Canterlot High stood in chilled silence, the building and surrounding grounds covered in a thick blanket of soft, fluffy snow. The sidewalks weren’t even shoveled. With the school in the middle of its winter break, even the groundskeepers were taking it relatively easy. The faculty parking lot, and a single pathway to a small side entrance, provided the only access to the school that didn’t require you to step into deep snow.
Sunset watched as a puff of steam rose from her mouth and disappeared into the cold air. She was leaning against the front door of the school, hiding beneath the overhang, to keep herself from getting speckled with the gently falling snowflakes. Her eyes moved from watching her breath to watching a few bits of snow flick this way and that. She was always impressed by how the snowflakes managed to be so beautiful even when they weren’t dutifully hoof crafted by pegasi.
Sucking in a deep breath, Sunset fought back a yawn before shrugging her shoulders, bringing her coat up around her neck. Despite being bundled up for cold weather, standing still so long so early in the day had left her feeling cold all over. In a fluid, practiced movement she pulled her phone from her pocket, checked the time, and then returned the mobile device and her hands to the warmth of her pockets.
“Where is she?” Sunset grumbled.
As if Sunset’s annoyance was the final catalyst to a summoning spell, she noticed a shimmer around the portal to Equestria. Though the rearing horse statue was long gone and had yet to be replaced, the statue base still stood front and center on the Canterlot High campus. And in that statue base, unbeknownst to the wider world, was a portal to a land of magical talking ponies.
But now the portal was opening, and someone was shuffling out, looking a bit unsure on their new feet. Sunset had been expecting Princess Twilight. Yet, instead, she was seeing someone whose skin, hair, and clothes were mostly blue and tan with light yellow accents. It was a guy who had brought with him a cardboard box.
Shifting her weight, Sunset stopped leaning against the door and quickly jogged up to the statue and the new arrival. “Uh, hello…. I don’t suppose Princess Twilight sent you.”
The guy turned and nodded. “Yeah, though I can’t say I’m thrilled she did.” The guy stuck his upper half back through the portal, fetching another box from Equestria and stacking it on top of the first one.
“And the reason Twilight sent you instead of coming herself is…?” Sunset asked, drawing out her sentence hoping the guy would fill in the blanks.
“She said it was because of something that came up in Canterlot, though I believe that about as far as I can throw Yona… and Yona is a yak,” he said before extending a hand. “Guess I should do the friendly thing and introduce myself. I’m Gallus, I'm a student at Twilight's School of Friendship.”
“Sunset Shimmer,” she said, taking his hand and giving it a few shakes. “Gallus… it’s been a while, but that sounds like a griffon’s name.”
“It is, and I am.” Gallus hefted up one of the boxes he had brought before motioning to the other one. “Now, maybe we could continue playing twenty questions while we’re going someplace not in the snow. My face is freezing.”
“Right, sorry,” she said as she picked up the second box. She then began to walk, leading Gallus down the street toward a bus stop.
They rode the bus in mostly awkward silence. From Sunset’s perspective, Gallus seemed to be taking in the world. She was waiting for him to ask questions, like what a bus was or how it moved. They passed so many things that were unique to the human world on their way to her apartment, and it did look like Gallus was curious. His eyes would lock on something for a moment, his head turning as he watched it pass in the bus window. But he never asked the question or even made a comment.
Considering she was expecting Princess Twilight, who was always eager to learn, the quiet felt strange.
Once they were at Sunset’s apartment, the silence was too much. Sunset had to break it. “So, did Twilight send you over just to bring the Hearth’s Warming supplies?” Sunset said as she pushed her way into her cozy little loft apartment, setting down the box she had been carrying before holding the door open for Gallus.
He shrugged as he came in the door, setting his box down on top of the first. “That’s all she said I had to do. Bring the boxes, help you carry them, and then I could come back. Obviously, she expects me to just turn straight around and not have some field trip in a strange new world.”
“Yeah, I have to say, I don’t really believe that either,” Sunset said with a chuckle. “Twilight, Princess of Friendship and Headmare to the School of Friendship, risks sending a student through a mystical portal to an entirely different world just to carry a few boxes. That’s a lot more complicated than just sending me a message she can’t make it and leaving the boxes on her side of the portal.”
“That’s what I said, but she said you’d need someone to help carry this stuff. This is such an obvious friendship lesson, it’s almost painful.”
“Well, I hope this friendship lesson isn’t keeping you from your own holiday plans,” Sunset said as she opened the first box, pulling back the flaps and revealing the haul of Hearth’s Warming festivities within.
Gallus frowned a little. “No, mostly because I don’t have many this year.”
