It was too cold and too dry for snow. What came instead was a crackling, crunching frost and a blustery wind that stirred it up in icy swirls around ponies’ ankles. Everything was covered in blue and white windows of ice, like the world was holding its wintery breath waiting for the holidays to arrive. Berry Punch hunched her shoulders against the bite, wondering hazily if this had been a mishap by the weather services or not. The sun slunk away over the edge of the world and she thought a few nasty thoughts, but only for the sake of it, because her heart wasn’t really in it.
Chilly, yes, very much so, but it’d have to get colder yet—or she’d have to sober up some—before it bothered her in any real capacity.
Berry Punch didn’t swerve as much as you might expect of a mare in her position, but then again the image in the collective conscious of a jolly, bumbling drunk was always an image held by the sober majority. The drunk minority—a minority of one, at that—didn’t have an image to try to keep up for public convenience, on account of being presently past caring about anything like that at all.
That had been part of the entire reason she’d ever begun drinking in the first place.
Or it had been, once upon a time, but long-term alcoholism has a funny old way of taking things like ideals and rationalizations and even conscious thought and corroding them down to something the colour and texture of sickness.
Berry Punch’s hooves fumbled at the latch of the door, but then thought better of it. If the hamper was going to be at the shed it’d be at the shed, not in it. She had a vague notion of it having once been in the shed tucked politely inside the doorway, but that might have been on account of rain that year. Berry swayed on her hooves just as her identity swayed atop her dissolving memories.
The Hearth’s Warming hamper had been coming for years now. Once upon a time it had merely been the centrepiece to Berry’s own haphazard efforts for the holiday, but these years the hamper was Hearth’s Warming, the thing and the whole of the thing, without which the holiday might as well not exist. She never had found out who they came from, once because the tattered scraps of her pride didn’t allow her to ask, now because she no longer could dredge up that kind of ability to care about such things.
She didn’t bother to count how many years it’d been coming for; she knew she couldn’t. Not with any degree of accuracy. It might have started the year her little girl had turned five, maybe not. Somewhere inside Berry Punch something small stood up and challenged her: how old is your own daughter? Do you even know?
Berry Punch halted, her search forgotten. Her hoof groped around for a bottle that wasn’t there. Dread stabbed into her in all the little ways the frost wished it could. “Seven,” she said tentatively. Yes, that was right. Berry Pinch was seven years old now. The hazy memory of a birthday struggled to come into focus. There’d been a cake...a small, unadorned cake—it was all she could afford—but the bakers had said they’d had that mishap or something and suddenly it was a big, very adorned cake, with many well wishes for the happy filly? “Seven,” she repeated more firmly.
The accusation sank back down grudgingly. It never went away but you could drown it out, one day at a time. Berry Punch shivered. She needed a drink, and stumbled to the back door of her house, her hooves carving meandering trails through the fine sheet of frost.
Berry Punch jimmied the handle, knocking a few slabs of ice from the frame. Her shoulder knocked loose a cascade of freezing powder with a sharp crack of ice that made all the world around her head a private snowstorm for one. On the second attempt the broken door opened. Powdery white fell in drifts on uneven wood flooring but this she paid no mind.
Her hooves rummaged through brown paper bags scattered across the table, some on the floor. Empties clattered and clanged underhoof in the dark. Nothing of interest in the fridge for her either: a few odds and ends looking forlorn and alone on the dirty shelves. The lowermost shelf held a few ingredients clustered together hopefully around the fridge light, a huddle containing the basic foods and snacks that Berry Pinch largely subsided on.
Her little girl had woken her up once upon a time because she’d forgotten to bring in food and Berry Pinch had gone to bed like a good girl but couldn’t sleep because she was hungry, just like Mommy couldn’t sleep when she was thirsty.
Berry Punch had never since let that corner of the fridge be empty. It might not be plentiful food, it might not even be good food, but there was always something there. Always.
The mare dragged her dribbling mind away from this. By Celestia’s raised tail, where was that drink already?
Late as it was, Berry Punch tried to creep quietly to her bedroom with some success. A stray hoof knocked the wall, another tripped over itself, but these were the usual little night noises. The crack under her little girl’s door was dark; as always the filly would have put herself to bed. Had she waited at the top of the stairs, like she sometimes still did, wishing for Mommy to tuck her in?
