Karyn sipped her coffee and jabbed her fork into her egg over easy. Derpy picked up her own egg-in-the-hole toast and took a bite. “Are you OK?” she asked
“A little tired. You can tell?”
“Your egg is a little off. Normally you make it into a perfect shape. And mine was a little runny.”
Karyn looked over. “I’m sorry, I’ll remake it for you.”
“No, that’s not necessary at all. It would mess up my diet and be more work for you. No, I just want to make sure you’re feeling well.”
“I’m in the middle of midterms. I knew I was going to get hit hard with my heavy schedule, but now it’s here. Well, three more days and it’ll be over.”
“That’s right, you’re taking an extra class this time.” Derpy nodded and patted Karyn with a wing.
“Yeah, and more than that I’ve been pushing myself for all A’s. That’s why I thought about remaking your breakfast. I’ve been focusing on perfection for the past week, making sure that all my essays have perfect grammar and just the right word, triple-checking my math, that kind of thing.”
“I’m proud of you for that. Sometimes it’s nice to see what your limits are. I hope you get your A’s.”
Karyn carried the dishes to the sink. “I darn well better. But even so, I’m working hard through these three days, and then I’ll have a blissful four day weekend. Nothing to do but relax. I can even get my cleaning done early so that I’m all set for you on Sunday. No stress.”
“Sounds nice. Wait, four-day weekend?”
“Yes, my parents are going on a vacation for the weekend. Well, I guess it’s not a vacation so much, they’re going a few states away to a friend of mom’s sister. I don’t know them very well, and, to my extreme relief, they said that I wouldn’t enjoy myself there, plus the logistics of the travel don’t work out too well. I would have to get up at the break of dawn to drive home and then be driven by them.”
Derpy waited patiently as Karyn said this, but she still had a question on her mind, and so she only half paid attention. She thought that she should try to stop doing this and give the other person speaking a chance to be heard, but then she realized that that thought was also distracting her, and so she let it go.
“But why do you have a four-day weekend in the first place? Is it because the midterms give you a day off?”
“Oh, no. It’s for Thanksgiving. I guess you don’t have that in Equestria.”
“No, what is it?”
Karyn had to take a moment to collect her thoughts. The idea of Thanksgiving was so ingrained in her that there was so much she took for granted. Then she remembered that not even all countries celebrated it, or did so at the same time, so it wasn’t Derpy who was the odd one.
“It’s a day of feasting that comes from some early settlers in this country. They had a bad year, then a good one, and they had a lot of food and wanted to celebrate.”
“Sounds like my kind of holiday.”
“Maybe so,” said Karyn. “So normally it’s a day when families all get together, just like Christmas but with no presents. There are traditional foods you’re supposed to eat and there’s a big parade that gets shown on TV each year, and it’s part of the big run of holidays that we have toward the end of the year.”
“And it’s on a Thursday this year?”
“It’s on a Thursday every year. I think it’s the only holiday that works like that. Most of them move to the nearest Monday or Friday, and some of them are on the same date no matter what, but Thanksgiving is always on the fourth Thursday of November, by rule.”
Derpy had a look of shock that Karyn couldn’t understand. “That’s a terrible holiday.”
“Why?”
“Well, you get the day off, but then you’ve got to come back to work the next day. They should just put it on Friday like all the other ones.”
“A lot of people have the day off on Friday too, like me. It depends on what you do. Retail stores are usually open on that day, but offices will close. Or you can go ahead and schedule a day off for Friday to tie it in with Thanksgiving. It’s one of those things that you consider when looking for a job, if you’re lucky enough to be able to consider things like that.” Karyn headed for the computer. “Come to think of it, I don’t actually know why it’s scheduled for the Thursday.”
She did some research, Derpy looking over her shoulder. “Any luck?”
“Not really. Every site I can find just says it’s tradition. The best explanation I can find is that it’s supposed to be the furthest day from Sunday.”
“But in the first place, Wednesday is just as far, and in the second, why far from Sunday? Just to keep it away from our visits?”
Karyn looked askance at Derpy. “Yes, Derpy, the people two hundred years ago said that the holiday should be far away from the flying pony who comes to Earth and no one knows about.”
