//------------------------------// // Hear the Twinkles // Story: Frostnight [a Snowdrop tribute] // by Gigglebrony //------------------------------// It was warm. This obviously wasn't winter, but I was wide awake and aware. And for the first time in my life, i was warm. I couldn't move. I couldn't look around. I couldn't see myself. "You can wish on them?" A much younger Snowdrop was sitting on the same small cloud with a yellow coated pony with a striped pink mane. This pony must have been her mother. What was going on? "Yes. Once there was a time when you couldn't, when stars were rare. But when the princesses came, the stars began to come out every night. I bet if you listened you could hear them twinkle." "No I couldn't..." Snowdrop's ears drooped. Her mother nuzzled her. "You listen better than anypony I know." They were silent for a moment. I listened as hard as I could. "All I hear is quiet." Snowdrop said, sighing sadly. "I'd rather see them. Do you think if I wished hard enough they would let me see them?" Her mother looked sad for a moment, then she smiled. "It's better to save your wishes, Snowdrop. For something you really need." "Don't I really need my eyes?" Her mother giggled. "No, not you. You're to special for that." "I am?" "Who else can discover an entire cloud's shape without denting the surface?" She spread her wing, letting it drop on Snowdrop's back, which made the filly giggle. "Only one little filly's wings and hooves are careful enough to do that. And I bet if you tried again, you would be able to hear the stars twinkling at night. 'You're a special filly, my Snowdrop. Don't worry, you won't need your eyes to find your place in the world." "I think I hear the twinkles." I heard a sound. A sound like the most beautiful, perfect little bell ringing. No, not ringing; twinkling. The world went fuzzy, and everything merged into white. ***** The white faded away, but everything was still blurry. Then I blinked, and I realized that my eyes had tears welling up in them. And there was a warm feeling in my chest that I hadn't felt since that day long ago, when I first became whatever I am. I wasn't even sure what it was. But I did know what I had just seen. Somehow, I had just seen a memory from Snowdrop. I had no idea how, or why, but I knew it had happened. And it was one of the most touching things I had ever seen. It made me wish I had a mother. "Twinkles." I focused on Snowdrop as she spoke. "What good are twinkles?" After hearing that sound, that twinkling sound the stars made, I was surprised to hear her say that. "You can't wish on twinkles." She suddenly stood up, and I had to jerk my head back to keep from having another trip down memory lane. She raised those large, blue, sightless eyes to the sky. "I don't know if one of you is out there tonight in all the snow. I don't think you are... But... But, please... if you are... I... I..." She closed her eyes, robbing the world momentarily of that amazing blue that was so very like my own eyes. "I wish. I hope. I dream. I pray. By the princesses' rule, light my way. Please, I... " I saw her eyes start to well up. "I just want to show I can do something for once. Everyone else says I can't do anything. But I just..." I saw a tear roll down her face. Without thinking, I reached out to wipe it away, but my hoof passed right through it. It fell from her cheek, now a frozen solid ball. it fell and kit her leg before bouncing off and onto the cloud. As it struck, I could hear the same ringing sound I head heard before. And, when I heard Snowdrop gasp, and saw her ear twitch, I knew she had heard it too. "But... that wasn't snow." She dropped to her belly and expertly scooped up the small ball of ice. I had a sudden idea. I leaped into the air, waving my arms and hooves through every snowdrop I could reach. one by one, they started to freeze into more solid drops, landing around Snowdrop with the same twinkling sound. One even landed on her nose, her sightless eyes crossing in a futile attempt to see it. "Snow... Snow is..." A wind blew by, and several snowdrops bumped into one another, making and ever more beautiful twinkling sound. I landed by the little filly, admiring my handiwork. As I did, I accidently bumped against her, and heard a voice in my head. "Tell me about that stars?" Snwodrop. "Well, there are all sorts of stars. All different shapes and sizes." Her mother. I saw Snowdrop lift a wing, yanking out a feather with her teeth. I winced, know it had to hurt. But the voices kept on talking. "But they all have little points at their edges. When they sparkle, their shapes shift. they leave little glowing spaces, only for a moment." Snowdrop took the frozen tear she had cried and started to pick at its edges with the tip of her feather. "And the few that streak across the sky and fall down to the earth, the shooting stars. Those are the ones you make your strongest wishes on, because they can carry them through." Snowdrop worked tirelessly for close to an hour, the words of her mother running through her mind over and over. When she was finally done, she held up what she had made. It was little flat sheet of ice, filled with holes and with pointy edges all around. It wasn't beautiful by anyone's standards. But I couldn't help smiling as I looked at it. A