Smoulder sat in Headmaster Starlight’s office, in the small wooden chair before the wide oak desk. She was getting a little big for equine chairs, her hips didn’t quite fit on the wood, and her tail wrapped around the chair’s legs for lack of anywhere else to go. The effect was that of an adult in a foal’s chair, forcing her to sit up straight for fear her weight might snap the back rest.
It was winter, five days until Hearthswarming, the last day the school was officially open before the holiday, though most of the students had already gone home. Starlight’s office was festooned with holiday decorations: tinsel and garlands, faerie lights and glass ornaments. A bowl of candy canes rested on the great oak desk, beckoning to those students who found themselves in the little chair.
Alone, Smoulder reached out and took one. With two clawtips, she snapped the curled section off the end, creating a peppermint stick. The end of this stick she set alight with a puff of dragon fire, allowing her to inhale the holiday-scented fumes.
“No smoking on school grounds,” Starlight said, as she pushed open the office door. Her tone was sharp, her manner determined. Trixie was with her, and the two walked in lock step.
“I’m a dragon,” Smolder said, unfazed, as she blew out a cloud of peppermint fumes that sparkled in the air like glitter. “I always smoke.”
“You’re in a lot of trouble, missy,” Starlight retorted, taking her place behind the desk. Trixie sat off to one side, pulling out the office’s little typewriter. Turning her head, Smolder watched as Trixie began to take notes, transcribing the conversation. The typewriter’s distinctive clatter filled the air, the whirring, the clicking, the ring of metal on metal as clear as any bell.
Trixie had a few lines to transcribe, but when nopony said anything, the typewriter eventually stopped, allowing the room to lapse into silence. “Nothing to say?” Starlight demanded, and the clicking and ringing came once again.
Smolder grinned, taking another puff off her candy cane. “I’m innocent, gov’na,” she spoke in an obviously affected accent. “A crime of this magnitude could only have been committed by Keyzer Soze.”
“Do you think this is funny?” Starlight snapped. “I know what happened.”
“If you already know what happened, why isn’t Gallus in here with me?”
“I’ll be speaking with Gallus later, along with everycreature else in your little friend group.” Starlight snorted. “I hope your stories are straight.”
“Well, you know,” Smolder leaned back in her chair, and the wood creaked with her weight. “The truth will set you free, or something inspiring like that. There’s gotta be a friendship lesson here, right?”
“Spill!”
“Okay, okay!” Smolder waved a hand about, and the smoking peppermint stick left whirling loops in the air, which spread into high arcs as they drifted towards the ceiling. “So it all started about three years ago, when Gallus gave what has to be the worst Hearthswarming gift ever. Dragons don’t even celebrate Hearthswarming, and I knew better than that.”
“I did not. I did not!” Gallus sat in the little chair like a drowning man clinging to floating wood. His posture was tight, his talons wrapped around the sides, his eyes wild and darting, looking about the room as though to anticipate imminent attack. “Griffons celebrate Hearthswarming too, you know.”
“I know,” Starlight raised a hoof. Behind her, Trixie’s typewriter clattered away. “I’m not trying to—”
“So we have our own gifting traditions. If I gave a griffon a colorful box with a big bow on it, they’d think I was insulting them. They’d think I was making fun of them.”
“Gallus, I—”
“So I gave Smolder the same gift I’d given all my friends every year since I was ten. A shiny twenty-bit coin, and a pamphlet explaining that the utility of the gift exchange is maximized when the recipient, rather than the giver, decides how the resources are allocated.”
The ring of the typewriter momentarily paused.
“Why the pamphlet?” Trixie finally asked.
“I don’t know. That’s just how griffons do it!”
“I don’t know what Smolder’s complaining about,” Silverstream said, munching on a candy cane and sipping her empathy cocoa. “I thought the pamphlet made some great points. Like, did you know that taxes are theft? They’re an unelected monarch seizing the proceeds of my labor without my consent!”
“You’re a student.” Starlight squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead with a hoof. “You don’t pay taxes.”
“No, but if I did, I’d be outraged.”
“Okay, this isn’t really what I’m getting at.” She let out a long sigh, lifting her head from her desk and opening her eyes again. “What else can you tell me about what happened?”
“Government money is an illusion that’s all going to vanish one day. Smart creatures keep all their wealth in gold.”