Something horrible clutched Berry Punch’s innards and twisted. She needed that drink. It was coming too strong tonight, too much to face. She needed to crawl back under her rock, but the rock was her guilt, all come to crush down on her...
The light under her own door was on when it should not have been. Berry Punch all but flew through it, and what she saw was worse than all the things that had come before.
Berry Pinch had been crying. The matted streaks down her fuzzy cheeks still coursed with a trail of tears.
Berry Pinch had managed to pry the cap off Mommy’s good-night bottle.
Berry Pinch was being Mommy’s little girl.
Other children might have cried out. The ‘I’m sorry I got caught’ compulsion can be very powerful. But Berry Pinch, soft spoken, meek and kind Berry Pinch, who got herself up in the mornings and tucked herself in at night and more or less managed everything in between because Mommy could barely take care of herself let alone a seven-year-old daughter...
Berry Pinch didn’t cry out in shock. She ran into her mother’s hooves and cried all the harder. It wasn’t loud, though for Berry Punch it was the loudest thing there could be. There was far more comprehension, far more despair in that soft little voice than a seven-year-old should know.
Berry Punch only realized how cold she’d been when the warm body of her daughter squeezed her even tighter. “I wanted to stop being sad,” the tiny voice said near her knee. “They said such horrible things about you. I just wanted to stop being sad.”
She held her little girl, praying that touch alone would speak the comforting words she didn’t have. Berry Punch ran a hoof through her daughter’s mane; the other fished the bottle from the filly’s unresisting grasp.
Nearly full. That’s good. She’s hardly had any, so she’ll be fine and I—
Berry Punch’s train of thought careened headlong into the rock wall of accusation. Of guilt, of everything that roared defiance at Berry Punch when the rest of her just wanted an oblivion to slip further into, of everything that haunted her from the inside.
Is that it? Look at—I SAID LOOK AT HER!
“I’m sorry,” the filly sobbed.
Berry Punch shushed her gently. She kissed her little girl’s forehead and smoothed down the filly’s tussled mane.
Then Berry Punch stood up. Fighting her muscles, fighting her mind, fighting everything it is possible to fight in oneself, she forced herself to the window. A habit of countless bottles tried to drag this one’s lips to hers, but this was it. This was where she decided where the future went. Here. Now. Always this moment, always the present.
Berry Punch flung open the window and dropped the bottle out of it before her willpower shattered entirely, and it was all she could do on trembling hooves to not race out after it and salvage every drop she could.
It didn’t shatter—the frost was too good for that—but the dark fluid spilled out slowly like the blood of an open wound.
Berry Punch sank and trembled. She pulled her daughter close to her and sat in silence, listening to the wind’s low howl and, at the edge of hearing, the mournful wail as it blew across the neck of the bottle.
Berry Punch wasn’t sure when how long she’d been awake for, only that awareness brought with it a terrible trepidation. She hadn’t slept so much as drifted somewhere on the verge of waking and sleeping, restless and troubled on both fronts. For what might have been hours or minutes she had lain there like that, unmoving, reassured only by the quiet and the filly snuggled up against her. Like the winter wonderland outside, one firm knock might send all of this precious moment tumbling down in pieces.
She watched the daylight creep inch by inch like an uninvited guest, from the floor and up the wall, bringing with it the promise of a new day.
Nobody ever said it was a good promise. Her little girl sighed and shifted in the manner of a filly soon to wake; Berry Punch squeezed her eyes shut and kept them so long after her little girl’s yawns and blanket rustlings had left the room.
She didn’t want to do that. She wanted to hug and smile for her daughter and kiss her good morning, but something tight and knotted in Berry Punch’s chest stopped her cold with what amounted to terror. It started this way, with wanting the little things. And from there it went to big things: Be a good person. Be a good mother. Be able to look at the state of her own life and not have it push her to the brink of despair.
The clarity of her thoughts hurt. The pain of hangover was so familiar that it was hardly pain at all anymore. Absence hurt worse, somehow.
Berry Punch turned over in bed and curled around the pillows and blankets, squeezing to her chest the last traces of warmth from her little girl.
She’d dropped the bottle. Clear out the window. Down, down it had gone. Out of her hoof. Out of her home. Out of her life? the small place wondered. That was a thought to scare her right out of bed and chase her all the way to the bathroom.
