“Three months of winter coldness
And awesome holidays”
Sunset Shimmer turned over in her sleep. “No, doctor, I don’t want you to stick that there.”
“We’ve kept our hoovsies warm at home
Time off from work to play”
“Why?” Sunset continued murmuring in her sleep. “Because sticking the pill there would mess up my combo. I need those green pills lined up right to wipe out those germs.”
“But the food we’ve stored is running out
And we can’t grow in this cold
And even though I love my boots
This fashion’s getting old”
“Ugh,” Sunset muttered to herself as she woke up. “Is something going on?” She went over to the window to look outside, only to see a large quantity of various ponies moving around while singing. Trixie appeared to take over the next verse:
“The time has come to welcome spring
And all things warm and green
But it’s also time to say goodbye
It’s winter we must clean
How can you help? Well, let’s just see
What does everypony do?
We’ll do all of it without magic!
With hard work through and through!”
“Did Trixie just suggest doing hard work and not using magic?” Sunset stared blankly. “Is this all a dream? This is surreal.”
“Winter Wrap Up! Winter Wrap Up!
Let’s finish our holiday cheer
Winter Wrap Up! Winter Wrap Up!
‘Cause tomorrow spring is here!
‘Cause tomorrow spring is here!”
“But… it’s fall,” said Sunset, feeling extremely perplexed. “You can’t just skip from one season to the next. There wasn’t even any snow on the ground yesterday!” Meanwhile, Lightning Dust started up the next verse:
“Bringing home the southern–“
“Lightning Dust!” shouted out the mayor as the music all crashed to a stop. “This isn’t your verse! Flitter was supposed to take the lead on this one!”
“Yeah,” said Lightning Dust, “but she was late coming in and I wanted to try to salvage the thing.”
“No, you came in too early!” argued Flitter. “If you had just waited a few seconds–“
Sunset had had about enough and left her house to try to figure out what was going on. “Okay, what’s with all the noise that’s been keeping me awake?”
“Take five, everypony,” said the mayor to crowd before turning to Sunset. “Oh, this? This is just our Winter-Wrap Up rehearsal.”
“Rehearsal?” asked Sunset.
“Well, there’s a big musical number that starts up the yearly Winter Wrap Up celebration, so we’re rehearsing it.”
“Why are you rehearsing it?”
“You don’t have the whole town doing a musical number out of the blue! These things take work to put together.”
“Yeah!” said Lightning Dust, who had zoomed up to them. “Maybe Flim and Flam could do something crazy like that, but not everypony at once.”
Sunset looked around. “Where are Flim and Flam? I’d think they’d be into this.”
“Enh,” said Lightning Dust, “they opted to sit this one out. They were upset they didn’t get to write the song this year.”
“Yes,” said the mayor, “there was this other duo that got the win. Oh, here they come now.”
“Hey, mayor!” called out a unicorn with an electric-blue mane. “I was thinking that we should rewrite the intro a little. I don’t think it’s original enough.”
The other, a gray-coated earth pony, sighed. “Vinyl, I told you that just because something isn’t new doesn’t mean it’s bad.”
“Yeah, but it’s just so dull. For starters, how about we rewrite the fourth line as ‘Electro-music plays’?”
“Why do you keep insisting we have something about electronic music? That’s not what the song is about!”
“Hey, I was willing to include that dumb line about the families of the southern birds growing, including the awkward emphasis on the word ‘families’ and ‘grow.’ You can at least indulge me on this, Octy.”
“That was not a dumb line, the emphases were necessary for the melody, and I told you to stop calling me that!”
“Whatever,” said Sunset, suddenly remembering how little she cared as the two continued arguing in the background. “All I’m really curious about is, how in the world did I not know about this?
“You didn’t see all the signs posted about it?” asked Lightning Dust.
“Uh… no?”
The mayor gestured towards a large sign with the phrase “WINTER IS COMING” written on it. “There’s one right there,” she said. “What did you think this was in reference to?”
“Um,” Sunset said. There was an awkward pause that was interrupted by Trixie arriving. “Hi! I bet you were wowed by the Great and Powerful Trixie’s singing skills! Surely this will lead to exposure and publicity!”
“Well, I didn’t expect to hear what I heard out of your mouth, that’s for sure,” said Sunset in as neutral a tone as possible. “Anyway, I’m just going to go back to bed—this time with heavy-duty earplugs—and I guess you guys can go on with this.”
“Why don’t you join in? You could probably assist on the bridge section.”
“You’re building a bridge?”
“No, the musical bridge.”
“Uh, no thanks,” said Sunset, starting to wish she hadn’t even bothered coming out. “But, uh, good luck with that song!” She ran off.
“Huh,” said Lightning Dust. “Maybe she just doesn’t like music. By the way, I totally should be doing the second verse, not Flitter.”
“No,” said the mayor. “She was the one who won the audition. Quite handily, in fact.”
“Hey, I wasn’t trying to make those clouds explode during mine!”
Several months later…
“Winter Wrap Up! Winter Wrap Up!
‘Cause tomorrow spring is here!
‘Cause tomorrow spring is here!
‘Cause tomorrow spring is heeeeeere!”
Much to Sunset’s frustration, her earplugs were no match for the fully orchestrated rendition of the song, forcing her awake. Even worse, the song was so maddeningly catchy she knew there was no chance of her forgetting it anytime soon.
Knowing she was unlikely to get back to sleep, she decided she might as well pass some time by observing how the ponies in Ponyville went about wrapping up winter without the usage of magic and thus opened the door and left the house.
“Oh, great to see you,” said the mayor. “Would you mind help the cleaning up with your magic? It’d help the other unicorns out.”
Sunset stared for a few moments, an act she found herself performing quite frequently since moving to Ponyville. “Uh, wasn’t the song all about how you were transitioning the seasons without magic?”
“Oh, yes, it used to be that way. But there was always so much work put into performing the song that everypony got too tired to put in the manual labor necessary to do it without magic, so we just started using the magic to quickly change the seasons. Plus there was also this lawsuit from the Equestrian Civil Liberties Union alleging racism against unicorns.”
“Then what’s still the point of even having the song?”
“Tax breaks,” said the mayor. Sunset stared at her yet again. The mayor shrugged. “We get some great government subsidies for preservation of the performing arts. Definitely makes it easier to pay for all the reconstruction that the various monster attacks tend to cause.”
Sunset stared some more. She opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it and closed it. After enough staring that the mayor got bored and moved on, she finally walked back into her house as if in a zombified state. With a blank look in her eyes, she took out some paper and wrote the following:
Dear King Sombra,
In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Sincerely,
Sunset Shimmer