A cold wind howled through the busy streets during a Winter morning just south of downtown Canterville. A freak snowstorm the previous day had blanketed the area in a carpet of white. However, since the previous week had been rather warm, nothing stuck to the road, so schools were still in session. This included the public high school, CHS, where hundreds of well-bundled students calmly if coldly walked through the front courtyard past the massive horse statue towards the surprisingly ornate decades-old building, all of them thinking in the back (or front) of their minds that term would soon end.
Sunset Shimmer and Applejack were among the throng, admiring the sudden alteration of their normal scenery. Applejack wore a large smile. Sunset wore a puffy purple overcoat and knitted hat very different from her usual leather vestments.
“Wow,” said Applejack with a nearly religious sense of awe.
“Yeah,” Sunset replied, albeit with much less enthusiasm. “They’ve really made a lot of progress fixing that façade I destroyed. It’s only been seven weeks. And I was able to get two nice leather jackets from the work I put in before they fired me. How was I supposed to know my punishment violated the closed shop rule?”
“What? Naw, that ain’t what I meant, sugarplum,” Applejack corrected.
“Oh, sorry. What were you talking about then?” asked Sunset.
“The weather. I love winter!” Applejack said brightly. “Hot cocoa, the feel of new snow, buildin’ a fire in the hearth, not… havin’ ta do as much farmwork,” she muttered as her eyes darted around from the guilt before continuing. “But, really, the best part is just bein’ at home for Midwinter’s Day with my closest family!”
Sunset briefly looked at Applejack with a decidedly neutral expression.
“Ain’t that the best?” Applejack asked Sunset, clearly expecting an answer.
“Well, as far as it goes, I was actually born in what you might call a ‘Winter Wonderland’ were it not for the… *ahem* Anyway. I’m always one to enjoy cocoa but, as to family, I wouldn’t know,” Sunset said, her tone more than a bit forlorn. “I haven’t been home for the holidays in a long time.”
Applejack’s face dropped as she realized her faux-pas. “Oh… right. You’re a foreigner. Hey, they got the same holidays back, uh, where you come from?”
Sunset thought for a second before responding. “Eh, sort of? Kind of… not really. Aristeque’s calendar is very similar to Equestria’s: thirteen months of twenty-eight days plus a solstice separate from the lot as a major holiday. However, there, our most important day was opposite: the Summer Sun Celebration, when a new Royal Year would begin. The closest holiday to your ‘Ȝeolla’ we have is called ‘Hearth’s Warming Eve’ where peop— uh, ponies, especially in the hinterlands, spend time with their families. Well, not mine, certainly not with me, but you get the idea.”
As the two reached their adjacent lockers to put away their packs and coats, Sunset continued. “I wasn’t close with my family, even before She took me in to train me. I never spoke with them afterwards. They’re probably just fine with that. Then, my first several years here, well, I wasn’t close to anyone. You can’t exactly blame people for giving me a wide berth, right? I mean, I did spend no less than three years lying, sabotaging friendships, and manipulating everyone and everything with reckless abandon.”
Applejack’s expression shifted to one of incredulous worry. “So, ya mean to tell me you’ve been alone each an’ every holiday, for years?!”
Sunset nodded and replied simply, “Yes.”
“Bu-but… that’s awful!” Applejack said, barely able to contain her sadness.
“Maybe,” replied Sunset dully, “But, like I said, this is the way my life has been for a long time now. I’ve grown used to it; you don’t need to worry about me. If nothing else, at least I have friends like you now.” She gave Applejack a quick hug, breaking it off with a friendly if tired, “I’ll see you later, AJ.”
“Uh, yeah. Later, Sunset,” Applejack said, almost in a daze.
With that, Sunset trudged off to wherever it was she went during the day. No one had ever seen Sunset attend classes. In the meantime, just as the first warning bell rang, Applejack pulled out her cellphone and readied it to send a mass-text to the other four members of her quintet: Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Fluttershy.
Hey y’all, we gotta pull a lil intervention on the friend front. Meet me in the library after school. DO NOT TELL SUNSET.
After the daily monotony of classes had ended yet again, Applejack made her way down the corridor of the school’s third floor towards the library.
Pinkie Pie was already there, typing rapidly on one of the school’s computers. She had bypassed the school’s flimsy firewall and was updating her 72,480 friends (which she concluded was about 99% of the city’s population that were on social media at all) on MyStable, the posting site of choice for CHS students, about her excitement over getting to spend time with her sisters. Or, in her own words:
yolla break coming soon! cant wait 2 live it up w my SISTURZ! YEAH!! :D
To which her older sister Maud, off studying geology at the University of Aristeque on the other side of the city, had replied simply,
Yes. I am also looking forward to it.