“Got it.”
“Or because Sunday was the day for religious ceremonies. Like when I took you to the church.”
It took Derpy this second explanation before she realized that Karyn had been sarcastic with her first.
“Well, so most people get the Friday off too?”
“I don’t know if it’s most, but a lot.”
Derpy lay down on the bed and put her hooves behind her head. “That sounds nice. You finish your work, then go see your family, and then relax for three days. It’s like staging down into your weekend instead of it all happening at once.”
“Not always.”
Derpy picked her head up to invite Karyn to speak.
“A while back we started a tradition of opening the Christmas season on that Friday. They even have Santa Claus in the big parade I mentioned. And since Christmas is such a big shopping season, that Friday is when all the retailers push for big sales. They’ll make deals available and open their doors at midnight or earlier to let people shop.”
“I would like that. I don’t have many ponies to buy gifts for on Hearth’s Warming Eve, but if we could have a start to the season and I could buy them all at once, I might not always be caught trying to get gifts at the last minute.”
“Yeah?” asked Karyn. “I kind of figured you’d be the responsible type even without a formal calendar.”
Derpy blushed, as if she had revealed something she hadn’t intended to. She quickly changed the subject. “So can I see some of these deals?”
“Sure, we can look online or go out and window shop. You’re not thinking about getting another computer, are you?”
“Why would I? I just got the last one.”
“Yeah, but it could be obsolete...never mind.”
Karyn pulled up the websites of some of the stores she liked to let Derpy see the garish advertising beckoning people in. Since that kind of hard sell was limited in Equestria to scammers like the Flim-Flam brothers, it was fairly new for her, and Karyn wasn’t sure it was healthy.
Derpy flipped through the pages themselves, enjoying it even if she didn’t know what half of it was. “This all looks so fun. Everyone must have a great time.”
“Not really. Some of it gets pretty intense, with people battling over getting what they want. There have even been people trampled at some of the sales. And then you get people who think that the whole thing is bad because of that and should be called off. They want it to be like you said, where everyone relaxes for the full weekend.”
“And what about you?”
Karyn shrugged. “I don’t particularly care one way or the other. I mean, it’s bad when people get hurt, and I don’t like that, but at the same time I think the people who complain get a little preachy.”
“No, I mean do you shop at these sales?”
“Oh. No, I buy all my gifts online. Most of them, anyway. Very convenient.”
After a few more minutes of browsing, Derpy shut it down and said, “I guess none of this is for me. The shopping I can’t do and the feast would help since it would all be meat stuff.”
“Actually, that’s one good thing, is that Thanksgiving is a nice day for vegetarians. It would probably be pretty good for vegans too, but maybe not. A lot of butter. But there’s all sorts of dishes that don’t have meats in them. Potatoes and sweet potatoes and turnips and carrots glazed in sugar and stuffing—although the stuffing could be made with meat, but my mom always made some for me—and then lots of desserts as well. It’s really only the turkey that’s a pure meat dish.”
“Oh, wow. Some of that sounds good.”
Karyn kept going. “Yeah, I don’t usually overeat myself, but the thing is that unless the cook really knows what they’re doing, things will be ready at different times. So at least in my house, it was less of a binge than a steady stream of food. So by the time the apple pie came out, I had a bulging tummy and was ready to sleep.”
“And that was every year?”
“Well, sometimes my dad would help with the cooking, and he was better at timing, but not as good at actually making the dishes, so it was a whole different thing.”
Their conversation drifted away from the talk of holidays. Derpy brought Karyn up to speed on everything that she had done that week, and how she had a lovely letter from Dinky telling her how great she was doing at school, and how the mail was fairly light and everypony got a good long chance to speak to her, which was how she liked it.
Then Karyn got a chance to talk about midterms more before moving on to some of the fun she had chatting online with some friends and playing video games. In the middle of this, Derpy burst out with, “I’ve decided. I want to do it.”
“Huh? Do what?”
“I want to have Thanksgiving!”
Karyn took a moment to think of the context that Derpy could be talking in and came up empty. “You want to come here to have it with me, or you want me to go with my parents after all and bring you?”
