Eight Years Later...
Alphabittle relaxed on the couch in his living room, dividing his attention between reading a book and watching his adopted daughter Isabelle go to and fro all around the interior of the living space with a wooden spoon she had drawn a face on, making whistling and whooshing sounds all the while.
After the adoption ceremony eight years ago, Alphabittle had taken Isabelle, or 'Izzy', one of her first words, to her new home. Because he had not taken Oak's advice months earlier, her new nursery had been fully furnished with a crib, changing table, with a playpen out in the main living quarters. As his new foal got settled in, the unicorn stallion had finally found the strength to begin to move on, and began boxing up the belongings of his wife or daughter that neither of them would have any use for, either donating them or putting them into storage. By her first birthday, which had had marked as five days before the bell ringing, he had effectively made a new home for the two of them.
The rest of Bridlewood said nothing other than murmurs when the time came to return to work and a new foal was dropped off at daycare; Oak figured that most of the families in the village believed in letting Alphabittle have a second chance rather than have another mouth to feed, and as time passed, the judgmental glances all but ceased, and the vast majority of Bridlewood accepted that nopony was perfect, that Alphabittle's lapse of judgement was a mistake he wasn't likely to repeat, and that Izzy was in good hooves.
Even if she was a bit... Lively.
Alphabittle had to admit, Izzy's exuberant mannerisms put her in rather stark contrast with the rest of Bridlewood's youth, and non-youth, for that matter, and it was likely because of that exuberance that she didn't have very many friends her age. The other fillies and colts usually played checkers, horseshoes, or played on the playground sets, and Izzy almost always wanted to mix things up in one way or another, and everypony else her age was pretty much set in their ways.
In fact, almost everypony in Bridlewood was set in their ways. The primary reason that Alphabittle excelled so much as the Lead Brewer at the Crystal Tea Room was he knew exactly what to have on hoof at the beginning of every shift, because nopony's orders ever changed. He was thinking of asking Oak for the position of Head Bartender when the time came for the elder to start thinking about retirement, which was likely to be in the next few years, as the owner of the Crystal Tearoom was approaching sixty years old. After all, he was fairly certain that was the best position for him in the Tearoom, given his cutie mark.
Alphabittle's attention was pulled away from his book when Izzy's whooping and trotting with her toy spoon came to a halt. He looked up and found her attention completely captured by something outside the back window.
"Alphie, Alphie, look!" She called, starting to hop up and down excitedly.
He set his book down on the arm of the couch he had been leaning on, and began to get up. When Izzy first started to talk, and rapidly learned words day after day at school, he wondered if he'd ever get used to being on a first name basis with his adopted daughter. But it was either that or more ritual dancing. Adoptions were very rare in Bridlewood, and if you weren't blood, calling somepony mom or dad meant major jinxies. But if he was honest with himself, he didn't mind her pet names, like Alphie, and Bitty.
He walked over to the back window and looked where Izzy was enthusiastically pointing.
"A falling star???" She asked as the orange glowing object in the sky got slowly larger.
Whatever it was, it did indeed look like it was going to land in the backyard, if the wind didn't shift.
"Stay here, kiddo, I'll take a look," Alphabittle said, turning around and heading for the front door. He stepped outside, walked around the tree house, and found that Izzy had, instead of staying put, opened the window, climbed out, landed in the flowerbeds, and was now standing under what looked to be a small floating lantern.
"Who needs doors?" Alphabittle muttered to himself.
Izzy pranced in place, her energy barely contained as what looked to be a piece of parchment attached to the bottom of the balloon was coming right to where Izzy was standing. As she began to reach up for it, Alphabittle stepped up next to her.
"Careful now, Iz, that looks like an open flame. I'll help you get it," Alphabittle said.
The stallion was more than double Izzy's height, so he had no trouble reaching up and stopping the balloon. Once he had it in hoof, he blew out the flame with a quick breath, before letting it continue to float down to Izzy, who was purely focused on the drawing on the parchment. It was attached to the balloon via a half-circle clip. Izzy reached up to undo the clip, and the paper fell into her hooves as the balloon, now with no flame, deflated in Alphabittle's grasp.
"Dear unicorns and pegasi, you have friends in Maretime Bay. Come visit us!" Izzy said, reciting what was written above and below the drawing.
Draping the balloon over his foreleg, Alphabittle leaned down to inspect the paper with Izzy. It was clearly a young pony's drawing, featuring a purple unicorn, a blue pegasus, and an orange earth pony sharing what looked to be muffins under a rainbow.
"Wow! Friends! Can we go? Can we go, Alphie, can we go? Please please please?" Izzy asked excitedly.
"I'm not sure that's such a great idea, Izzy," Alphabittle answered.
"But... But we have friends there!" Izzy countered.
"I think that's enough excitement for one evening. We have to get ready for bed. I've got work tomorrow and you've got school in the morning," Alphabittle said.
"Oh, alright," Izzy resigned, folding up the paper and tucking it away.
Not wanting to end the night on disappointment, Alphabittle decided to explain on the walk back around to the front door.
"You see, Iz, unicorns don't leave Bridlewood. If we leave the forest, it's the worst kind of jinxies. We'd have to do an awful lot of ritual dancing to ward them off."
"Do you think earth ponies and pegasuses would ever come visit us?" Izzy asked.
"I hope not," Alphabittle answered as they walked through the front door. "Earth ponies don't smell too pleasant, and pegasi, well, they steal your luminescence."
"My luma-what?"
"Your happiness, Izzy," Alphabittle told her as they walked towards her room, with Alphabittle putting the deflated balloon on the end table as the passed the couch.
"Are you sure they've never been here? Because that would explain over half of my class. They're like, never happy."
"Well, I certainly don't want that to happen to you," Alphabittle said as they walked into her room, and he helped Izzy into bed. He got her tucked in, and kissed her goodnight on the forehead.
"Sweet dreams, Izzy."
With that, he walked to the door, shut off the light, and closed the door almost all the way, leaving just the glow of the night light in the filly's room.
Of all the places for that balloon to land. If it did come all the way from Maretime Bay, it must have had quite the favorable breeze to get all the way up here. With a sigh, he folded up the balloon and set it next to his book, which he picked back up as he sat back down on the couch.
Oh well, she was at that age where nothing stayed on her mind for more than a day. By tomorrow, she'd be fixated on something else, and then the next thing, and the next.