“You seem... confused.”
It, of which Xenilla could best assume was the Spirit of Hearth’s Warmings Present, noted in a voice that sounded like multiple entities speaking at once with just enough dissonance in their voices for him to pick out the differences.
Though thankfully it was right and the oldest son of Godzilla Senior was made of sturdier stuff than most, being more puzzled than unnerved.
-Past said ‘they’ and it certainly sounds like a ‘they’, but still it looks like just one figure… Why oh why does my mind have to be so confusing with its constructs?..-
Instead of harping on that detail, he instead decided to focus more on the fact the figure really did not look the part for any version of Snowfall Frost’s carol he’d read. Past was different, but it still mostly fit the bill of a small illuminated figure. The big cloak and foreboding voice? That sounded more like Hearth’s Warmings Yet to Come then the jolly, jovial Present he read of. Xenilla narrowed his eyes.
“You look off,” he grunted.
Present stood still for a moment before shifting, wriggling as if something inside it was moving. And then a blue… “horse… thing with fins” head popped out of its chest in a manner that would make Ridley Scott want to sue someone.
“Whaddya mean?!”
Xenilla’s brow scrunched and his jaw dropped slightly in sheer befuddlement as the figure wriggled and squirmed more.
Another voice called out, “Sonny!”
Now Pinkie Pie’s head burst out of the top of the cloak, directly on top of the unidentified being Xenilla guessed was “Sonny”.
“You spoilsport!”
“Eeeeh?! You’re the one who ruined the act fully by bursting out too! Now he thinks we have two heads!”
A third, deeper and more masculine sounding voice chirped below them as the cloaked ghost wobbled and staggered in instability, “Eeeyeyee girls! Kinda throwing off our center of gravity here!”
Any semblance of seriousness or foreboding the spirit had cultivated upon its first appearance was completely shattered, as it stammered around off balance with hooves, a glimpse of a horn, and flippers poking out of the edges. Xenilla deadpanned and just wrapped the cloak and anything inside it in his telekinesis and held it up. Illuminated by his glow, the spirit froze.
“This is getting ridiculous, as if it wasn’t already…” Xenilla grumbled before he ripped the cloak off.
Before him now were three figures, stacked atop each other. Pinkie Pie was on top of the water-something with the latter holding her hind limbs around it shoulders like it was about to jump in the pool to play a game of chicken fight. Then below that with the blue entity’s tail curled around it was a rather peculiar looking brown changeling with a rhinoceros beetle-like horn, along with metallic-looking tips on its forelimbs that looked strange. And yet somehow familiar…
Xenilla combed his mind as the trio that collectively comprised the Spirit of Hearth’s Warming Present were released from his grasp and toppled over.
-The bug and the marine-something look vaguely familiar, but from different places. Like I’d read about them… Huh, buried memory must have manifested with all this stress. Might as well ask my subconscious.-
Xenilla shrugged, “Okay I recognize one of you but not the other two, what’s the situation I’ve found myself in now?”
Pinkie Pie hopped up and put a hoof to her chest proudly, “We are the Spirit of Hearth’s Warmings Present! Here to show you the importance of the partytastic holiday through the perspective of those who are living it!”
“Joy,” he muttered dryly, noting his memory had even taken note to copy Ms. Pie’s speech pattern.
The blue one levitated up like she was swimming, something that did cause Xenilla to raise his eyebrow briefly, “Thus we have taken the form from a collection of party lovers-
The brown changeling, whose features were just in the back of Xenilla’s mind, finished the sentence off, “- from across Equestria’s and Terra’s realms!”
Pinkie Pie’s emulation struck a pose with a hoof pointing upwards towards the moon, “Pinkamena Diane Pie!”
The blue one swam up beside her and also motioned towards the moon, “Sonata Dusk Seirína!”
The changeling, whom Xenilla had lost track of for a moment, burst out the ground beside them like some giant flying gopher in the exact same pose, “’Nebulan-Hunter-Line-”
He must have noticed his two compatriots glancing at him with raised eyebrow and he cut to the chase, “-Megalon!”
Pinkie Pie cried out in a gleeful tone, “Because you have failed to grasp the meaning of this holiday, in the name of tonight’s festivities-!”
