//------------------------------//
// Winter Wrap-Up 
// Story: Last 
// by Alan Smithee 
//------------------------------//

“Spike! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! It’s Winter Wrap-Up day!”

Spike was nudged awake by an overjoyed Twilight Sparkle. 
Spike opened his weary eyes, and lifted his heavy head.
“Huh? Mommy?”
He turned and was nose-to-nose with Twilight.

“Winter Wrap-Up!” She told him sternly, and rushed away. Spike lowered his head to his pillow agan.

“You’re not mommy” he muttered grumpily, and closed his eyes.

With a ‘click’, Twilight turned on the lights. From beneath the landing where the two slept, she called up to him, “Spike, the first day of spring is tomorrow, so everypony in Ponyville needs to clean up winter! Now help me get ready.”

The unicorn leapt into the air three times her standing height, and landed all four hooves into her yellow boots, which had been lying at the ready.

“Clean up winter? Who cleans up winter? Don’t they just use magic to change the seasons like we do in Canterlot?”

With her hooves, Twilight picked up her winter saddle and lifted it over her head, letting it slide down to her midsection.
“No, Spike. Ponyville was started by Earth Ponies. So for hundreds of years they’ve never used magic to clean up winter.”

She got to her back, and performed some complicated, clumsy maneuvers to ensure her saddle was on straight. When she was finished, she stood up proudly.

“It’s traditional!” She declared, and her saddle slid off her back and flopped to the ground. She sighed.

“It’s ridiculous!” Spike concluded, and swaddled himself with his blue blanket. “No magic. Peh”

Twilight had her saddle on, and this time pulled the strap taught with her teeth. 
She took her scarf from its hook on the wall, and wrapped it around her neck.

“Okay, let’s see” she began, looking at a checklist, also on the wall, “Scarf, check. Saddle, check. Boots, check. Spike refusing to get up and going back to sleep, check. It’s a good thing I’m so organized. I’m ready...” She burst out the front door of her library, “...bright and early!”

She looked out into the empty streets of Ponyville. It was still dark outside.
“Oh...maybe a little too early…”






When the sun rose and the day began, all the ponies in Ponyville emerged from their homes and set about their annual Winter Wrap-Up. In the sky, Rainbow Dash glided up and down a long line of hovering pegasus ponies who were flapping their wings to drive the winter clouds away from town.

“Keep it up! Don’t slack, Thunderlane!” she barked.

If all the pegasi on the line didn’t keep a uniform wind speed, all sorts of catastrophic weather could be formed. It was midmorning.

Rainbow took one glance at the ground - a habit she’d formed over years of flying - and something told her to look again. She did, and sure enough she found something unusual.
A bipedal form stood in  the knee-deep snow, staring at the activity above.

Rainbow turned back to the line, but couldn’t stop glancing at the unmoving Simon below. It was distracting, and a bit creepy.

She dropped out of the sky and came to a hovering halt next to him.

“What’s up?”

He held out a piece of paper. Rainbow Dash stared at him. He shook the paper, and finally she read what was on it.

What Are You Doing?

She looked up at him with some incredulity.
“You really want to know?”

He nodded.
“Okay”

She shot up into the sky, and returned with a tuft of cloud as big as a cart. She held her hooves against it to keep it from floating up and away.

“Once we get these clouds away from Ponyville, we’ll kick them and let their water fall on...” 
She paused. Simon was holding his hands against the surface of the cloud, imitating her hold on it. They passed straight through the misty body of the cloud. Arms still outstretched, he stumbled into the cloud and disappeared. His hands blindly found her hooves. He walked out of the cloud, pushing Rainbow Dash in front of him. The flying pegasus gave no resistance. He stopped when he realized what he was pushing against. Since the pegasus was no longer holding it down, the cloud rose back into the sky. They both watched it go, then, hands still grasping hooves, slowly lowered their eyes to each other.
“Yeah, only Pegasus ponies can touch clouds”

Simon’s eyes grew wide at this idea; his grip tightened. Rainbow Dash instinctively pulled her hooves out of his hands, which he quickly stuffed into his pockets.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to hear the rest?” she asked flatly.

