughout the room, but that was to be expected, she supposed.  The previous two times had also been around Hearth's Warming Eve.  Applejack sat at the dining room table, drinking a warm beverage, probably tea.  And on the ground, a young Diamond Tiara and Apple Bloom sat happily, playing with a puppy.

Diamond Tiara brightened at the sight.  "This is back when we were still friends, before we had that big fight!  We used to pretend to be sisters.  I used to love playing over here."

"Sisters again, huh?" Nightmare Night asked.

"Apple Bloom's idea, really.  I guess due to the age gap between her and her siblings, plus they essentially were her parents.  They had little time to play with their little sister, what with running the farm and all.  So whenever my parents brought me over here, she always insisted we make believe we were sisters.  It was nice though.  And, truth be told, I always wanted a sister, to share things with."

Nightmare Moon harrumphed.  "They are not so perfect, you know.  They hog the spotlight, refusing to share any with you.  And when you complain and try to get a little attention of your own, they shove you away," Nightmare Moon said, bitterness spilling forth with every word.

Diamond Tiara eyed the taller mare.  Sisters were a bit of a sore point for her, it seemed.  To be expected, based on the history.  "Maybe.  But I would have liked to have experienced it for myself."

"And you'd probably have had one big fight and decided to hate your sister forever, the same as me," Nightmare Moon lashed out verbally.  "We're alike, you and I," she said, prodding Diamond Tiara with a hoof, "alone and full of rage.  The difference though, my little foal, is that I am full of rage because I am alone, because no pony appreciated all that I did for them, while you are alone because you are full of rage, because you work so hard to keep them all away."

The two fillies stopped their play, ears perking up at the sound of a door opening.  The voice of Applejack greeted the visitor, expressing surprise at seeing him so soon.  A hushed reply could be heard, followed by the sound of a cup shattering on the ground.

The sound of that cup's shattering triggered a memory for Tiara and she knew exactly what moment this was.  Diamond Tiara's eyes went wide.  She turned to Nightmare Moon and begged, "Oh, Queen, take me away from here.  I do not wish to be here."

The little filly Tiara got to her feet, cried out, "Daddy!" and raced off into the other room.

With a look of anguish, the elder Tiara was unable to stop her body from following after her younger self.  A tear rolled down her face as her younger self's enthusiasm disappeared into a questioning look at the sight of her father, wondering what was wrong.

"Please, let us depart," Diamond Tiara pleaded of her companion.  Her father knelt down and held her younger self tightly.

Nightmare Moon shook her head and continued to watch the events unfold, as the little filly's world was brought to ruin.  Diamond Tiara could only stand and watch, tears falling, as her father told her younger self that there had been a carriage accident on the icy roads, that her mother was never coming home again.  The little filly refused to believe, asking when they could see mother.  Again her father explained that mother would never be coming home again, and when he had finished, her father was holding a daughter whose reality had just crumbled.

Diamond Tiara turned away, unable to watch further, only to find herself looking at Applejack, who stood awkwardly by, one hoof holding Apple Bloom.  Emotions played on Applejack's face, and Diamond Tiara found she could read them with ease: sympathy over the death, helplessness to do anything about the situation, and painful memories of the loss of her own parents.  And so she did the only thing she could, hold on to Apple Bloom, who struggled to get free, wanting to comfort her friend.  Only then did Nightmare Moon act, shifting their bodies to fog once more..

"HOME!"  The thought screamed out of Tiara's mind instinctively and unplanned, powered by the agony of what she had just relived, made even stronger by the addition of Applejack's pain.  She ripped through the air and found herself back within the confines of her room, feeling as if she'd been stretched beyond her limits and then allowed to recoil.

She had barely managed to recover from the trip, to suppress the urge to heave, so that she could give in to the emotions the scene had awakened,  when Nightmare Moon poured in through the window and reformed.  "Why?  Why did you have to show me that?" Diamond Tiara sobbed.

"Did you expect that cake, sunshine, and celery sticks would be all it would take to change your path?  That if such a thing were even possible, they would send me to entertain, to be a clown for your amusement?  Just how foalish are you?" Scorn dripped off every word Nightmare Moon spoke.

"I'm the Queen of the Night," Nightmare Moon continued, as if that should explain everything.  "I came about because somepony felt unloved, unappreciated, and all alone.  And in that loneliness, she created me, created me so that I could lash out at the world and make it pay for ignoring her.  Did you expect my visit to end in anything but pain and darkness?

"Now, when shall we go next?  What are your darkest memories?  A funeral or two perhaps?"  Nightmare Moon took a menacing step towards Diamond Tiara.

"No, torture me no more, you vile thing!  I do not want your darkness, this despair.  I want the light!" Tiara yelled and grabbed the lamp.  She turned up the setting as far as it could, increasing the light far more than should have been possible, such that the lamp lit up the room as if it were the sun.  So armed, she advanced upon the much taller alicorn.

Nightmare Moon's wings flared outwards, covering her face in an attempt to shield her eyes from the intense light.  The light would not be held at bay by mere wings and grew even brighter.  Covering her eyes with a hoof, Nightmare Moon hobbled backwards on three legs.  "No!  The light, it burns!  Nooo!"

"Yes!" Diamond Tiara shouted in reply, continuing her advance, backing Nightmare Moon into a corner.  And still Diamond Tiara advanced, for if there was one trait she had besides wanting to bring misery to others, it was that she was driven.  She forced the lamp down upon Nightmare Moon, who had begun to shrink, alternating between screaming and ranting, until at last, the lamp sat on the floor, no longer producing an excess amount of light, and Diamond Tiara was alone in the room once more.

She felt so tired.  Not only did her limbs feel as if she had run for hours, but her eyelids felt like they were being pulled down with the weight of a thousand tons.  She barely managed to shut the window and crawl into bed before the tiredness overcame her, and the moment her head touched her pillow, she was out.