Berry Punch struggled to meet her reflection, and when she did it was in the same mirror as it had always been: tarnished, cracked and filthy. Every grey-green speck, every old splash stained into it mocked her. Groping hooves knocked aside sticky old tubs and empty shampoo containers in a clatter of rubbish. From the back corner of a forgotten cabinet she dredged up an old sponge, one with a decent scouring edge to it too...
It had started with the mirror, but cleaning one thing had made the deplorable states of two others stand out all the more. Berry Punch hadn’t slowed and she hadn’t stopped, and two hours had passed with gritted teeth in a kind of focused insanity of house cleaning.
She’d dug through rubbish, tearing into every empty can and bottle with a vengeance, throwing every last one of them into the smelly old bin past the back door, slamming the lid of it down with a grim finality.
Berry Punch eventually wore herself down scouring in futility at the grout of the kitchen countertop. Aching and worn out, her hooves slowed then stopped entirely. Berry Pinch watched and ate the sandwich she’d made for herself, one of the ones she always made: a single piece of bread folded over on itself.
Berry Punch caught herself on the counter and tried to catch her breath. The sponge was a blackened and soggy wreckage, her hooves were little better, and everything was still so dirty.
Trembling, she poured herself a glass of water. It was what everypony else drank, and she told herself it wasn’t making her feel bloated and nauseous. The toxic thirst nagged her relentlessly. Oh, sweet alicorns, even a little something just to put some warmth in her throat, oh, it’d be so, so very much welcome...
It made her want to scream.
Not with her little girl watching. Berry Pinch watching and wondering and making her own sandwiches because it’s okay that Mommy isn’t always capable of even that much and sometimes wouldn’t remember to anyway...
Berry Punch took a seat on a wobbling kitchen chair and rubbed her temples until the worst of the anxiety passed, sipping at her water until she finally pushed her glass away with resigned disgust. Her little girl took it wordlessly along with her own plate to the sink, where she watched the clear liquid pour slowly down the drain with nothing short of utter fascination.
Berry Punch held her head in her hooves and sighed. “I’m okay,” she muttered. “It’s alright. It just has to stop, that’s all. It’s already stopped.” She pulled down on her cheeks, stretching them and her eyelids out. “I just want it to feel like it’s stopped,” she groaned.
“Mommy?”
“I’m alright,” she said. Don’t focus on it. That was key. Keep yourself busy. Don’t think about the past, and certainly not the part where he left you, and definitely don’t recall how suddenly you became your own vineyard’s best customer, or how you had to sell it all for pittance and didn’t even care because what they don’t tell you about drowning your sorrows is that you have to drown every other feeling first...
She slid the chair back with the earsplitting grind of worn old wood. “I’m alright, baby. I just need to go to the shop. To get more cleaning stuff,” she added. “You’ll be alright on your own for half an hour?”
It wasn’t really a question. The past was made up of a lot of half-hours. Only Berry Pinch knew how many. “Yes,” she said in her whisper-soft voice.
“Hey, come here,” said Berry Punch as she pulled her daughter into a hug and kissed her forehead. “Don’t be sad anymore, okay?”
The little filly gave a littler nod. “Okay.”
Berry Punch went out the back way. She always did, but this time she was stopped by the view. Clear sky and clear ice made it a day for snowblind. Everything glittered with a magic of its own.
Except the dark patch of ice under her window. Against the white of winter the glass and its spilled, solid innards seemed almost black and traced with deep red—a tiny private pond of a hell frozen over. Tendons bunching up, Berry Punch put her hoof over the patch and pushed. The first cracks spread as she added her weight to it. She kicked it through the crunchy frost and cried out in pain. The patch of frozen drink went deeper than she’d realized. All the way down, in fact. Growling and smarting with the hurt, she jumped atop the icy patch and felt the satisfaction of cracks tearing through the dark ice.
All else was beautiful. Icicles turned trees to kaleidoscopes of sunlight and even the most humble bits of windblown detritus sparkled as much as any treasured diamond could hope to.
Crunch crunch crunch went the frost underhoof. Berry Punch shivered. It was colder than she remembered it being so she hurried herself along, puffing little clouds of white steam with every breath.
The chill chased the usual vendors, and their customers, from the streets, so that to Berry Punch it could just as well be that all Ponyville was hers to traverse, alone in her head. It was not far to Green Grocer’s little shop. Even as the bell on the door jangled and she politely knocked the frost from her hooves her thoughts had spun aimlessly still, swirling in on themselves and going nowhere.