He shook his head, and hurried away.





From atop a small hill, Applejack surveyed the ground-clearing operations. 

She was startled to discover Simon sitting cross-legged right beside her.

“Oh, howdy, Simon!” she said shakily and tipped her hat.

He nodded at her.

“Here to watch the ponies clearin’ the snow off the fields?”

He shrugged, and sat down, gazing onto the fields.

“...Well, have fun...” Applejack muttered as she walked away.

Simon rose to his feet and wandered among the fields, observing their activity with great interest. The ponies were pushing the snow off the farmland with individual ploughs.

He saw one pony leave her snow-moving device. He peered inside and looked at the controls. He stepped inside, and pushed. It moved fairly easily. The ball of snow grew larger and heavier, but still he kept it moving.

He moved along at a steady pace. A small pegasus pony passed him on the right. She sped past him at an easy trot. He grit his teeth, clamped his hands down on the push-bar, and charged ahead. The snowball got bigger and heavier. He began to swerve off and on his path. He approached the pegasus. He was nose-and-nose with her when his machine suddenly veered toward her. He dug his heels into the ground and strained to turn his machine away. He ground to a halt. The pegasus trotted away without noticing. Simon’s muscles burned. He was wheezing. He pushed on the push-bar, but could not budge the machine. His heart raced; he felt dizzy. His vision blurred. He leaned on the push-bar and gasped. 

“Are you alright?” He heard Applejack’s worried voice. She was right next to him. He shook his head.

“Take my hoof. Be careful steppin’ out”

Simon stepped over the threshold of the device, holding Applejack’s hoof for balance. He slipped on the wet ground.

“Come on, sugarcube. I’ve got ya”

She lifted his arm around her neck. He had to stoop to lean on her. Applejack took Simon away from the snow-clearing device. As they walked, Simon’s eyes cleared, and he saw she was taking him to the house. She dragged him into the kitchen and sat him down on a chair. She pressed a glass of water to his lips, and he accepted it desperately. The orange mare brought him some sliced apples on a plate, which he ate. A few minutes later, Simon was feeling shaken, but otherwise fine.

Applejack was stern, “Apple bruises, boy! What were ya thinkin?”

He looked back at her with wide eyes.

“Don’t you know to stop when you’re exhausted?”

He sighed and hung his head.

“Don’t worry about helpin’ out, sugarcube. We’ve got it handled”

Applejack left him to think in the family kitchen.

He could remember a time when his body seemed to possess infinite energy. What had happened? He was only thirty-three. Was he an invalid already?

Applebloom walked into the kitchen, and said, almost casually,

“Mornin’ Simon” 

She jumped up on the chair next to him and sat down. She took some apple wedges from his plate and munched on them with some distaste.

“Not too long before we can have Ponyville apples again!” she said with excitement. When she looked up, she found she was alone.






Simon found himself at Carousel Boutique, where Rarity stood at a table laid out with straw and ribbons, fumbling with the materials in her hooves. 
She mumbled something, but otherwise ignored him. 
He rounded the table and watched her. She stood on her hind legs. Her tail arched gracefully, hovering just above the ground. 

He picked up a bowl-shaped weave of straw with ribbons and bows woven through it. He didn’t know what it was for. 

He watched Rarity for a time. She was working on another weave, apparently trying to make it look like the bowl-shaped one on the table. The one she worked on was squashed and resembled a bird’s nest in colour and shape. Rarity’s frustration grew with every passing moment. Before long, he left her to her work.





Outside of Ponyville, Simon found Pinkie Pie skating on the frozen surface of a small pond. 

“HELLOOOOO, SIMON!” Pinkie bellowed as she skated backwards in his direction. She spun around gracefully, and came to a halt on her haunches and nose-to-nose with Simon.

“Hi!” she said again.