The three crossed their forearms in front of them and laid their other limb across it to point at Xenilla, “We will elate you!”
A stiff breeze, no doubt from embarrassment, rolled through as they noticed the figure they were pointing at had seemingly vanished while they were posing.
Spirit Pinkie Pie felt a bead of ethereal sweat drop down her face, “... Where’d he go?”
Sonata, not dropping her pose, glanced around, “Uuuuuum? I think he walked off.”
Pinkie Pie pouted, “Party pooper! Party pooper!”
Sonata stuck out her tongue, “Humbug!”
Megalon’s drills whirled, “Daiei!”
Sonata shrugged as she failed to see a sign of where their charge had gone off to, “McCarthy he’s quick for someone that big! Got anything Meg?”
Megalon’s eyes flickered, from spiritually emulated cybernetics, and scanned the ground.
“I got ‘em!”
Xenilla, having thoroughly felt he was surrounded by idiots and wanting to kick his subconscious personally, had made his way towards the Apple family farm; retracing steps from memory from when he accompanied Fluttershy and Applejack to the barn to discover Destroyah. The building of focus in the evening hours however, was the house he never entered. Glowing with multiple lit candles and lanterns, the old timey residence’s rustic charm was enhanced by the wreaths strung up on the doors and holiday bird feeders set out amongst each window. Xenilla paced around the house, taking it all in and studying every detail as if he would a dire problem. Voices drew him to the back windows and he flew his way to them, standing beside the window in question before stepping out in front of it after speculating and then confirming his presence could not be seen. Made for better observation, a convenient plot device in fiction his dreamscape evidently emulated.
Within the house, the core members of the Apple Family were hard at work; though free of toil judging from the elated smiles on all their faces.
“An’ what happened then, Granny?”, Applebloom chirped as she helped flatten out a batch of cookies with a rolling pin.
The matriarch of the household had her head half buried behind a counter, likely inspecting or prepping the oven, as she continued whatever story she was reciting.
“Now mind ye’, he wasn’t ‘bout to give up after ‘ah turned him down flat the first time. Ye’ know how a young stallion’s mind works, an’ ‘ah was quite the looker at Applejack’s age!.. Well, first he tried courtin’ me on the holiday season! Thought he could butter me up with pretty pear tree!”
Applejack’s eyes looked they were about the explode out of her head, “A PEAR tree? Did he seriously not know what we grew? Ontop’a who the neighbors were?!”
Big Mac, either concentrating on his work and not feeling he needed to comment much in this story or possibly having heard this tale before; just shook his head, “Eeeenope!”
“Bes’ I can figure is he got our addresses mixed up an’ thought I was a Pear!”, Granny Smith snapped like she was about to spit, “Well needless to say it didn’ work. So he tried next day with a pair o’ pretty birds.”
Xenilla and Applebloom, unbeknownst to each other, both glanced up at the preserved dove feathers hanging off the hearth.
“Turtle doves?”
“Ye’ betcha! Cute lil’ critters too… Still said nope!”
“Sooo, then how’d you an’ Grandpa get hitched?”
Granny Smith got up from the oven, taking a moment to collect the breath in her old bones before chuckling, “Kept’ him going till he gave me a twelve-pony drum ensemble.”
Applejack paused for a moment before the connections sprung into her head, “Waaaait a minute! Ye’ tellin’ us our grandpappy wooed you by reenacting THAT ol’ song?”
Granny Smith burst out laughing, the warm glow on her face coming not just from her candles but also in the infectious, jovial benevolence that wreathed the Apple Matriarch’s visage. Even Xenilla found himself conceding a tiny smile at seeing someone so old and so worn, so happy.
-I can see why so many people like having grandparents.-
“Reenact it? Ye’r grandpappy’s stubbornness got so many’s ponies’ attention someone made that tune outta it!”
The three apple siblings looked to each other in mild shock and confusion before the realization caused them all to burst out laughing, an uproar that carried on into their tasks. Xenilla sighed quietly, finally noticing he had company that could notice them. The three emulations of the Spirit of Hearth’s Warmings Present were all perched upon the lip outside the window, chin in hooves as they had been watching and listening to the story and scene before them.