Pinkie interpreted this as Maud’s enthusiasm.
Shortly after she made her post, a tap on her shoulder startled her to the point that she nearly split into pieces. An older-sounding voice situated just behind her right ear said, somewhat playfully yet sternly, “Oh, Pinkie~!”
She turned around to see a woman in her thirties with shoulder-length fuchsia hair, pink skin, a green floral print long skirt, and a brown sweater vest: Cheerilee, the unofficial librarian and CHS faculty’s whipping girl due to her lack of tenure.
“I hope you’re not using a school computer to visit MyStable again!” Cheerilee said in a singsong voice, a knowing smile on her face.
Pinkie laughed guiltily. “O-of course not, Miss Cheerilee!” she said as she quickly erased her browser history and shut down the computer.
Within a couple of minutes, Applejack moseyed into the library and stood next to Pinkie, who remained seated for the moment. Not long after, the other three came in at once.
“Hey girls! Over here!” Pinkie called loudly to Fluttershy, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash. Cheerilee did not care, as the school day was legally over so no point in enforcing the rules, and decided to just leave. Fluttershy took a seat at the computer terminal on the other side of the table, but the others remained standing, forming a crude semicircle.
“So what’s the emergency, AJ?” asked Rainbow Dash. “What’s up with Sunset? And, uh, why should we care?”
“Well, I think the poor gal gets lonely around the holidays,” Applejack explained. “An’ I think we can help her get through that!”
Rarity approached Applejack, intrigued. “She does seem lonely of late. I saw it when she bought her jackets at the boutique. Even with end-of-term exams upon us, it’s absolutely awful to feel glum so close to the end of Særrajeol and the holiday break around Midwinter. So, what is your plan, dear?”
“Two words:” said Applejack matter-of-factly, “Slumber Parties!”
Everyone except Pinkie looked at AJ as if she had sprung a screw. Pinkie, for her part, sat with a growing smile as her eyes lit up.
“Basically,” Applejack explained, “we should have parties at everyone’s homes, once every few days, leading up to the big shebang at my family home two nights before the Ȝeolla-day proper!”
The other girls all nodded their heads in agreement, except for Pinkie, who seemed to have temporarily blinked out of existence.
“That’s a lovely idea!” said Rarity.
“Yeah!” Rainbow Dash agreed.
“I’d love to!” said Fluttershy.
At that, Rainbow Dash looked askance at Fluttershy. “You know, in the ten years we’ve known each other, I don’t think I’ve ever met your family.”
“Really?” asked Fluttershy. “Well, they’r—”
The rest of her explanation was interrupted by Pinkie who had somehow managed to reappear, balancing on top of an empty book cart to give herself a height advantage to interject from above. “Ooh! Ooh ooh Ooooh! ME FIRST!!”
Applejack raised her eyebrow, but Pinkie deflected with her simple but heartfelt declaration, “Parties are my LIFE!”
“Uh… Well then, sounds good to me, Pinkie,” Applejack said after a moment.
“GREAT!!!” Pinkie replied within a millisecond. “I’ll go tell Sunset!”
Down on the ground floor, Sunset Shimmer stood at her locker, the one she had kept for so many years that some of the books on the top shelf had become conduits for cobwebs. She sighed as she grabbed her useless bookbag out of the locker, noting its slowly fraying threads. Once she shut the metal door and turned the built-in combination lock, she found herself face to face with a full-smile Pinkie Pie, who was so excited she could barely keep her hands to herself, able only to vocalize, “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~!”
Sunset stared at Pinkie, expression neutral, as Pinkie grabbed her by the arm and led her outside the school, still making that sound, her stance unchanged.
The other four were waiting for them by the horse statue. Rarity stepped up to Sunset, shooting an exasperated but non-threatening gaze at Pinkie.
“I assume by that confused expression on your face that you have no idea what’s going on? Well, dear, tonight the five of us are throwing you your very first slumber party! At, uh, Pinkie’s. She volunteered. So, go home, gather a change of clothes including nightie, your toiletries, and meet us back here in an hour and then we’ll all head over there. That will give Pinkie time to set her home up for us.”
“That’s… wow… that’s fine by me, but how can you get away with this on a school night?” asked Sunset, her logical mind taking over. “You all do have finals coming up.”
“Fake study session!!” Pinkie said as she jumped around the snow.
Sunset smirked. “That’s the best excuse I’ve heard in years.”