It wasn’t hard to focus. What was exceedingly hard was focusing on the right things. A hook embedded in her mind kept tugging it back to dwell, so that as she drifted up and down the aisles grabbing likely-looking shapes and colours it felt like this was a fantasy, Berry Punch playing at something she wasn’t, a pantomime dream that she was going to be wakened from any moment.
Green Grocer himself was a gentlecolt, somewhat progressing in years, a little shriveled by time but still good, just like the produce he sold. Berry handed over things; with one hoof he took them, the other dancing atop a heavy old register, punching out a litany of clicks and clacks in a feat of arithmetic prowess.
Something clinked off the edge of the counter. Berry Punch glanced down dreamily. She blinked. How had that second-rate red wine gotten there? It hung in the air between them.
As quickly as that the fantasy was gone, popped like a bubble. Green Grocer gave a small tug, then a puzzled glance when it stayed right there in Berry’s extended hoof.
“Er, dear,” the old pony hazarded, “you need to let go. Dear?” The mare’s eyes widened. Her heartbeat picked up, as did her breathing.
Oh precious princesses, she could smell it. She could taste it. She could feel it already, sour and stinging and whispering all the way down... A wet tongue licked trembling lips. You need to let go...
Berry Punch pushed it away so hard that the cashier toppled over backwards with a yelp. There was a smash and a glittering shower of glass and wine. She trembled in place until Green Grocer shot her a look of anger and bewilderment, the deep crimson spilling down his face. She bolted, all her things forgotten.
The bells jangled violently and his shout chased Berry Punch out the door. “Blazes, mare! Are you drunk?”
“I’m sorry!” she yelled, breathless already. “I’m sorry!” Berry ran until the ice tossed her into a frozen-over snowdrift. It hurt. A lot. She waited there, buried in the cold. Whatever stubborn, brittle insanity had propelled her this far without alcohol shattered.
The tears were fat, hot and stinging, quickly freezing on her cheeks, the sobs wracked and ungraceful. Berry Punch wept into her hooves and she wasn’t even sure why. Mourning, perhaps. The past that was and the future that wouldn’t. The thought of going home like this killed her. Oh sweet alicorns, she’d left her purse, she’d left everything. She couldn’t go back and face the accusation in those eyes. Home would be no better. It would be worse.
She imagined herself the ice, something to go away in time for spring when nobody would miss it. And so she cried.
Berry Punch rubbed her eyes. Bleary and hurting, the world a blur of tears, she saw something, enough to make her blink them clear. Something small. Something purple. She wracked her corroded memory. Someone who’d been kind to her daughter. Spike. “Go away,” the mare said. Even with her dignity in tatters, Berry Punch’s pride still twinged with battered life. She didn’t want to be seen like this. Her misery loved no company save the kind that could be poured.
Short legs struggled to move quickly through the snow and ice. “Are you alright? What’s the matter? What happened?”
Berry turned away, tracts of ice cracked and broken on her cheeks even as fresh tears coursed new paths down over them.“Go away, please!”
Spike was huffing now as he scaled her snowbank, half climbing and half digging his way to her. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Everything! Everything’s wrong.” Berry shook violently and her face sank into her hooves once more. “I’m so messed up. I don’t want to be this anymore.”
“Berry, come on, I’ll walk you home—”
Berry shook her head, shedding tears left and right. “No, not home. I can’t. Look at me. I don’t want her to see this.”
He was shoving at her shoulder now, so feebly she could barely feel it. “Then we’ll go to my home. Please, Berry. I’m really worried. Just come with me, please?”
Berry let herself be led, one claw clutched tightly to a tuft of her coat as the other helped Spike traverse the way back down the snow and ice. He was so short—no taller than Berry Pinch—and the going was hard and slow.
Pity and a battered need to nurture saw Berry Punch set Spike on her back.
“Thanks,” he managed to say through clattering teeth.
Brush at her eyes as she may, the mare could still feel the last few frozen tears scalding her cheeks. It was cold enough for any pony. A dragon was something different entirely, and a small child of one at that. She was a little worried, but it was selfish too. Better to think of it as her helping him home than look at what it really was: just the opposite.
“Umm...here we are,” he said. Berry Punch hesitated at the door. A public building and she didn’t feel welcome. The library-tree looked down on her.