Xenilla shrugged, “Pleasant as this is, this is something I could’ve seen anywhere in Equestria.”
Sonata Dusk shook her head, “Not the sight, the meaning! Don’t you see it?”
“See what?”
Megalon motioned to the window with a beaming expression, “The lesson! Have another lookie-see!”
Xenilla relented and did so, watching intently. He saw how Big Mac carried some more logs in for the fire in both the chimney and stoking the oven, Applejack carefully prepared all the ingredients and set them up, and Applebloom helped her grandmother in decorating a small army of gingerbread cookies; apple flavored naturally. Some more family knocked upon the door and some relation Xenilla didn’t recognize were met with much elation. Babs Seed, Aunt and Uncle Orange, and others like Apple Fritter or Apple Crumble soon filled the house and kitchen.
Xenilla dug from his memory of the books he’d read talking about holiday morals to try and grasp at the answer as to what he was supposed to talk about. He found it, but he also found frustration. Wasn’t that the moral was bad, just that it was extremely repetitive and not locked in to a time of the year indicating it had to be something related to a holiday.
“... So what now, some banal about holidays bringing families together? Already knew that fact and it’s not the holiday that brings family together, it’s the family that does. Even I know the value of relation,” he grumbled.
Pinkie Pie shook her head quickly, “That you do, especially for your brother and sister. But you’re missing the point! It’s not the fact about family that is unique to holidays, it’s the memories! Especially with Granny Smith.”
Xenilla only rolled his eyes, now truly feeling like he was trapped in some children’s programming special trying to teach an after school moral message, “Memories? That’s hardly unique either! They'll be with her next week too and that isn't some sanctified day. Those not living here can always drop in and forge more memories. The matron has at least another ten or so years in her, she’s spry.”
Pinkie Pie turned and looked up to Xenilla, “But making memories of somepony is finite to when they’re there. Nopony lasts forever after all or can always be in one place.”
“Doesn’t change the fact they can always have more experiences with each other and the matriarch before or after this holiday and it not be some grand ceremony that pesters for attention.”
Megalon put his hoof to Xenilla’s lips, “But what do you think is going to leave a bigger impression? Last weekend when they were scattered around and doing their daily tasks and occupations?”
Pinkie Pie tilted her head towards the window, “Or taking time to travel and spend Hearth’s Warming with somepony who’s their mother or grandmother?”
Before Xenilla could answer, Sonata followed up upon it. She didn’t turn around like Pinkie Pie or Megalon did and her tone kept a minor somber hint to it.
“Especially when that family is gone. Which do you think they'll remember most often?”
Xenilla closed his mouth as he watched the Apple family, for the first time noticing how Applebloom and some others had to help Granny Smith with some of her actions. She was getting older, and eventually one year, she’d be unable to do anything for good. And yet, there was laughter, there was elation, storytelling, and memories to be had all around in spite of mortality. The three imbeciles he was stuck with finally managed to say something he couldn’t retort to. Xenilla lowered his head slightly and let his breath leave him, muttering under it.
“I know how the carol goes. There’s always more than one place Present shows… Take me to it....”
The trio of a changeling, siren, and pony all nodded with slight smiles and put a hoof on Xenilla as if they were holding him. The vision shifted to a new place of which Xenilla did not immediately recognize, though judging from the buildings he could see outside the window he best presumed he was back in Canterlot. The room of which they stood was filled with a small bed, a desk and lamp, and a few decorations around the walls and window. The presence of textbooks indicated a student and, judging from the telescope pointing towards the distant moon alongside several rabbit plushies on the bed, likely one that was as studious as she was childish. Several posters and pictures upon the walls were put in places of great prominence. A family was in one, set upon a desk that seemed to bear a shrine of some sort. The tall, red furred and black maned unicorn stallion in a tuxedo stood next to what Xenilla presumed was his wife, a pink furred and gold maned pegasus mare wearing a pale dress embossed with a lunar symbol. Between the two was a tiny pink foal, held between their mother and father. Upon the walls were multiple pictures of a country Xenilla did not recognize, though the aesthetic seemed familiar to Japan. And flanked together on the largest wall were two large posters. One of Princess Luna striking a dynamic pose atop the lunar tower with radiating lights streaming down towards the city, the other an artistic representation of Godzilla Junior standing in front of Canterlot with his arms crossed as if he was daring something to try and come at what he guarded. Both of them were signed, though the one of Godzilla just had a hoof print as opposed to Princess Luna’s eloquent signature.
