Twilight's 12 Pains of Christmas

by TheDriderPony

On the Eighth Day

It was dark when Twilight woke up. While not totally out of the ordinary, what made this particular morning special was that the bedside clock claimed it was nearly three hours after dawn. Without the sun, she woke up groggy and grumpy.

"Spiiike..." she whined, "why did you close the curtains? You know what a state I get into if I wake up without the sun."

Spike exited the bathroom, clearly more awake than she was, and with a scale polishing rag covering something in her claw. "Me? I thought you closed them to shut out the moonlight. It's been pretty bright lately, so I figured you shut them after I went to sleep."

She groaned at the inconvenience of it all. "Well, whoever did, let's get some sunlight in here!" She reached out with her magic to grab the curtains, but found only air. "Huh?" She muttered blearily, chalking the miss up to darkness and poor horn-eye coordination. She tried again, and missed. Once more, and missed. Again, missed. Half-snarling in grumpy frustration, she poured an excessive amount of power into her horn, bathing the entire room in a n eerie lavender luminescence.

The curtains were not fully closed. In fact, they were pulled back entirely, still snugly held back by their tasseled ties. The glass of the window could be fully seen, only nothing could be seen through it.

"Where... where did Ponyville go?" Spike asked, his voiced threaded with confusion and fear. Twilight unlatched the window, and opened it ever so slightly. A small amount of the darkness fell inside, where it turned purple in the light of Twilight's magic. Spike picked up a piece of it. He squished it, rolled it into a ball between his claws, and after a moment, popped it into his mouth.

"Spike!" she exclaimed, her light flickering as the focus shifted, "What have I told you about putting mysterious dark substances in your mouth?"

He finished chewing and swallowed. "It's just snow Twilight." He picked at a tooth with his claws. "Kind of... tingly snow. But still snow."

"Snow?" Twilight's mind raced to come up with, analyze, and evaluate theories as to how Spike's fifth floor window could be completely covered by snow. A moment later she finally vocalized her conclusions. "Ah, the big seasonal snow storm must have been larger than usual, and a significant amount fell off the roof to pile up on your balcony." She smiled confidently, " That explains it."

"Uh, Twilight?" Spike interrupted to crash her pleasant mindset. "I don't have a balcony."

"Well, then that means the only possible explanation is-" Twilight froze. A few sprigs of mane started to curl and a faint sound like a pane of glass shattering could be heard. In a flash, she was airborne and speeding through the hallways. Library windows? Blocked. Her bedroom balcony? Inaccessible. The main doors? Despite pulling with all her magic, sealed shut. The castle was well and truly buried.

Spike finally caught up to her in the map room. The memory infused strings of gems hanging from the roots of her chandelier lit the room in a subtle array of colors. Not enough light to read by, but plenty to navigate around obstacles. He found Twilight near one of the windows, puffing and panting hard. Wisps of smoke came off her horn, which she lit periodically to no visible effect.

"Oh my gosh!" he exclaimed as he ran to her side, "Twilight are you okay? What happened to your horn."

"Tried.. to teleport... outside the castle..." she panted, "Not... working. Spell fails... every time."

"So you're saying we're trapped here until somepony can get us out?!"

"Looks... like it."Her breathing slowed as she finally caught her breath. "We need to get a message out. Let ponies know we're okay and find out what happened. But how?" She started pacing. "If something is blocking teleportation, then I'm not sure what other magics might be able to break through."

"I think..." Spike half-started before clamming up.

"What is it Spike?" She probed. "There are no bad ideas and I'm frankly open to options."

"I think my dragon magic might be able to get through it." He admitted.

"That's certainly an idea," she acknowledged, "but I don't want you to get hurt. If your magic does get repelled, you could be hit with magical backlash like I did when I tried to teleport. And you're a lot less magically durable then an alicorn is. So maybe let's keep that idea in far reserve."

"No, I'm telling you Twilight. My magic can get through to the outside." He insisted.

"But how do you know?" She pointed out. "There's no way you could know for sure and I don't want to risk you getting hurt when there could be a safer option."