Sunset winced a little, even as she held a Hearth’s Warming doll of her pony form in her hand. It had been so long since she had seen one of those, but at the moment, her attention was focused on Gallus. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s nothing bad, just this year can’t be like last year. Last year all my friends stayed at the school to celebrate Hearth’s Warming with me, which was cool after… the prank I pulled almost forced them to stay there. But this year their families really wanted them to come home. They invited me to come, but my friends are a pony, a hippogryph, a yak, a dragon, and a changeling.
“Going down the list. Sandbar’s holiday sounds… painfully boring when his most exciting story is the time his Hearth’s Warming doll almost fell in the fire. Silver Stream and the hippogryphs spend part of their holiday underwater as hippocampi, and I do not want to be in water that long. Yona’s holiday traditions are basically just smashing. Smolder’s traditions are telling stories and eating gems. Ocellus’s traditions are to literally dive into a swimming pool of punch.”
“Sounds like a pretty great group of friends,” Sunset said as she stood and began to look around the apartment. She didn’t really have a mantel, the blessing of central HVAC. Maybe her Hearth’s Warming doll could go on top of the microwave? No, the bookshelf above her computer. That was a great place for it. “I think Princess Twilight’s talked about some of you when we write to one another. She and I are kind of cross-dimensional pen pals.”
“She’s told us… and that reminds me,” Gallus said. “I’ll give you three guesses what’s in this present.”
Sunset set her Hearth’s Warming doll on the bookcase, smiling at it for a moment before looking to Gallus. He had opened the second box and pulled out a wrapped present. The present itself was wrapped in plain red wrapping paper with an orange ribbon. It was rectangular, taller than it was wide, and with very narrow depth. The dimensions made it pretty obvious to Sunset what the present was. a glance. “Is it a book?”
Gallus held it out, letting Sunset take it. “Congratulations, you won the prize.”
Sunset chuckled, taking the present and beginning to pull off the wrapping paper. Though the book had no title on it, she knew what it was the moment she saw the mark on the front. “A fresh cross-dimensional journal… Twilight must have noticed ours was running low again. I wish I could be the one to give her something like this, but I can’t make this book over here.”
Gallus shrugged, “Eh, magic is overrated. Griffons are able to get around well enough without it.”
“Yeah, but it helps you have something like these,” she said, holding up her hand and twiddling her fingers. “I bet having hands isn’t that much different from your claws. Probably why you managed to carry the boxes without stumbling around. Though you walk on two legs pretty well for not being in this world before.”
“Twilight gave me a crash course before I left,” he said as he tugged at his jacket. It was subtle, but Sunset imagined he was getting uncomfortable standing indoors in heavy winter gear.
“Well, Twilight obviously wanted you to have a friendship lesson, so I might as well let you stick around for a bit. Go ahead and take off your jacket. You can hang out here for a few hours before you go back.”
“Not going to make me learn my friendship lesson?”
Sunset chuckled as she reached down into one of the boxes again, picking through some of the Equestrian quality holiday decorations Twilight had packed inside. “Even if I knew the lesson she wanted you to learn, I wouldn’t force you to learn it. Just crash on the couch. I’ll put on a holiday movie or something.”
“You can watch a movie here… but this isn’t a movie theater.”
“Yeah, the movie industry in this world has been going a lot longer than Equestria’s, and it benefits from a lot more advanced technology. You can have a full movie theater experience in the comfort of your own home. On top of that, it’s practically a local tradition to watch holiday-themed movies around this time of year. I can even pop some popcorn if you’d like.”
“Sit and watch movies. Yeah... I could hang out for a bit,” Gallus said as he worked to take off his jacket and other winter clothes, revealing a comfortable long sleeve shirt and denim jeans beneath. “So, why did Twilight send you all this stuff? Couldn’t you have gotten a Hearth’s Warming doll here?”
“Well, for one, I doubt I could have gotten a doll made in my pony form very easily. On top of that, they don’t really celebrate Hearth’s Warming here.”
Gallus blinked a few times, staring at Sunset as if waiting for the punchline to a joke. “Wait, but… we passed like a dozen houses and business on the way here decorated for Hearth’s Warming. I saw Hearth’s Warming trees.”
Sunset hung the wreath on the backside of her front door, finding the coat hook there an appropriate means to display the wreath. “Yeah, it baffled me to my first year here. Trust me, between this world and Equestria, the number of bizarre similarities don’t stop at holiday decorations.”
“So then what is everyone celebrating?” Gallus asked as he took a seat on the couch.
“Where Hearth’s Warming is something of an Equestrian national holiday, the winter season in this world brings with it a lot of religious and cultural holidays. I won’t get into it too much, though. Nothing you’ll need to remember.”