Xenilla put the pieces together well enough. He was in the room of a student, likely in one of Canterlot’s schools, whom came from a foreign land. Said student, like most of her age group, idolized others and in this case it was the Princess of the Night and the King of the Monsters. An assertion that was clarified when the occupant of the room stepped inside and he recognized her.
“Icka’brod’s apprentice,” Xenilla noted as Mariner Chibi Moon passed over to the desk and started writing.
Pinkie Pie, seated on the bed and unseen by the child, beamed at the filly, “Ah, you know her?”
“Seen her once or twice, my brother brags of her often.”
Xenilla observed the filly as she started writing something at her desk. She kept scribbling before there was a knock at her door. Chibi Moon’s ears perked up and she beamed.
“EnterSensei!”
Despite her rapid talking, that got Xenilla’s attention as it was none other than his brother whom poked his head out from behind the door.
“Finished?”, the King of the Monsters quipped with a raised eyebrow.
“ChottoMatte!” (Wait a minute)
Chibi Moon went back to her writing and scrolled down the rest of her work at breakneck speed. Hopping down from her chair she levitated up the note and an envelope for it and approached the door, momentarily pausing to bow to her family portrait and set a holiday arrangement of flowers upon it. Godzilla Junior smirked, pulling a sealed cup out of his saddlebags that steamed with warmth. Chibi Moon eagerly bounced up to him and accepted the drink.
“Got the letter to mail?”
“Hai!” (Yes)
“Know where we’re going?”
“Hai!”
“Walk or ride?”
Chibi Moon snickered and teleported up onto her sensei’s back, giggling to give her answer.
“Lazy little student of mine,” Junior chuckled and started on his way, sipping the cup of hot cocoa Chibi levitated out in front of him.
The three spirits and Xenilla started to, much to the latter’s surprise, slide across the floor like they were on a moving walkway. They phased through the walls and into the hallway to follow master and student out of the school dorms.
Sonata Dusk sighed with a smile on her face, floating above the mobile floor with her chin on her wrist; “A monumental effort, this will make that girl’s year.”
Xenilla, getting over the confusion of movement, raised his eyebrow.
“He saved her life before and she got to be student to a hero. With all the time spent so far, why would this evening be any more special?”
The Ghost of Hearth’s Warmings Present in the form of Megalon, though Xenilla still didn’t quite recognize him, chimed in, “Because earlier this year she was worried she’d spend this Hearth’s Warming alone. Be it from her first year far from home or with alienation from her peers. The students and teachers used to be scared or not know what to do with her.”
“That little filly has some talent for more... eeeeh,” Sonata paused and looked to her earth pony compatriot, ”how’d you put it, Pinkie?”
“Overt? Eruptive? Bombastic powers?”
Megalon raised a drill, “Keyword on “bomb” in that bombastic label!”
Xenilla nodded, having remembered his sibling telling him some of the reasoning for taking in young Ms. Moon being her need for control, “So I'm told, she blew the roof off in her entry exam.”
“And you better bet it freaked out the teachers!”
“Quite, had Princess Luna not been there to applaud and demand she be given an A+ as a prodigy, she'd have failed her entrance exam. And after she passed, her peers and teachers were wary of and tried to restrict her too much; neglect her talent and focus on restraining her.”
“With the best intentions of course!”
Xenilla shrugged, “I think I can imagine what might have happened there had my brother not stepped in.”
Sonata, Megalon, and deflated maned Pinkie all nodded in unison with frowns upon their faces.
“What do you think that would do to a child already isolated far from home with a lot of power?...”
Sonata Dusk pointed towards Chibi Moon as the filly bantered and joked with her sensei, “That child could have become the next Starlight Glimmer or worse.”