He sighed. "I was hoping to keep this a secret a while longer..." He raised his voice and his eyes. "Look, I've been corresponding with Ember, alright?"

Twilight blinked. "Ember? The dragon Lord? What does she have to do with this?"

Spike sighed again, figuring he might as well come clean entirely now that this much was out. "We started talking not long after we first met, but it was really hard trying to find anyone who would deliver mail to the dragonlands. So Ember showed me a pattern of dragonic runes which let us send messages and items instantly. So we started an exchange. I taught her about friendship and how to rule a nation, and she's been teaching me about dragon magic, history, and cooking." He held out a few red, blue, and green shards. "She just sent me a sampler of a new recipe this morning, so I know dragon magic still works."

Twilight didn't respond for a moment as she processed all this. Eventually, she chose her response. "Is the portal in your bathroom somewhere?"

He nodded in surprise. "Yeah, how'd you know?"

"I had some suspicions, but I only thought you had a secret stash somewhere." She smiled as she drew him close. "But I'm also so proud of you Spike! So young and already with your own friendship student!"

"Yeah, yeah, save the mushy praise for Starlight." he made a half-hearted attempt to wriggle out of her hug, "We still need to get a message out."

Twilight sobered up quickly. "Right. You need to send a message, but being snowed in seems rather too insignificant of an issue to take directly to Celestia, even if it is magic blocking snow."

Spike tut-tut-tutted with a smile. "Did you forget already? I've been learning more about how dragon magic works. I haven't tried it too much, but if you have a feather or bit of fur, I should be able to send a message to whoever you want."

Twilight's smile grew quick and fast. With a poof, she disappeared, only to reappear a moment later with a blue feather in her mouth and some paper and an ink well under her wing. She spit it into his hands as she dropped the ink and paper. "Ptoo! I'm glad I can still teleport within the castle. So, all you need is a feather to send a message?"

He nodded as he gathered up the ink and paper. "Anything with a strong magic signature really. Though I've only tried it with scales so far. Why do you have one of Rainbow Dash's feathers?"

"Oh, she crashed into my study once when a trick went wrong and broke nearly all my quills. It was just before molting season, so after her feathers came out she had them made into new quills as an apology."

"Huh, that was oddly thoughtful of her." He dipped the blue quill into the ink and set it to the paper. "Er... what do you want me to say?"

"Ahem," She began:

Rainbow Dash,
Hopefully this message gets to you, we haven't tried using Spike's magic in this way before. I'm not sure what happened, but we seem to be snowed in. Entirely. As in we've yet to find a window or door though which we can see sunlight. Also, I can't teleport through it. Only Spike's dragon magic seems to be able to pass through. Not sure what's happened, but could you gather some ponies and try to lend us a hoof?

Thanks, Twilight.

P.S. Spike here. To reply, write on the back of this page and set it on fire. In theory it should head back to me.

Spike wrapped the page around the quill, and with a whoosh of flame both floated away as a small cloud of green smoke.

"So, now what?" Spike asked.

"It will probably be a while before she responds, if the message gets to her at all." Twilight replied, "I suppose until then we should get to lighting candles."

With a nod of agreement, the pair split up, each tackling different sections of the castle. Luckily, the halls came pre-lined with candles in case of an emergency such as this (or for just as lighting for nighttime events and gatherings). Spike lit the candles he came across with his fire breath, while Twilight relied on a low-power ignition spell. It wasn't long, however, until the pair was forced back together.

"Twilight!!" Spike's voice echoed, "Come to the ballroom, we've got a problem!"

In a swirl of magic she arrived. "What is it Spike?" she asked, "What could possibly be worse than being buried alive in magic-blocking snow?"

He pointed out into the ballroom, which was significantly more crowded than it had been the previous day. "Not being buried alone."