Spike hopped down and scrabbled at the doorhandle. “It’s freezing! Well come on, what are you waiting for?” Light, and warmth, and Berry Punch hesitated on the doorstep. Spike huffed and came about for her, his feet skidding as he struggled vainly to push her forwards ahead of him. He stumbled when she moved without warning. She was led to a seat by the fire, encouraged to sit and no sooner had she done so than her hooves were occupied with a hot mug of chocolate.
“Thank you,” she murmured quietly. She started to cry. Softly, with no effort made to resist or conceal it.
“What’s the matter?” asked Spike.
“You’re very kind. To my daughter, now to me. She deserves it, but I don’t.”
“That’s nonsense!”
Berry Punch turned away from her mug. She was thirsty and cold, but it reminded her too much of what she wanted. What she needed. She cried as fat stinging tears readied themselves to fall only to be wiped away with her hoof. “I don’t deserve her. She didn’t deserve me.”
Spike’s claw was no colder than her own coat as he patted her tenderly. “Tell me what happened,” he urged her.
The memory was sharp as broken glass, all sharp edges and blurs. “I-I was going to...going to get some things. From the shop. But, but there was a wine bottle in my hoof, I don’t even remember picking it up, and, and I want to tuck my little girl in at night...I...I want her. But I don’t want me! I don’t want to be me anymore. I can’t go to the shop now, I don’t want to keep drinking, I don’t want to keep drinking, I don’t want to keep drinking...” Head in hooves, the words became something of a prayer.
A voice echoed down the stairs. “Are you speaking to someone, Spike? Is somepony in?”
The words caught in his throat as he cast wide eyes to Berry. “I’ll be right back, I promise!” he said, claws up in pleading before rushing off to the stairs.
A quick and heated discussion happened just out of hearing, just out of sight. This place was so bright, so clean, so warm, but Berry Punch felt only like something that should be swept under a rug. She’d tried cleaning, oh she’d tried cleaning! But you couldn’t clean broken.
She had cried too much to have much energy left for it. Berry Punch blinked until she could see, and what she saw was the worried faces of Twilight Sparkle and Spike the dragon. If she didn’t have the energy left to sob, neither did she have the energy left to struggle vainly for a semblance of dignity.
Twilight’s mouth moved, but each time the words died before she spoke them. She finally said, “I...I’m not sure I know how to help you.” There was a boundary Twilight seemed unable or unwilling to cross, so that she spoke from half a room away. “I’m sorry.”
There was no silence, not while Berry quietly cried and cried and cried, but it had much the same effect.
“Have you tried just not drinking anymore?”
As a sentence it made no sense. Berry Punch tried again and again to parse it with little success. It was so different, so alien in every way to her experience that when understanding finally arose it dawned with a flame of anger too, an emotion she had thought long since smothered in her.
It was not Berry that acted on it though. Not her, but Spike. The air was palpable with his tension. He made no move, spoke no word, but with frills rising and claws clenched his feeling made itself known as if he had roared it. “Twilight,” he hissed low under his breath.
“Spike, I don’t understand. What—”
“That’s just it! You don’t understand! Don’t understand how ignorant and hurtful that was just now.”
Berry was too stunned to sob. Tears still fell, but they did so with no action on her part. Spike was a dragon. A baby dragon, and one so wrapped up in layers of pony life as to make the fact all but forgettable at times, but for a brief instant something of the dragon he should one day grow to be had revealed itself.
A glimpse had been more than enough. Spike regained something of his calm.
“Twilight, I’m sorry.” There was no panic in his apology, only dignified maturity in recognizing his own wrongdoings. He said stiffly, “I just don’t think you can help here.
“You just don’t know what it’s like. Dealing with things like this, it’s just...it’s just... Imagine the Want It Need It spell, except it’s not been cast on you, it’s part of who you are. Something that’s always there. You ignore it but it doesn’t ignore you. It’s not a thing that we fix. It’s something that we have to be fixing, all the time, because if we stop trying to hold it together it falls apart.”
Spike managed a weak smile. “Turning into a fifty foot monster because I had a good birthday made me face this sort of thing.”
“Spike, I’m...I’m sorry.” Twilight nodded stiffly to Berry Punch. “And to you as well. I’ll be...I’ll be around, if either of you needs me.”
“Thanks,” said Spike, hugging the unicorn’s leg.
Berry murmured once Twilight was gone, “I remember fifty-foot you.”
“Me too.” A moment of silent understanding passed. Spike gestured the mug Berry still clutched. “It’ll go cold.”