He looked back with cocked head and raised eyebrow. 

“You wanna know what I’m doing?” 

He nodded. 

“I’m Ponyville’s one and only lake scorer! It’s my job to make the ice on the lake easy to break up and melt!”

Simon blinked. 

“You wanna skate? It’s fuun!”

Pinkie wrapped a foreleg around his arm and pushed off gently. With her tugging, Simon lost his footing and put his foot down on the surface of the lake. 

He heard a crunch, felt the sensation of an unexpected fall, and then the sting of the black, deadly water. 

Pinkie heard Simon let out a strangled gasp as his arm was wrenched violently from her grasp. Her head snapped around to see what was wrong. She saw him lying in the snow beside the lake. The ice was intact. Simon’s eyes bulged wide; his breathing was rapid; his face was pale.

Pinkie Pie turned around on a dime and skated back to the panicked human. She walked off the ice, and sat near him until he was calm again.

“Are you okay?” 

Without looking at her, he rose to his feet and walked away.




All around him, the citizens of Ponyville were literally washing the winter off the face of the Earth. 

They didn’t need clothes to protect themselves from the cold. They didn’t need to protect themselves from the seasons: They held greater dominion over the Earth than he ever thought possible.


A familiar tune entered his mind:


A law was made a distant morn ago here
July and August cannot be too hot.
And there’s a legal limit to the snow here.
In Camelot!

The winter is forbidden ‘till December
And exits March the 2nd on the dot.
By order summer lingers through September.
In Camelot.

In short there’s simply not
A more congenial spot
for happ-ly-ever-after-ing
than here in Camelot!




It was from the Broadway musical “Camelot”. It was Arthur’s song to Guinevere about why Camelot is a paradise on Earth.

It was nothing more than a song from a play that was all but forgotten even in Simon’s time. But the world it described was unnervingly similar to the one he found himself in.

Equestria, what little he’d seen of it, had treated him well. The natural question to ask was, what had he done in return? He shuddered when nothing at all came to mind. He felt his legs weaken. 







Fluttershy was on a hill north of Ponyville, to awaken some more animals. She found Simon there, sitting on the hill-side, staring out into the empty field beyond. He was squinting; the snow covering the field was very bright. She fluttered up to him, and gently lowered herself onto the snow. She looked at him; he glanced at her. Their eyes met briefly.

Slowly, he opened his palm to reveal a crumpled ball of paper. He smoothed it out to reveal a single, scrawled word:
Useless
Simon reached out and spread his palm over Fluttershy’s Cutie Mark.

Fluttershy nodded. “Come with me” she said. Simon followed her down the hillside, to a small hole in the ground. Fluttershy took the bell tucked under her wing, stuck her head down the hole, and rang it loud and clear. She pulled her head out. Out came a long, vicious-looking snake. It slithered between his legs and into the grass that was emerging from the snow. 

Fluttershy rang the bell down the next den. A skunk emerged, and from the third, a cloud of bats came flapping out.

“They don’t need Cutie Marks to have a place in the world; they make one for themselves. I’m sure you can do the same”

Simon wandered away.





“Dear Princess Celestia,
Winter Wrap-Up was one of the most special things I’ve ever been a part of here in Ponyville. It helped me to learn that we all have hidden talents, and if we’re patient and diligent, we’re sure to find them. And, as always, with good friendship and teamwork, ponies can accomplish anything! How’s that, Spike? Spike?”

Twilight looked at her baby dragon, who was snoring in a warm robe and slippers on a rocking-chair next to a roaring fire. He’d fallen asleep with his pen and clipboard in his claws.

“Oh, Spike!” she sighed, and laughed cheerily. 






Celestia,

I’m sad to report that Winter Wrap Up has forced me to acknowledge a fact that I have hidden from myself for too long: Equestria is a wonderful world, for those who help to make it so. However, I seem to serve no purpose here. This is why I’m asking you personally to share with me your wisdom about the places beyond Equestria, should I choose to leave.