Twilight turned to follow his finger, and soon stared in slack-jawed shock. Near the grove of pear trees, and avoiding the protective mother geese, was a herd or cows. Eight of them, precisely. They used their tails to swat away at the birds who tried to land on them, but otherwise stood still in a small, worried lump. Upon seeing the alicorn, a chorus of whispers spread amongst them. After a moment, one particularly confident individual (or possibly the least lucky of them) left the group to make her way towards Twilight. She lowered into a kneeling bow as she approached.

"Your- your highness." The unnamed cow said reverently.

"Um, hi?" Twilight started awkwardly, "I mean, greetings. Why are you in my castle?"

The heifer looked up in confusion. "Oh. I was hoping you could tell us that."

Twilight and Spike shared a glance that was equal parts worry and confusion. She turned back to the cow. "Please, there's no need to bow. What's your name, and how did you get here?"

She rose and coughed briefly before beginning. "Thank you, your highness. My name is Mirabelle. The girls over there and I are part of a much larger herd based just outside Whinnyapolis. We all went to sleep last night, same as normal, and when we woke up we were here, in this room. We'd really like to apologize for the inconvenience, and would just really like to go home."

Twilight rubbed her forehead. This was not going to be fun. "I'm sorry as well. Strange things have been going on lately, causing random objects and beings to start appearing here. We're working on a solution now, but I would like to make it clear that it is through no fault of your own that this happened to affect you." Mirabelle nodded in thanks. "As for getting you home, as you can see from the windows, we're completely snowed in. We've sent out a request for aid, but it should still be a couple of hours at the least. But once a path is cleared, I promise you'll all have tickets on the first train back to Whinnyapolis for your trouble. First class, of course."

Mirabelle thanked her, and returned to her herd to disseminate the news. Twilight turned back to Spike. "I don't like this, Spike. Plants and birds are one thing, but now innocent beings are getting pulled into this."

"I don't like it either." He agreed. "I hope at least this is like the rings, and we go back to birds after. If worst comes to worst, I don't think we have room to house too many guests."

He would have continued, but just then Spike felt the familiar tingle of a incoming message. He released his fireball, which quickly reconstituted into a parchment with slightly singed edges. Twilight grabbed it and began to read.

hey I'm glad you guys are okay. a storm escaped the Everfree last night that nopony saw coming. we all left our posts to go deal with it, and nopony was able to react in time when it merged with the season's snow shipment. Long story short, it buried everything. and cause its from the everfree, the snow resists magic. even our pegasus magic isn't working, so we're trying to clear everything the earth pony way. Mayor Mare's made a priority list of who and what to dig out first, mostly ponies who either will be really useful at clearing snow or who don't have a lot of stored food. we're working hard as we can, but the Mayor put you down kinda far on the list. you've got a lot of food stored in the castle cellars, right? anyways, we're doing what we can but it could be a few days before we get to you. sorry about that.
-RD

also, I hope this message gets through. I had to hit it with lightning to set it on fire.

Twilight groaned as she finished the message. "I'll go and break the bad news to our guests. Spike, could you go prepare some guest rooms and then maybe check our stored supplies? This is going to be a looong couple of days."

Comments

[Kichi]

Maybe Princess Celestia know a way to take the snow? As the others are busy.

[Fetch]

Ten of them, precisely.

Shouldn't that be Eight?

[TheDriderPony]

7808713 Whoops, you caught me getting ahead of myself. Thanks!

[Foxhelm]

9,10, 11, 12... Four more to go. Twilight you might want to send a letter to Pinkie and ask her what the gifts her uncle received were and what order.

Side note, the word 'gift' in certain older forms of German can mean 'poison'.

Just something to think about, Twilight

[TheDriderPony]

Aw, the first dislike. There goes my perfect record. Well, it was a fun high while it lasted.

[Awesomo3000]

Y'know, it's funny. When I saw the title of the story, this popped into my mind:

[Greenhorn]

Finally! The birds are no more!

[TheDriderPony]

7810031 Customers are overwhelmed by her adorableness and literally can't say no. Sweetie Belle even catered the boutique and they still couldn't say no.

[Mr cold ghost]

So did they get the regular presents along with the cows?

[The Iguana Man]

So, um... how much oxygen do you think they have in the castle?