“Oh.” Berry wiped her eyes and stared into the drink. Hot chocolate. So innocent. This would be something her little girl would drink. It was that thought that spurred Berry Punch to try it. The smooth, creamy richness brought with it an inescapable despair. Tears filled her eyes once more. “I still can’t go back.”
“Just go home,” Spike said softly as he lifted the mug from her unresisting hooves. “Don’t think about the rest. I’ll go and get your things. Just go home. Go see Pinchy.”
Berry blinked and stared, her mouth agape. Slowly her features changed into a smile, one contrasting sharply with the bright tears that still dominated her features. “Twilight has a lot to be proud of. Thank you.”
“Feel better?”
Berry Punch stood, wiping her eyes a final time. “No. But I feel like maybe I finally can.”
“That’s good. It’s Hearth’s Warming in case you forgot.”
The veneer of joviality made the depth of despondency underlying their mutual feeling bearable, but it couldn’t last. “I know what it’s like,” Spike said quietly. “You can always talk to me. I’ll be here.”
Berry whispered, as if her addiction could track her down if she spoke too loudly of it. “Does it get easier?”
Spike meditated on this for many seconds. “No,” he said at long last, “it doesn’t. At least not yet. But it’s still worth it. Things get better,” he stressed. “It doesn’t...but we do. Do you understand what I mean to say?”
“I...I need to go see my daughter.” She was filled with a sudden energy, frantic, almost desperate, a need to move and to do it right now, because maybe this was the first time she’d really moved at all in a long time. Berry Punch winced as the wintry blast of air washed over her through the door, then turned back to brave it. “Thank you. I’ll pay you back for this. Somehow. I will.”
“Just take care of yourself,” he said. And then she was gone, the last touch of icy air in the library slowly starting to warm again. Spike padded solemnly to the seat. “She didn’t finish her hot chocolate,” he mused.
He sat, and thought deep thoughts, and after a time picked up the mug, sipping the last of its still-warm contents. He particularly liked the teeny tiny marshmallows, which he chewed with a philosophic slowness.
Twilight was quiet on her hooves as she came down the stairs, careful to glance about the place before she reached the floor. “I guess Berry Punch went home?”
“Yeah, it was a little while ago. She didn’t stay for long.”
“I’m sorry, Spike. I wasn’t much help at all.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry too. Sometimes it’s just so hard dealing with something when it feels like nobody else really understands at all.”
Twilight scooted in next to him on the seat, throwing a warm hoof over his cold scales and pulling him into an affectionate hug. She didn’t say anything at all—something so unusual for her—but for once the words wouldn’t be enough. Or, with everything between them, and this hug and this warmth, it just went without saying.
Spike hadn’t realized how chilly he’d been until he let Twilight hold him close. “Thanks.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Spike shook his head; the softness of her coat brushed his cheek. “I think she’ll be alright. Just her and—” The words caught in his throat.
“And what? Spike?”
Spike was shaking, his eyes wide. “I have to go.” He scrambled free from Twilight’s side and bolted to the door.
“Spike?”
He wasn’t answering, smacking himself on the forehead with an open palm. “I’m so stupid! I have to go!”
“Spike! What are you saying?”
He flung open the door. The icy wind came back with a vengeance. “The Hearth’ Warming hamper!” he shouted as it swirled around him.
“Wait!” A decisive flash of magic teleported Spike to Twilight’s back, with scarf and little bobble hat quick to follow. “I can get you there faster. Just tell me where to go.”
“Okay!” And on they charged out into the cold, Spike’s only hope being that he could reach Berry in time.
Berry Punch had come home full of nervous hope. Everything was ice and wind around her, but in her heart she felt renewed, with all the potential—and fragility—of a seed germinating beneath the snow.
Her thoughts buzzed with skittish energy, her stomach swarmed with butterflies. She was going to...she was going to, yes, yes! She was going to go to her daughter, and she was going to see her little girl smile, smile because she was happy, not thinking about it at all and, and...it was going to be warm inside. The house; the image came to her now, the lights bright and cozy, the oven spilling over with heat and the tantalizing scent of holiday baking, her and her little girl. And herself. Warm. Not the unfeeling, dismissive lukewarm of the apathy under the rock, no. Real warmth—like the tears streaming freely down her cheeks and past her smile.
