> The Gift of Winter
>  by Banana Prince
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> Stitch in Time
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	The crisp, chilling winds blew, announcing the almost-present holiday season. The animals were retreating into their burrows and the leaves were wilting in response to the cold. Celestia was leaving the world dark for longer now. The weather pegasi  brought darker clouds – some of which drifted along the ground until the wind raised the fog later in the morning. Many ponies were staying in bed a little longer in the morning using their blankets to protect themselves from the chill of autumn dawn… all except for Minty of course.
Minty would be the only mare awake during a winter morning. There was too many happy memories brought back by the cold for her to spend hours fighting it. She made no hesitation to scarf down some breakfast oatmeal and get outside and made her way to the crafts store just like she had for every year that came since she was a filly.
The green mare with the pink mane looked over the hill and saw the fillie’s school. Suddenly she saw herself there again. 

She was the funny one. She had a deep resent of that position. She had no idea why she was clumsy. It didn’t help at all that her grades weren’t the best. She had a hard time concentrating when the joke clouded her mind while she made a hobby of finding where she belonged, trying to overcome her bad luck and growing a strong sense of humor and humility at the same time as she desperately waited for each day to end.

A building blocked her view and suddenly Minty was brought back to the present. At this point of her stroll, Celestia had risen the sun a little higher and Ponyville was brighter now. She picked her head up and widened her stride.
At the market was a multitude of booths with yawning ponies wrapped in scarfs, holding on to mugs of warm drinks (provided by a grinning Donut Joe). Minty trotted up to the one with different crafts supplies displayed.
"Hi, Pearl!" Minty greeted in her jolly way.
The mare behind the counter lit up from her tired stated seeing the candy colored mare coming.
"Hi, Minty." Pearl waved. "Lemme guess. The usual?"
"You know it."
And at that, Pearl got two bags already stuffed with bolts of yarn of every color from beneath the counter just like every year. They exchanged the bags with bits (that were dropped then recounted). 
On the way home, Minty stopped for a short while to press the yarn with a hoof. The soft feel of it took her back.
Minty was a thankful filly. When the cold seasons came and she was excused from class, her mom would make her soup and knit her scarfs, sweaters, and, what she remembered the most, socks.
Socks were one of the rarest articles of clothing in Equestria. Even the monumental city of Manehattan had no more than three stores that sold them (at least to the best of her recollection). Once in a blue moon, word would travel of an aristocrat like Prince Blueblood being seen wearing or requesting the odd clothing. A musician and anthropologist (whatever that was), named Lyra, tries to explain their rarity by claiming they come from a lost race or something crazy like that. Either way, they were a very special thing. A very few actually knew how to make any socks and her mom was one of those few.
Now, Minty was at her house again. She put her bag of bits on the coffee table. They made a loud jingle as they hit the surface of the table. She always had plenty of bits after buying yarn. It was that way as long as she could remember, along with how much her mom would strive to see that she was comfortable and healthy until Wrap-Up came around. 

After a while, Minty felt some guilt from just taking so much. She wanted to give back to her one day. Unfortunately, Minty was impulsive being the not-so-bright filly she was and was an impulsive buyer as well. She could afford yarn only on her budget.

In a small chest in the living room was a pair of needles, both a foot long and only slightly rusted. Minty took them out and got her yarn and sat on her couch. As she began to knit, she laughed a little. Those knitting needles were one of the only things she could handle gracefully. Even during her first time knitting as a filly, she could not only handle the complex motions of the needles and the yarn as she had saw her mom do so. 
After a short while, she had a pair of wool socks on her lap with her signature mint-candy print based off of what her confectioner mom always made. The same print that Minty had put on the first pair she made for her mom. 

They weren't amazing works of art by no means, but they were still of passable quality. Her mom receiving those hugged her little filly. That warm embrace was like no other sensation. After that day, Minty began to knit more and more, each pair of socks becoming more and more beautiful. Eventually, she made scarves too, then blankets, then sweaters and so on. Minty soon made a killing selling what she made. She later afforded a booth in the Ponyville marketplace, becoming wealthy be remaking the creation that was a part of the shining light of her childhood and sharing it with Equestria. At this point, Minty became the highest earning filly ever and the one who made almost all of the socks in Equestria selling in mass to the local Carousel Boutique and with traders that came from all over to sell them in their own stores. In this process of perfecting her passion she earned her cutie mark: the signature mints her mom made that she made an icon through her craft.

Minty looked at the pair of socks. They had to be like - what? - her 3000th pair? Even now, they carried a spark of her childhood as the second pair had. She was never a smart, gracefully. She still wasn't, but in her lap was a show of what she was: Thankfull, determined… They were also a relic of the silver line of her early life that her mother's care was: The very same that made her long school days bearable. Those socks and the ones she'll make later will have the same amount of sentiment they carried as her gift that came at winter.
Minty put the pair of socks to the side and began knitting the next pair.