“No, I want to have it in Equestria.”
“You want to set up a dinner for yourself at home?”
Derpy stomped her hoof. “No! I want to make this Thanksgiving a holiday there so that everypony gets a day off and gets to spend it with their family and have a feast. And I want it to be on this Thursday.”
Karyn first got the image in her head of a pony family gathered round a long table to have such a family dinner, and it didn’t seem too far out of place, even if the knives and forks would be manipulated with hooves or magic fields instead of fingers. Then she got a little cynical.
“Are you sure you don’t want an excuse to break your diet this week?”
“Well, kind of. But I think that if I can have a holiday each year that’s based around food, then I’ll be better the rest of the year at avoiding the temptation. I’ll just keep the anticipation for Thanksgiving and all the eating I’ll do then, and when I get really desperate I can plan out the menu and make preparations.”
“Well, it’s up to you of course, if you really think that’s best.” Karyn tried to put a reproachful tone in her voice, but wasn’t sure how effective it was.
“I actually do. I mean, I know that I’m being silly and that I’m not going to get everypony in Equestria to celebrate by this Thursday, but I can start celebrating myself, and maybe get Dinky to come home, and who knows? It might catch on. Although I’m going to have one big problem.”
“What’s that?”
Derpy spread her hooves as if seeing the table set before her. “The whole thing that you were telling me about with the turkey, where it’s this central important dish, I think that’s important. Obviously I can’t eat a bird, poor thing, but I want something that would fit at the center of the table and be the highlight of the meal. Something...big.”
“I can see that, but what do you want to have? If it can’t be a meat dish, it’s hard to make it central. Because usually there’s only one meat and many vegetables. So what’s something that’s unique in a pony meal?”
“Hay? I can have a big bale of hay that everypony takes from?”
Karyn visibly expressed her disdain for this, but that was her visceral reaction, not that she thought it was a bad idea.
“I guess not,” said Derpy. “What it should be is something that takes a long time to cook. That way, like you said your family does, all the other dishes could be eaten while it’s being made.”
“You know what I liked? Do you remember a few weeks after we met I got ill? And you took care of me with Zecora? When it was all done you made me stuffed mushrooms. They were really tasty. You should include those in your Thanksgiving meal.”
“That’s it!”
Karyn shook her head. “Huh? No, I didn’t mean for your main dish. They don’t take a long time to cook, and I don’t think there’s any way to make it a big central dish. Not as far as presentation, which the food channel always says is important.”
“That’s because when I made it that time I used regular mushrooms. I can find some really big ones, where I’ll only need one or two to fill up an entire platter.”
“Do you have them that big in Equestria?”
Derpy was not even looking at Karyn anymore, just staring off into space. “Yes, and I can get them sized up by a good cooking unicorn. Not too much, since I’m told that dilutes the flavor, but then I can give everypony a nice big piece.”
“And it even has a meaty flavor, or so I’m told.”
“Yes, that’s definitely the thing to do. I’ll go shopping this week and find the best one I can, then I’ll slow steam it all day Thursday and I’ll add lots of spices and fresh herbs. It might take me a couple of tries before I get the exact best flavor, but if it’s going to be a tradition, then I’ll have the chances.”
Derpy was having such fun planning out her event that Karyn hated to put a pin in her balloon. “Derpy, you haven’t established the holiday yet. That means that you’re not going to have off on Thursday.”
She seemed to be stymied, but only for a moment. “I’ll just have to take a day off. I’ve got enough good will that Mr. Mintsugar will give it to me, even if I don’t tell him what it’s for. But I’ll explain that it’s Thanksgiving and he’ll probably just laugh.”
“Go for it.”
Again the conversation devolved into minutiae, and at one point the girls decided to head out for lunch. Karyn was impressed at how little Derpy ate; it seemed that she was truly committed to balancing out her meals so that she could eat more come the holiday. Right as they were winding down the midday meal, Derpy came out with another non sequitur.
“Hey, what for?”
“What for what?”
Derpy realized that she had been vague and apologized. “What is it that you’re giving thanks for? Or is the name of the holiday just something that you thought sounded cool?”