“Silverstream, our money is made of—”
“Now, if he was a dragon, I’d have just smashed his face into the pumice stones until he got the point,” Smolder said, gesturing vaguely at the window that overlooked the courtyard. “But that’s the problem with being a dragon among, you know. Mammals. If I hit Gallus hard enough to actually make me feel better, I’d break every bone in his body. And his talons couldn’t pierce my hide even if he was using them to hold a saw. Not much of a fight when the other guy can’t fight back.”
She looked up at the ceiling, her tone turning thoughtful. “So, you know, I stewed for a while. Thought that this was a stupid holiday and maybe I should just quit. Not get anycreature anything. But then I talked to Trixie and—”
The typewriter stopped, and Trixie loudly cleared her throat.
“Oh, right, I mean, I talked to a changeling who looked like Trixie, but I have no idea who they actually were. Probably long gone.” Smolder snapped her fingers and pointed at Trixie, and Trixie winked back. “But anyway, they helped me appreciate the joy of Hearthswarming.”
Shooting a narrow look between Trixie and Smolder, Starlight asked: “And how, exactly, did they do that?”
“Simple,” Smolder grinned. “I didn’t realize how much fun Hearthswarming was, until I realized I could win.”
“It’s not okay!” Ocellus snapped. She couldn’t sit in the chair, but instead paced in front of Starlight’s desk. “It was three years ago and I still have nightmares about it.”
With a sharp gesture, she tapped her own chest, her wings buzzing behind her: “Smolder took advantage of my cultural heritage to—”
“See,” Smolder said, “nocreature had asked Gallus out to the winter dance, and he was just so sad. This puffy little cinnamon roll that’s trying to act like it doesn’t care that no mares think he’s cute. So I had a chat with Ocellus, and said it would be a great Hearthswarming gift if she took him to the dance.”
“A pity date?”
“No no,” Smolder sat forward, eyes bright, manner so sharp and alive. “A pity date would only make him feel worse about himself. I told her, he needs to know that there is love out there for him. That he’ll find the right creature one day. Just one magical night, to give him hope.”
Her current candy cane expended, she reached out to the bowl and picked out another one, breaking off the end and lighting it just as before. “So I broke into his dorm room, and found the magazines he keeps under the mattress. And I found his diary. And I helped Ocellus make the perfect griffon for him. Her name was Gaze, she was a new exchange student to the school.”
“So you’re confessing to breaking into the dorms?”
“Yeah, three years ago.” Smolder scoffed. “To nick something that’s worth, what, ten bits total? Statute of limitations.”
“We’ll see.” Starlight glowered, and the typewriter rang. “Continue.”
“So, Gaze. She’s perfect for him. Physically, sure -- nice figure, bright colors, keeps her feathers the way all the models his magazines did. But she’s also, you know, perfect for him in the way that matters. She’s smart, she’s funny, she thinks he’s funny. They’re both from the same podunk part of Griffonstone, and she laughs at his neighborhood’s in-jokes. So ‘Gaze’ walks up to him, and says that she’s new to the school, and has nobody to take her to the dance, and since they’re both from the old neighborhood, maybe…?”
“And then?”
“And then,” Smolder grinned, “he’s smitten. He spends all day before the dance trying to get ready, way overthinks it, ruins his feathers with too much prep, dries out his fur with too much washing, and he’s actually panicking. So I slip Ocellus a little hint, and she shows up with her fur and feathers off the same way. And she asks him if he was nervous too, and they both laugh. And then? The dance, conversation, opening up to each other, Gallus’s heart pounding in his chest, and they rub beaks under the starlight. And the plan is that, when the dance is over, Ocellus will excuse herself, and say she can’t be with him, but that he’s a wonderful griffon, and one day he’ll make another creature very happy.”
“And is that what happened?”
“Nope, because just as the dance is about to wrap up, I burst in and shout at the top of my lungs,” she mimed the motion with her hands, holding them up to her mouth to amplify her voice, “Ocellus, Thorax is coming! Get back in your natural form, quick!”
The ring of Trixie’s typewriter stopped. For a long moment, Starlight did not ask any followup questions, but instead stared at her desk.
Smolder chuckled: “The little wimp cried for like, four hours.”
“And I tried to get over it!” Gallus shouted, his voice squeaking with the tension in his chest. “I really did. I put it down for a full year, and swallowed those negative feelings just like Trixie taught me. They can’t be laughing at you if you’re laughing too.”