voice called out from the small house. Snowdrop's mom was looking out at her daughter. "Snowdrop, at are you doing? It's freezing out here! Come inside." Snowdrop look ed around, snapped out of her trance. She had been staring at her little art project too, even with her sightless eyes. "Mother? Mother, look!" She took off from the small cloud, her left wingtip brushing along the rope as she flew. That's why it was there, I realized. To act as a guide for the sightless filly. I smiled and leaped into the air, smiling as I saw the wintry young pony show off her project to her mother. I was in such a good mood that I never wanted to touch down again. I was good with just floating on the wind forever. Even knowing that winter was going to be gone in two days couldn't get me down anymore. Now I knew there was one pony out there that saw more in my winter than just cold and snow. ***** Two days later, I was sitting on a roof, struggling to stay awake. The warm front had been brought up and winter was wrapped up. With the warm weather settling in, I was starting to become slow and tired again. But I had to be here for this. I had to see what they thought about Snowdrop's project. The princesses were standing in front of a large crowd, with Snowdrop's class right at the front. All of them had brought their projects with them. I saw a bottle of liquid that flashed in every color at once, a cloud with a flower growing on it, some sort of liquid hour glass, and a glass of ice water that got spilled on a young filly. But no Snowdrop. Celestia was speaking. "Thank you all for your hard work. After a long winter, it is wonderful to see so many young fillies and colts bring us such beautiful ideas to make the seasons shine. Now, we can only choose one as the centennial symbol, but..." "Wait!" came a yell from far back in the crowd. Snowdrop and her mother came through the crowd, shoving aside a few ponies in their haste. More than a few of them were surprised to see her. I heard a few even wondering about how she had been absent the day before. She had been home trying to figure out how to make her bit of snow stay frozen after the winter wrap up. Primrose, as I had learned Snowdrop's mother was called, spoke up. "forgive us the interruption, your highnesses, it's just..." "I've been working really hard! Please, I have a gift for the seasons too and-" "Doubt that," Said a filly down the line. I worked up enough of a wind to send a chill up her back. Snowdrop looked downhearted. I looked over at the princesses. Celestia seemed interested, but Luna, the younger sister, seemed a million miles away. I knew that look. it was the same look I had had for the last two thousand years. The look of somepony who feels unappreciated but still has to be out and about. "May we see it?" said Celestia, leaning forward to get a look. Primrose gave her daughter a small nudge. Snowdrop walked forward and held her small speck out to the princess. "You brought snow?" Said a colt. "And just one little dot of it," said the same filly from before. I would have frozen them both, but I was getting too weak. "Maybe she grabbed the wrong thing on the way here?" This from another colt. "Why would you bring snow to the Spring Sunrise?" I didn't see who said that. "It's not snow. I made a star." I was so proud of her for speaking up for herself. "A star? You can't make a star. It doesn't even look like one," laughed the first colt. This time I pegged him in the back of the head with a gust of icy air. "Maybe it doesn't look like one, but it's still a star! It's a star for winter. I can't see what the stars look like out there. Just like I can't see what spring looks like. But I can hear it all. And I heard the snow twinkling just like the stars do every night. So they should be able to grant wishes too, shouldn't they? Winter's been giving us a gift all this time and we've just been ignoring it." I saw that now both princesses and everpony there was listening closely to the little filly I had begun to think of as something close to family. "Celebrating spring is good. But winter can't be all bad if it gives us these. It may be cold and dark, but that doesn't mean there's any good to it. Maybe... Maybe winter is sad that everypony doesn't like it. So maybe we need to make wishes on the winter snow, just like we make wishes on the night stars. Maybe then we can have a happy winter instead." I had tears in my eyes by now. I had finally found a pony who understood my winter the way I did. And she saw more in it than even I could, despite her sightless eyes. Strangely, I also saw that Luna had a look in her eyes that made me think she was feeling the same way. Well, night and winter did sound very similar when you thought about it. "We already have a happy spring, summer and fall. Can't winter be happy too? Because winter... It's important. Even if it seems useless, it can give us wonderful things, so..." Luna stepped forward. "May we see your wishing snow?" Snowdrop held it up, and an aura of magic picked it up and the two monarchs looked at it. Then Celestia looked at Snowdrop. "Could you make us some more of these?" Snowdrop gasped excitedly and nodded. I was now crying freely, ad I saw that Primrose was close to doing the same. Both of us felt so proud for our little pony.