//------------------------------// // An unexpected gift // Story: Babs and the Hearth's Warming Gift // by scoots2 //------------------------------// The pleasant holiday mood had been broken. The room seemed, on the surface, to be exactly the same—Babs on the worn red rug, Poppy in his favorite sagging brown chair, and Gramma carefully moving the bobbins on her pillow, making long strands of lace she would later stitch onto dresses—but some wet stains on her muzzle gave away that Gramma had been crying, and behind his copy of the New Yoke Post, Poppy was shaking with rage. Her favorite time of the whole year was slipping away in just a few hours, and somehow she’d ruined it by asking why more of the family couldn’t have shared it with them. Babs had never heard Poppy sound so bitter or so angry. He spent most of his time listening to ponies screaming at each other and saying things like, “All right now, break it up,” and “Uh-huh, lady. And then what happened after the cart entered the intersection?” in a calm, soothing voice. This was a Poppy she didn’t even recognize. Oh, well, she might as well enjoy the tree on this last night, before Poppy and Coconut hauled it away tomorrow. She swiped a miniature pie off the side table. The satisfying taste was pure Apple Family sweetness. She could almost identify which orchard the apples in the pie had come from. Their generous cousins had sent such a large box of delicious treats that it had driven Babs’ mother Anisette into a frenzy of competitive baking. Among the cakes, pies, cheesecakes, and Hearth’s Warming breads, surely nopony would have missed a small box of cookies. The apple smell was so suggestive of Ponyville that Babs remembered she hadn’t filed her report to CMC headquarters. She might as well plan it now, before she was put to work cleaning up from the holidays tomorrow. She stared into the glowing lights of the tree, eating the pie with one hoof and thoughtfully tossing a fragile Neightalian glass ornament up and down in the other. CMC Equestria Headquarters, General Chairmares Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle: CMC Manehattan Local 101, Babs Seed, President Winter Quarter Q4, Cutie Mark attempts: 5 Q4, Cutie Marks accrued: 0 Membership has been banned from New Yoke Stock Exchange (hay commodities fell by 800 points), and Maretropolitan Opera. Equine fly attempt partly successful. Suction shoes functional up to 14th story, which is pretty good for earth ponies, Scootaloo, and we could totally have made it down off of that ledge ourselves if Vice Pres. Cherry Blossom hadn’t panicked, so wings ain’t everything, just saying. Anyway, we ain’t got too far yet, but we got plenty more opportunities in Manehattan. Hope you can come for a visit soon. Maybe your very special talents would only come out in the city, and we could sure have fun trying, so ask your families if you can come. Hope you all had a great Hearth’s Warming season. I mostly did. Say, you ever figure maybe getting a cutie mark makes you stupid? My big sis Avocado keeps saying there’s a bunch of stuff I’m supposed to get later on, like what’s so interesting about colts or why wearing extra-high horseshoes is worth it and like that. I’m kinda thinking maybe being mad forever is one of them. See, the cool thing about you guys is that you said you were sorry for all that stuff that happened last summer, even though I started it and I was way more mean than all of you. I never would have guessed you’d have been my friends after that, but you are, and then we never talked about it again. All over and done with, like it never happened, so we can spend our time doing fun stuff instead. So I don’t get being mad forever. I don’t see being mad at Poppy or Coconut or Avocado, or you guys now, for more than a couple of hours, and not talking to you ever again—well, if that’s what growing up and getting a cutie mark means, maybe I don’t want to. Babs stopped writing the letter in her head. If she didn’t want a cutie mark, wouldn’t she stop being a Cutie Mark Crusader? No. This, she thought, tossing the glass ornament almost up to the ceiling and catching it again, was not a letter she was going to write. Poppy stole a glance over the top of his copy of The New Yoke Post. There was his youngest, playing with one of the family’s oldest ornaments. Right hoof, left hoof, right—no matter how breakable they were, they never broke and she never missed. The kid had a good eye and good reflexes. Great reflexes, like—no. “Sorry, Poppy,” Babs said, catching the ornament as she grabbed another pie. “I never should of asked. I wish I’d of met Grandpa Pepper.” “I wish you had, too,” Poppy said, his insides burning with shame as he dropped the paper. He shouldn’t have taken his anger out on his daughter. It wasn’t her fault for asking. “Dad was the best. You would of liked him. Everypony did what bothered to meet him. It’s why he was so popular, see. He was a great dancer, yeah, but he got out there on that stage and he liked you, an’ nopony could help liking him back. He was everypony’s friend before they even met him. After he was gone, we came here, ‘cause we didn’t have noplace else to go.” A great bubble of grief began to surface from within. He hadn’t talked about Dad in years, and never to his own children. Now he’d started, and he wasn’t sure he could stop. He was being rushed backwards in time to his own colthood, when he was even younger than Babs, a small, miserable bundle huddled nose to tail in the railroad car taking him away from Dodge Junction, and away from his father for good. “That’s how we wound up in the Broncs.” “At least you had here to come to, right? I mean, comin' here, there was a good side.” Good side? What good side?