“Trixie,” Starlight growled, “how often is your name going to come up in these stories?”
“It’s good life advice. We can’t all grow up with rich parents and a supportive household.”
“And I was fine,” Gallus went on, heedless of the exchange, “I was fine, until next year, when she started making jokes about what she was going to get me for Hearthswarming. Maybe a repeat performance, eh? And I just, I couldn’t take it, okay? I’m just one griffon.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, I said, dragons don’t celebrate Hearthswarming.” He gestured wildly with his talons, though it was not clear even to him what he was gesturing at. “And I know that the pageantry bothers her, the bows, the tinsel, all the singing. That Smolder must be feeling pretty homesick. So I told her I’d get her something that would make her feel like she’s back in the Dragonlands. And I gave her this big box wrapped up with red wrapping paper and a bright yellow bow.”
“And what was inside it?”
“Nothing,” he snapped. “When she was distracted opening it, I hit her real hard. Right in the gut.”
For a moment, Starlight paused: “I didn’t think griffon claws could peirce a dragons hide.”
“They can’t,” Gallus said. “Which is why I hit her with this.”
He held up an authentic, full-size cast-iron mace.
“Honestly?” Smolder said. “The part that annoyed me the most was that it was actually a really good gift. When I was lying on the ground, doubled over in pain, I was thinking, ‘this is just like being back in the dragonlands.’ It made me feel better, you know? Like my brothers were around again. And I hate it when people make me feel better.”
“So then what?”
“Well, I’d obviously lost that one, and I hate losing, and I didn’t have any other good ideas, so I gave him a twenty-bit coin and a pamphlet explaining that absolute notions of private property derive from imperialist oppression and exist primarily as a pretext for the use of governmental force against the powerless.”
After a moment, she added: “I figured that made us even, you know? That made us square. Wrapped the whole thing up.”
“And did it?”
“For that year, yeah, but last year… you know. We both knew something was going to happen on Hearthswarming. We just didn’t know what. I thought I’d take it easy, let Gallus make the first move. And that turned out to be a big mistake. See, Sandbar warned me that Gallus had asked Ocellus to impersonate this scaly hunk of a dragon named Pyrite—”
“My powers are not a prop to be used in your pony shadowpuppet theater!” Ocellus screamed so loud her voice cracked. “We are a noble and enlightened race, but everycreature treats us like we’re just romantic comedy standins waiting to—”
“So then the real Pyrite shows up on a special mission from Dragonlord Ember,” Gallus rubbed his talons together, his breath shaking as he drew it in and out. “And Smolder thinks it’s Ocellus, so she’s giving him the roughest time she can. Tripping him into the fountain, calling him by the wrong name, taking him for a tour of the bog with a bag full of hydra feed. And finally, he snaps. He just snaps and screams that she’s the most selfish, idiotic, insufferable dragon he’s ever met. So she tells him ‘give it up, changeling’ and slaps him across the face.”
“And I take it he hits her back?”
“No no, he doesn’t hit her back.” Gallus’s grin was wild, his eyes wild. “He hits her through a building, and then—”
“Sits on her, and makes her say, ‘Hanging out with pretty princess ponies does not make me all that, and I will not backtalk real dragons’ one-hundred times,” Sandbar said. “And I was like, ‘dude, this is harsh, but at least all this stuff is over now, right?’ But it turns out that when he got back to the dragonlands, Pyrite told everydragon about what happened. And when Smolder went back for summer break, all the boy dragons laughed at her and she couldn’t get a date.”
For a moment, Sandbar sucked on a candy cane. Then he added: “Oh, and like, Gallus lied to me about Pyrite actually being Ocellus. What’s up with that? Not cool.”
“So this year,” Smolder said, “I was ready to throw down. This was going to be murder. When Silverstream tells me that Gallus asked Ocellus to impersonate him and pretend to ask me out—”
“So then,” Gallus giggled, a rippling and unhinged sound. “Apple Bloom tells me that Smolder asked Ocellus to impersonate her and pretend to ask me out—”
Hooves up on the desk, Ocellus roared: “It was justice. For me and for all changelings. Those who could not taste love would taste my vengeance!”
