The Spirits of Hearth's Warming Past, Presents, and Yet to Come catch up with Sludge in order to show him the true reason for the season. Sludge has no idea what they're talking about.
This story was the one and only entry in the 274th Writeoff Association contest. No one even entered a prompt, so it ended up being "TBD" by default. And since I found myself with some free time during the 24-hour writing period Christmas Eve Eve, I threw together the original version of this story. It's been greatly expanded for its appearance here.
Chapters (1)
At least he got a pillow.
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And:
Story material. We all know how important that is...
Mike
Well whose fault is that in the first place sludge 😡
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The ending makes me wonder how much all the other stories are made up.
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It's indeed:
An open question.
Something I went back and forth on with this story was the ending, actually. Originally, I was going to have an epilogue where it turns out the whole story with Sludge and the Spirits was written by Spike as a piece of fanfiction after listening to Twilight's annual reading of "A Hearth's Warming Tale." I went back and forth a couple times but finally decided to just go with the story rather than pin a frame tale onto it. But now I'm wondering again...
Mike
11795919 I think the ending is great.