“Unless Twilight gives me a test.”
Sunset snorted, trying to suppress her laughter as she walked towards her TV stand. She could imagine Twilight doing just that. Sitting Gallus down and giving him a test on human holiday traditions, even if it was just a weak excuse to find out more about them herself. “Well then, I better make sure we watch a good movie so you’ll have a better chance of remembering it.”
Sunset grabbed her remote, pressing a button to turn on the TV. She then put the remote down, crouched down, and turned on her gaming console. As all that hardware booted up, she glanced at Gallus and took a gauge of him for a moment. “I think… you’d like How The Grinch Stole Christmas.”
Gallus arched an eyebrow. “What is a Grinch, what is a Christmas… and how did he steal it?”
Sunset opened a drawer on her TV standing, flipping through some of the DVD cases inside before pulling out the movie. She then smiled as she opened the case and took out the disk. “Answering all that would basically make me spoil the whole story. So sit down, get comfortable, I’ll microwave some popcorn.”
Though, I will give you one warning. This is basically a fairy tale. There is not a subset of humans called the Who’s. These are all just actors portraying a fictional story.”
“Why does it sound like this movie is going to get confusing?”
“Just try not to think too much about it.”
Gallus had become entranced with the movie once it had started, and Sunset was reminded of the first time she saw a human world movie. Equestrian cinema was alright, but the human world movie industry just had an undeniable advantage. So they watched the movie together, polishing off a bowl of microwave popcorn by the time the end credits began to roll. At that point, Sunset stood up and carried the bowl towards her sink.
“So, what did you think?” Sunset asked.
“Well, can’t say I understood all the parts… like the whole… Santa thing. But can’t say I hated it either. It almost felt like it was a friendship lesson.”
Sunset chuckled as she began rising out the popcorn bowl in her small sink. “Sorry, you really can’t watch a holiday movie in this world without it trying to teach a lesson about the importance of family and friends.”
“So… where are your friends?” Gallus asked. “I was worried I’d have to deal with a herd of my professors who were not my professors.”
Sunset finished rinsing the popcorn bowl and set it upside down in a nearby drying rack. She then turned around, leaning against the sink as she looked over at Gallus. “I guess you could say I’m kind of in the same boat as you. I had a lot of fun with my friends before today. We even had an early holiday party the day before yesterday, but… they’re all spending time with their families today. And…”
“And each of them invited you, but you froze up when trying to decide who to go with.” Gallus brought one of his legs up onto the couch, hugging the leg to his chest while he looked away from Sunset. “I mean, how do you pick just one to spend the holiday with? How do you deal with the fact that the others would be disappointed, or that you might ruin the party you do go to?”
“And you really don’t have a family of your own to visit,” Sunset said, finishing Gallus’s thought. For a few moments after, silence just floated around the apartment. In the warmth of the holidays, they were two souls feeling a nip and chill… and not because they had been excluded by others. No, they had excluded themselves, out of… fear? Out of anxiety? It was hard to put a name to it, but… Sunset knew exactly how Gallus was feeling. She had felt it herself when her friends had tried to include her.
"I hate to say it, but I think we just hit on Twilight's friendship lesson," Sunset said with a chuckle.
"Ugh, she's getting too good at doing this. It's like she sets friendship traps," Gallus grumbled.
"So… I imagine you had to get back to the portal so that you can have Twilight teleport you to one of your friends' parties."
Gallus stood up from the couch. "While you basically do the same, but with a lot less magic."
"Basically, but I may eat lunch first. The place where I work in the mall let me bring home a bunch of fish. If I don't eat it now, I won't have an appetite for until after New Year's."
Gallus wave the club before pointing it at Sunset. "Wait, you eat fish. You, a pony, eat fish."
"Yeah, I'd say the common human diet aligns more with a griffin's diet than a pony's." It was at that moment that a grumbling sound filled the apartment. It was Gallus's stomach. "And I imagine it's difficult for you, a griffin, to get the kind of food you really like in Ponyville."
"You have no idea."
Sunset laughed as she crossed the apartment toward her small fridge. "Then let's both agree that we didn't learn the friendship lesson until a couple of hours from now. I'll make some sashimi for lunch and we can watch another movie."
"Got anything with more action in it?"
Sunset brought out the carefully wrapped fish and a bag of microwave rice. Not the best ingredients, but it would taste pretty good. "I think I know just the movie, just… don't tell Twilight."
And so it is said, on that special holiday
They watched Die Hard, no matter what Twilight might say.
They ate sashimi, and in the end, found
That good holiday spirit is not to a single world bound.
Both will find joy with familiar friends, but neither will forget the new friend they had made in the end.