Pinkie Pie’s face, and mane for that matter much to Xenilla’s further befuddlement, perked back up, “And yet look at them now!”
Godzilla Junior and Chibi Moon exited the school grounds and entered a quieter part of Canterlot’s nightly streets. The filly hopped off her sensei’s back as they admired the beautiful light and candle displays strung up across all the shops, complimenting the gorgeous night sky filled with stars and a full moon high above. And the custodian of said night sky flew down to join them, Princess Luna landing on the opposite side of Chibi to put the beaming filly between her and Junior. The now trio were all taking three steps forward and one step back in tandem, slowing down to take in more of scenery. Chibi Moon started to hum a familiar tune, one her accompaniment were soon to pick up on. The unity wasn’t perfect. Junior was slightly less nimble in his skipping step as the females and Luna, not knowing the language, had some trouble carrying the neighponese tune Junior and Chibi had down; but it didn’t make a hint of a difference to the group.
“Laughing with her favorite coffee on a particular night of the year,”
“Walking through town humming a familiar melody from home in a way she did with her parents,”
“And between two beings she associated with power and kindness, masculine and feminine in the manner a child thinks of their mother and father. For the first time since she got here, Equestria feels like home and her company feels safe as family.”
“She might be away from Neighpon, but this Hearth’s Warming of present will feel just the same to her.”
Xenilla watched on, seeing not only how joyful Chibi Moon was but also how elated both Princess Luna and Godzilla Junior seemed on this particular night. Not a drop of blood or marriage shared between them, and yet it looked so much like the Apple Family house in regards to feeling. Mare and stallion with a filly between them, going out on a tradition the latter had with her parents. For a split second Xenilla had to kick himself off the thought he was seeing his brother’s mate and niece alongside his kin, they looked so much like a family.
Xenilla let the thoughts run through his mind, lowering his head and whispering to himself, “She’ll remember this, they’ll all remember this for sure…”
“Now you’re getting it! And not only is she going to remember, Luna and Junior are bound to as well. They both have a soft spot for children,” Sonata sighed with a smile as she saw mare and stallion steal a smiling glance at each other as Junior helped Luna through the song.
Pinkie Pie shrugged and playfully rolled her eyes, “That and Chibi got Luna and Junior to see the other is good with kids. Probably intentional on that part too, ten bits says she plotted this.”
Xenilla sighed and watched on at his brother and his compatriots, content in his sibling’s joy. At peace with others he enjoyed being around, that was what Icka’brod and Princess Luna deserved. Chibi Moon wasn’t the only elated one in the group. If the holiday was tied to this circumstance, maybe he could let his mind wander as to how that would apply to him. If memory and spent time with others were the point of this holiday his subconscious locked-onto, he let his focus go and imagined.
A quiet evening walking through the empire and attending a festivities with Blade Dancer, admiring the sights and spending time with the Imperial family. Perhaps that, even if some importance of the idea of a holiday was lost upon him, was what he should do when he awoke.
Xenilla stood up straight, “Alright, I’m ready!”
He felt a pause and after hearing nothing, turned to the three spirits. The smiles upon their faces subsided slightly.
“No, you’re not,” Pinkie Pie pouted with flopped ears.
“But it’s time for us to go,” Sonata sighed.
Xenilla blinked in surprise a bit more before stamping towards them a few steps, “Yes, yes I am ready! How could you be leaving now if I’m not ready?”
“The present is the gateway between the infinitely expanding past and infinitely stretching future,” Megalon nodded as he patted Pinkie on the back, “Our time on this holiday is short and will be added to the record of Hearth’s Warmings Past.”
“You are aware of the meaning but you do not know it,” Sonata sighed as they started to fade with the scenery around them.
“Know it?! Not know it? I spent hours studying it, I’ve witnessed it, I know what to do to make Ms. Dancer happy tonight!” Xenilla snarled as if he tried to will them to stay and release him from this rest, “Relinquish me to wake! You’re wasting my time, I’ll miss it all!”
“Not until you witness whom we preceded,”
“Your last trial,” they spoke in unison as they blew away like snow in the wind, “Is Yet To Come…”