— —The train clicking, pulling him away from Dad, ka-chick, ka-chick, ka-chick. Ma and Sesame and him moving into the little walk-up, two rooms, five stories up, back to Dad’s family, who they didn’t even know. —The Seeds, Pepitis, Semillis, Samens, and Zoymans, who didn’t care if they hadn’t met them yet, because they were family. —Ma making lace and running the sewing machine day and night, making dresses for other fillies’ cute-ceañeras. Waking up hungry and going to bed hungry. —The filly at the corner bakery who slipped him cookies that he ate for lunch. —The letters that always came back from the Pears, Persimmons, and Oranges, who had forgotten Ma as though she’d never been born. —The boxes full of apples from the cousins who never forgot her. —Cold winter mornings, selling papers, dropping out of school to support the family. —Knowing the neighborhood so well that he could walk it blind, which came in handy for a police pony. —Anisette. Three beautiful foals. So, yeah. “Yeah,” Poppy said slowly, rubbing his hoof across his dark brown mane, “yeah. There was a good side.” “Anyway,” said Babs, “I just wanted to know, ‘cause I met the Oranges a couple months ago. At the reunion.” “You met the Oranges?” said Gramma, suddenly looking up from her lacemaking. “Did you like them?” Babs shrugged. “They was ok.” “They nice to you?” asked Poppy. “Yeah, I guess. They was ok. They asked where we lived and where I went to school an’ stuff, and they said ‘oh’ and that it was a pleasure and like that.” She lay back on the rug, juggling the ornament, first on her front hooves, then on the back, backwards and forwards, making sharp little clicks against her horseshoes: tappity-tap-tap-tap. “They got twins, Tangelo an’ Pummelo. Kinda boring ‘cause they’re colts an’ prac’ly still foals, but anyways still kinda cousins, and they kept wanting to talk to me an’ Apple Bloom, so I sent ‘em some cookies. And a box of matches. Relax, Poppy,” she said, as her father’s eyes bulged, “I’m just yanking your bridle. I only sent the cookies. I felt sorry for ‘em.” “You felt sorry for the Oranges?” Poppy said incredulously. Colts who probably lived on Park or Fifth? Babs felt sorry for them? “Well, yeah. Their mom doesn’t even bake.” Poppy chuckled. “That’s true. Your ma’s spice cookies are the best anywhere. I tell you, I sure was lu—“ The word froze on his lips: that cursed word “lucky” that he never used, because it brought such bad luck. “Yeah. I thought we was pretty lucky too.” Poppy’s heart sank. Oh, Babs, never say “lucky.” Sweetie, no. Babs balanced the ornament on one hoof and sat up. “The twins sent somethin’ back. I dunno what it is. I was gonna open it up when we was all together, only Coconut and Ma went to bed and Avocado went to work, and—“ she let out a breath and continued wistfully, “seems like we’re never all together at the same time for long. Go ahead an’ open it up, Poppy.” She put the ornament down and lay back down next to the tree. Poppy trotted over to the hall. A moment later, a burst of laughter echoed back to his mother. “Ma,” he called, “this is something you gotta see.” Poppy trotted back, four gold boxes of graduating size stacked high on his hindquarters and a card held in his teeth. Gramma Seed took it and read it while he slid the packages down his rump to the table. “Thank you for your continued patronage. We wish you and yours all the joys of this holiday season. Best regards, Stodge and Company.” “That’s a corporate gift if I ever seen one,” he said, tears stinging his eyes as he wheezed with laughter. “You mean they just grabbed it off of the pile without even telling anypony?” “Prob’ly,” Babs said, yawning. “That's the kinda thing they do. What’s inside?” Poppy pulled the lid off the boxes and whistled. “It’s nice. You had enough candy for tonight, though.” “Chocolates, Ma. The real fancy kind. Champagne. There’s silk scarves in this one,” he added in an undertone, so that Babs couldn’t hear him. “Don’t Babs even know the difference?” Doesn’t she know we don’t have much? Doesn’t she know that the cute-ceañera dresses her gramma makes are so expensive that only rich little fillies’ families can afford them? That Avocado couldn’t have one, and she wouldn’t have one herself? Doesn’t she understand that everypony in the family works hard all the time, and that’s why we almost never are all together? “It’s hard to tell,” Gramma Seed said, thoughtfully tying off some strands. “Sometimes I think she doesn’t know which ponies are rich and which ponies are poor, and sometimes I think she does, but it just doesn’t matter to her. It didn’t matter to Pepper, or to me.” “They’re just presents,” said Poppy, looking down into the chocolate boxes. “And she sent cookies to the Oranges ‘cause they’re littler than her an’ they’re cousins, and it’s Hearth’s Warming and she felt sorry for ‘em. Well,” he said, sighing, “she’s prob’ly right. You,” he added to the plump little figure, snuggled close to the tree, “are a very smart young filly.” But Babs was asleep.