“I didn’t name it. But you probably meant humans in general. Well, it was a religious holiday to begin with, but these days it’s different for everyone. Sometimes you’ll go around the table and everyone will say something that they’re thankful for in that particular year.”
“Oh, that sounds nice.”
Karyn thought of how it might work with the religious parallels. “Or you could make it a holiday about giving thanks to the princesses for all the work they do. Celestia and Luna particularly.”
“I don’t know that they’d like that. They try not to have us give them too much praise. I think they’re afraid of their own egos. But I should definitely get them on board with the holiday. Also Mayor Mare. That would be the best place to start. She’s always looking for some other holiday to preside at. No, I’d better let the princesses know first.”
“Why’s that?”
“So that Celestia can let me have Dinky for this Thursday.”
Karyn beamed. “I’m sure you’ll figure out how to get it done. I really think that you can do anything you set your mind to.”
“Well, I couldn’t eat a hundred cakes in one day, or fly to the moon, or turn into a unicorn, or...”
“Within reason.”
“Oh.” Derpy eyed Karyn’s laptop. “Do you think I could use that for a little while? I’d like to start planning out my menu and stuff. Can I print it when I’m ready?”
“Sure. Better than that, whatever you write I’ll save to a portable drive, and you can plug it into your own computer at home.”
“And I can print it there?”
“I meant for you not to print it at all.” Karyn looked round her apartment, thinking of how much more work she’d have to do to get it to pass Derpy’s inspections if she had to print more.
“I think I prefer paper. No offense.”
“None taken. If you take it home with you, it can’t clutter up my place. I guess you’re better at avoiding that though.”
Derpy went to work while Karyn, deprived of her main source of entertainment, played a little on her phone. She knew that Derpy didn’t approve, but if she was going to do an alone activity, so could Karyn. From time to time Derpy would ask her what she thought about a dish or a tradition.
“OK, I think I’m ready to print. It’s fun to plan things out like that.”
Karyn did the printing herself, so Derpy didn’t waste paper by using the wrong settings. “I’m sure you’re going to have a great time.”
“You are going to come, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t even think about it. You’re inviting me?”
Derpy spun around in the chair a full 540 degrees before facing Karyn. “Of course! Not only did you give me the idea, but I’d invite you to anything fun I’m doing.”
Karyn didn’t know what to say, beyond a thank-you, and she wasn’t sure if she was going to accept. She still had her midterms on her mind, but then she remembered that they would be finished by Wednesday. “I’d be delighted to some to your Thanksgiving dinner, Derpy. It won’t even cut into my time off. It’ll make it a five-day weekend. Something I could use.”
“Great. Can I ask you another big favor then?”
“What’s that?”
“Can I take this list home now? There are some ponies I’m going to want to see and since I’ll have work all week now is the only time I can do it. Plus if we see each other on Thursday, it’ll mean that we really won’t lose any time together.”
Karyn gave her a hug. “Of course I don’t mind. That will give me more time to study for tomorrow’s test, and I can get to bed early so that I’ll be at my best.”
Derpy packed up, and after assuring Karyn that she would pick her up bright and early on Thanksgiving, she used her spell and left for Equestria.
She flew home first, so she could mark up her printed list with a quill as to what she had to do first. Then she gave her cat a pet on the head and made her way around Ponyville running errands.
When the sun went down, Derpy realized that it would normally be the time she was getting home anyway, but only half the day had been spent with Karyn.
Back on Earth, Karyn wasted no time, but went right to work on her books, highlighting and taking notes. She had marked the pages that would be on the midterm, and frequently she would look at the stacked pages hoping they would have shrunk. It was slow, but eventually she reached the end.
It was already dark out when she picked her head up and stretched her neck, but it was the time that she normally would straighten the bed covers from where Derpy had crashed on it and headed into the bathroom to brush her teeth and change into her nightclothes.
And so both of them stood in their respective dwellings in their respective worlds, and both of them lamented the lost time and anticipated the time to come. Although there was no way they could have known it, both of them felt that the other was thinking of them, and they were right.