Sincerely, 

Simon X


He re-read his letter to the Princess. It struck him that Twilight didn’t know about his encounter with Celestia. He’d never had the reason or opportunity to tell her. The eternal sovereign he’d read about in the history books seemed so unlike the kind, laid-back mare that had consoled him in the woods the day after he’d been teleported out of Ponyville for burning a parasprite, he could hardly believe they were one and the same. That Celestia hadn’t shown herself to Twilight that day made him think she didn’t want Twilight to know.

And now he was asking her to taking him away from Twilight Sparkle, after all she’d done to take care of him. Despite the weight on his conscience, he rolled it up and ascended the stairs.

Simon opened the door from the basement quietly and looked around, making double-sure that Twilight Sparkle was nowhere around. Something about what he was doing made him feel terribly guilty.

He sneaked across the room to the sleeping Spike in his rocking chair with his bathrobe on, and a clipboard in his claws. Simon carefully took the clipboard from the dragon, slipped his note behind the one Twilight had dictated, placed the clipboard on the floor, and strode away.

Hours later, Spike awoke and eventually remembered that there was a letter to be sent to the Princess. He took both letters - never noticing the second - rolled them into a single scroll, and breathed them into Celestia’s hooves.





Fluttershy opened the door to Twilight’s Library without knocking. She found a comfortable scene inside: Twilight Sparkle by the fire, reading a book by it’s light; and Simon sitting nearby, looking pensive at the fire. Spike was snoring in a rocking-chair.

Twilight was the first to look up and notice the pegasus. “Come in, Fluttershy!” she exclaimed.

“Hi, Twilight” responded Fluttershy neutrally, “I was wondering if you’d like to take a walk with me, and we can enjoy the weather”

“That sounds delightful, I...” Twilight got up, then stopped and looked at her unusually assertive friend with a raised eyebrow, “What’s this about?” she asked.

Fluttershy nearly backed out the door. “I need to talk to you...alone” she whispered.

Without turning from the fireplace, Simon waved the two mares good-bye; Spike didn’t stir.

Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy walked in silence until the library was out of sight. The newborn Spring filled their senses and lifted their spirits.

Even so, Fluttershy’s demeanor turned grave when she spoke.

“We need to talk about Simon…”

“Oh dear. What’s wrong?”

“Yesterday, while I was waking up some critters from their dens, I found Simon. He wrote one word to me”

“What?”

“Useless”

Twilight let the meaning of the word sink in.

“I don’t know what to say” she finally admitted. 

“Me neither” agreed Fluttershy, “I tried to reassure him, but I don’t think I helped much”

“I mean, it’s not like he’s actually useless. He’s helped us with, uh…hm... Well, he can’t be useless! Nothing in Equestria is! We could ask Applejack to give him a job on the farm…”

Fluttershy gave her a level stare. Twilight blushed.

“Okay, so maybe that’s not the best idea”

“Twilight, maybe we need to think...maybe we should think of places we can send him…away from Ponyville”

“No!” Twilight stopped in her tracks and stamped her hoof, “I won’t give him up!”

The two ponies stared at each other. The cacophony of the crickets and other night-creatures washed out all other sounds. Both Twilight and Fluttershy became distracted by fireflies appearing in the corners of their eyes, only to disappear when they turned their attention to them. At last, Twilight broke the silence.
“Whatever happens, Simon has to make the choice. We can’t force him to do anything”





Twilight was almost too afraid to face Simon to open the door to her own library. When she finally did, she found him sitting exactly where she’d left him half an hour earlier. It was suddenly painfully apparent that this was a portrait of a being with nothing to do in life. 

She came between him and the fire, and looked deep into his dark, shadowy eyes. His face was...his face. Whatever fault she could find in it, she’d long since gotten used to it. He looked at her inquisitively. She spoke softly.

“I hope you remember, whatever happens, you’re my friend, and I’ll be there for you”

A quiver came to Simon’s lips. After a pause, he reached out a hand, and stroked Twilight’s muzzle.