“So, like,” Silverstream said, after taking back her copy of Celestia Shrugged. “They’re both on a date with each other, and they both think the other is a changeling trying to seduce them. And they both have this idea that the best way to win is to act really into it, so the real Smolder or Gallus will be freaked out. And so they both open up, but like, you know, they aren’t expecting the other to do it?”
“Right.” Starlight gestured for her to continue.
“So, Gallus breaks character first, and says, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this. This isn’t funny,’ and talks about how awful his uncle was to him when he was a kid. Like, I can’t believe you’re toying with my emotions this way? But he doesn’t actually say the word changeling, and so Smolder is like—”
“You think you had it rough?” Sandbar said, using his hooves to mime two creatures yelling at each other. “And then she’s all, ‘Your uncle just yelled at you. If I ever acted like a girl, my brothers whooped me until I could barely stand. Because dragons are like that. And then she says, ‘dragons are awful.’ Because you know, she can say that, but Gallus thinks it’s Ocellus saying that.”
“So he thinks Ocellus is trash-talking Smolder.”
“Right, and he steps up and is all, ‘did you just call Smolder damaged goods?’”
“I’m not damaged goods,” Smolder said, crossing her arms and settling back in her chair. “I’m not. I just had a rough childhood. And sometimes I take that out on other people.”
Trixie stopped typing. Silence hung in the room.
“I mean, he referred to me in the third person. ‘Smolder’ not ‘you’ so I pretty much figured out what was happening. But I’m not damaged goods. I just get emotional sometimes. So I told him I wasn’t. I’m just tough. He’s the sack of wimpiness and fail who breaks down twice a day because his uncle didn’t love him enough.”
“And then what?” Starlight asked.
“He asked why, if I knew what I was doing genuinely hurt him, I kept doing it. Because he thought we were friends.”
“It’s like, dude,” Sandbar leaned forward in the little chair. “I never thought I would see the day that Smolder breaks down before Gallus. They’re yelling at each other and she just starts crying. And dragons cry gasoline! She’s shouting that she doesn’t want to hurt people, it just happens and she doesn’t know why.”
“And then?”
“And then they’re both crying, and hugging each other.”
“And then?” Starlight asked, more sharply.
“I don’t know exactly. I didn’t have a great view. I’m pretty sure that Smolder kissed Gallus first? But it could have been the other way around.”
“And they’re in the main hall, and the screaming has attracted a crowd, so everypony is watching as Smolder asks Gallus if this is actually happening. And then he points up and says, ‘Mistletoe’ and there is mistletoe there, so they start making out right in front of the crowd.”
“I have a girlfriend,” Gallus said, holding his head with his talons and staring at the floor. He shook like a leaf in the wind. “I have a girlfriend, and the very first thing we did together was get a citation for public indecency and inciting a riot.”
“I wouldn’t say he’s my boyfriend,” Smolder blew out another cloud of smoke. “But he gets me, or something. I don’t know. Maybe we could go out again.”
“This is a textbook toxic codependent relationship!” Starlight shouted, lifting her hoof to the air. “We have to split them up. I mean, we have to. I will ship one of them back to their homelands if that’s what it takes to—”
“Ahem.” Cadance cleared her throat. “One question. Which one of us is the princess of love. Is it you? Or…” She pointed a hoof to herself. “Is it me?”
“It’s you, but—”
“And that means that if there’s any ‘shipping’ of the students, I get to do it, right? I mean, I get to ‘ship’ everypony. I get to decide if you and Trixie are, what’s the term, ‘gay disasters?’ Or a loving couple that simply remembers how to have fun.”
“You uh…” Starlight cleared her throat. “You do get to decide that, yes.”
“What if I want us to be gay disasters?” Trixie asked. They both ignored her.
“So in light of that fact. These facts, really. These multiple, related facts, I think we should overlook that citation and allow them to stay together.”
“Um… you're the princess.” Starlight looked at her desk. “And uh… I love Trixie. I really do.”
“I know.”
“But…” Starlight took a deep breath, steeling herself before she went on. “Will Smolder and Gallus be… okay?”
“Emotionally, as individuals? Yes. This will be good for them. It will help them heal and they’ll become better, happier people. If you mean, will they succeed as a couple? I’m not sure. The potential for true love is there, but it’s up to them to develop it.”
“When will we know?”
“Give it a year,” Cadance advised. “After all, they’ll have to get each other Hearthswarming gifts next year. We’ll ah…” She picked her words carefully. “We’ll see who wins.”