Smiling and crying together, how silly was that? Berry wiped them away even as more came, but her smile was wide and unbroken. She wrestled with the shed door, knocking away the ice from the frame in chunks that shattered as they fell. Holiday baking would be so much fun for her little girl, she’d be so happy. She’d make little Pinchy laugh, laugh! When was the last time she’d heard her little girl laugh? Too long.
Berry Punch grunted as she forced the shed door open. She’d been wrong before. It was clear to her now, of course the hamper would be inside the shed, not left outside where it could be buried in snow and ice. Next year they wouldn’t even need a hamper. In a year she could change so much, everything could be so good.
The mare grinned under the weight of the basket. She’d known it’d be there, just known. She closed the shed back up with a kick; a shower of fine ice fell all down the back of her neck. She threw back her head and laughed; it couldn’t stop her now, oh no! Berry could see how warm, how good, how sweet everything was going to be now. Her little girl’s eyes would go so wide, be so bright!
Berry Punch flicked on every light in the kitchen as soon as she stepped in, smiling wildly. Why, she wasn’t even thinking about drinking! She set the hamper down on the table.
Something inside went clink.
Berry Pinch opened the door a crack for them. She hid behind the crack, peeking out with one teary eye. “Mommy’s sick.”
Three syllables. Enough to twist Spike’s insides. “We need to see her,” he said, forcing himself to be calm for the filly’s sake. “We can help.”
She looked ready to trust Spike, but hesitated more on Twilight. “Okay,” she whispered, fleeing back into the house.
“Come on,” Spike urged, hopping from Twilight’s back and slipping quickly through the crack.
It was a house that was much smaller than what Twilight had been used to, living as she had in the great big library tree. Even so, there was nothing of snug homeyness here. It was dim, where everything coloured seemed to slip towards grays and browns. Mildew scowled at them from the corners. In the kitchen the countertops, the sink and oven gleamed with freshly scrubbed defiance against the predominant drab. The images struck Twilight. Spike rushed past them.
The back door leading on from the kitchen was open and through it the icy wind stole what little heat there had been in the house. An empty wine bottle clattered against Twilight’s hoof. She shuddered and knocked it away.
Berry Punch was on the floor, her neck on the threshold. Her head, eyes half-lidded, lay on the doorstep next to fresh fallen snow and an acrid-smelling patch stained with vividly dark red. A trickle of bile stained the side of her mouth and matted her cheek against the cold ground. Those lips trembled, but whatever Berry was trying to say was too vague and indistinct to be heard.
Spike touched the mare’s mane, slowly stroking the hair from her face. Little Berry Pinch shed her tears silently as she watched.
The sounds of retching jolted Twilight back around. Berry Punch shuddered and heaved. What passed those lips was a shiny sludge, all too reminiscent of blood, and where it spilled the snow melted and the air filled with the vile stink of sickness.
It went on for a long time, Berry retching and crying, and when Spike finally helped her up she could barely stand, shuddering and shaking worse than the worst of shivers. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, again and again and again, not stopping the litany even as Spike daubed at her marred face with the wet cloth Twilight had found for him.
Berry looked straight to her daughter. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, baby.” She only now seemed to realize the others’ presence. A feeble hoof tried to brush Spike away. “No,” Berry murmured. “No.”
The struggling mare fell from the chair and cracked herself sharply enough against the floor, making everyone jump in concern. Berry was beyond noticing, though, only struggling to stand upright and reach the door. “I’m so sorry,” she slurred. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Have to be good,” she moaned. “Have to go. I’m so sorry. I have to go. Let go!”
“Help me, Twilight!” Spike hissed. Berry was uncoordinated and weak, but Spike was a quarter her size so that even as he tried to stop he slid along the floor beside her.
“Uh, right!” She hurried to Berry’s other side, unsure of what to do. “Berry,” she pleaded, “please just listen to me!” She didn’t even know what to say, what words she could use to fix this. How could words fix anything like this? “Berry, please.”
Twilight awkwardly grabbed hold of Berry’s leg. It was a poor restraint, but enough to make Berry Punch give up; she let herself simply go limp, dropping to the floor with another painful-sounding impact.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured sleepily. “I’m bad. Bad everything. Let me go,” she pleaded, writhing weakly under them. “Be better for her if I was just gone. Better if I was—”
Spike slapped Berry Punch and she recoiled. “Don’t,” he warned, “don’t say that. Don’t even think that.” Then he hugged the stunned mare, throwing his arms far as he could around her neck. “Don’t give up,” he whispered. “Don’t. People like us have to stick together. We just have to.” He pushed himself away with a small, sad smile. Berry Pinch rushed to fill that void, burying herself in her mother’s mane. Berry Punch wept freely, but without the pained wails; now it was her catharsis, now the tears came as if to wash her clean.
“She needs you more than anyone. And you need her,” Spike said.
“Spike...” Twilight murmured in a quiet awe. Sometimes he could be so...so noble, like a glimpse of what he might yet grow to be.
He turned to her with a tired smile, one meant to reassure. “I think we’re through the worst.” He sat at Twilight’s side and leaned on her leg. “I was so stupid,” he sighed.
“What do you mean?” Twilight whispered, terrified to intrude on mother and foal, who embraced as if they never meant to let go, holding on to one another in a private world of their own.
“I’ve been making their hampers.” Spike chuckled wearily. “Every year since we moved to town.” Twilight was awash with mixed feelings. How did an underage dragon even get a bottle of liquor? But to be so considerate... Yet before she could voice anything he carried on, pausing only to sigh. “At first it was a good idea, including the one bottle. It kept Berry home on Hearth’s Warming Eve, you know? But I knew she was getting worse this year, I knew it, and I didn’t think to...I was so stupid,” he groaned, batting at his forehead again. “This is my fault.”
“But it’s alright now?” Twilight asked, an unexpected strain to her voice. She was beyond the bounds of her knowledge, and floundered in events beyond her experience.
“Alright?” Spike asked. “No, not really. But it can be. Berry,” he said as he stood up, “you know I’ll help you in any way I can. You can count on it.”
The mare raised her head, her matted cheeks not yet dry. “That...I...thank you,” she managed. “This has been the worst time of my life,” she said with chillingly sober steadiness.
Spike patted her on the shoulder. “Then everything from here on out has to be better.”
Berry looked at him and managed a weak laugh. Then she redoubled the hug with her daughter. “It will be. It has to be.”
Berry Punch visited the library frequently now, and though Twilight was busy with organizing and reorganizing the logistics of next week’s Winter Wrap Up she still made a point of it to politely leave Berry and Spike as much privacy as the semi-public building allowed for.
Berry was nervous, still very nervous following her ordeal, sometimes enough to keep her from the library for several days. And sometimes she came to vent her anger. It scared her just how much old and bitter anger she had hidden away inside, and even scarier was how much of it was directed at herself. Sometimes her visit was marked by a solemn quiet, and Spike and she would not talk very much at all but just sit together for a little while.
He still ran some errands for her. The first few days had seen him run himself ragged, but if he had complaints of the cold, or of the distance, or of the weight, he never showed sign of them.
Berry still would not go into any of the Ponyville shops that sold alcohol. Walking past them she would tense up, bite her lips and suppress her shakes, but she would walk past them.
And every day, she told herself, it was getting a little easier. And even if it wasn’t, she knew beyond doubt that it was worth it, more and more worth it all the time.
Today, for the first time, she’d brought her little girl along to the library too.
“Are you going to help with wrapping up winter?” Twilight asked the foal in what she hoped was a friendly, approachable manner. Twilight still felt less than comfortable around the family—she didn’t know just how she related to them after everything that had happened—but she too was trying her best.
The shy little filly looked half ready to hide behind her mother. She looked to her mommy, who smiled assurance. The filly nodded to Twilight.
Berry cleared her throat. She was little braver than her foal, sometimes. But bravery wasn’t about not being afraid; it was about being very afraid and doing it anyway. “I was thinking,” she started in a jumble of words, “that since you kind of run the whole thing, if you could find a place for her in...in something she’ll like?”
Twilight pranced through her notes. “Do you ice-skate?” she asked suddenly, holding out a page that to both Berrys was identical to every other.
Berry Punch crossed one hoof before the other. “I took you once, a long time ago, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” her little girl said, in that voice so small and soft.
“But I don’t really think we can,” Berry quickly amended.
“Well,” Twilight mused aloud, “would you like to try again? There’s still time to learn how before Winter Wrap Up.”
Berry Punch chewed her lip. “I’d like that,” she whispered, seemingly to herself. “Do you want to try?” she asked Berry Pinch.
Her little girl gave a littler nod. Berry pulled her daughter close and threw a hoof over her shoulder. “Yes,” she said with more certainty than she’d had before. “We’d like that. We’d like that very much.”