Moony snuck down the road -or as much as you can sneak with snow crunching under your hooves on ever step at least. Not that mattered too much anyway, seeing as literally noone was awake or outside to see her. The road and forest was empty, aside from the far-off screech of a barn owl. Big snowflakes fell around her, muffling the sounds of the world and —conveniently- erasing her hoofprints behind her. She hoped the contents in the basket she was carrying wasn't getting too wet though. It was already getting cold in the freezing winter night.

But despite being just shy of midnight, the world wasn't dark. No; Moony held her head up high, casting the light of her very first Light-spell horn prosthetic far and wide. It glimmered on the icicles in the trees, shimmered in the snow around her and glittered in the falling snowflakes. Moony couldn't think of more synonyms to describe it, but it was very beautiful to look at.

Not that she hadn't had one before; no, her parents had ordered a ton of them specially made for her, in varying sizes as she grew. But this one— this one, she'd made all by herself. It wasn't perfect; the professionally made ones' light was steadier and white, whereas hers was slightly flickering and with a hint of blue. But that was okay, it gave it personality.

She had to put it out though as she approached her destination. It wouldn't do for her to wake Felix' parents up.

As she passed over the small bridge to the house, a loud "Hoo!" made her look up. The tree seemed empty at first —until two dark eyes opened in the snow. A snowy owl walked out on the branch, staring unblinkingly at her. It hoo-ed again, louder.

"Shhh!" Moonstone put the basket down and held up a hoof in front of her face to shush
the annoying guard bird. “It’s me!”

"Hoo!" the owl said again, turning their head upside down, eyes never leaving her face.

"Me! Moonstone!"

"Hoo."

"Princes bucking Twilight Moonstone!"

"Hooo," the bird gave up trying to make itself understood. At this pace, they were just recreating a joke that was too old years ago. So it spread its wings, and took off —shaking the tree and piling snow on Moonstone in the process.

Moonstone couldn't shout at it, so she just bit her tongue at its tail feathers as it disappeared into the night.

Stupid bird.

Whatever, she'd finally made it. Now to just…

How should she do this? Felix was most likely asleep, and any noise she could make to wake him up, would just wake Fluttershy and Gilda too. Too bad there didn't exist some kind of… portable telephone, like in a lot of her comics. But no, she'd looked into it; it was based on mundane concepts, running on electricity, and there were no powerful enough electrical batteries. And all magical solutions were either wayyy too expensive, or needed two spellcasters on either end. And other long distance communication options, like windvoice or carrier pigeons were either heard by everyone, or… needed a pigeon. There had to be a better way. Sound was just vibrations, right? Could she make crystals vibrate….?

She shook her head, realising that she was just standing there, in the snow, in the middle of the night. Later.

Eventually she just settled on the good old 'throwing pebbles at his window'strategy. Though in this case, snowballs just worked as well as pebbles. It only took her throwing three - and missing two— for Felix to open the window and look out with a bleary-eyed glare.

"Felix!" Moony whisper-yelled. "Open the front door!"

"…what?" Felix mouthed at her, rubbing his eyes.

"Open. The. Door!" Moonstone whispered again, waving in the direction of the front of the house.

Felix squinted. "What?" he mouthed again.

"Door!" Moony rose onto her back legs, mimed opening a door, and pointed with both two hooves to the front. "Open!"

Felix finally nodded, hestiently, and closed the window. Moony hoped he wasn't just getting tired of her, and grabbed the basket to walk back to the front door.

It took a little while -long enough that Moony considered throwing more snowballs at his bedroom window- but the door finally creaked open.

She lifted the basket up so he could see it, smiling widely. "Happy late midwinter!" she said around the basket-handle in her mouth. "Or welcome back, or early birthday, whatever you want."

Felix mouth opened in a surprised 'o', before he caught himself and smiled back. "Thank you. Is that…?"

"You should be able to eat 'em — they're modified from your bread recipe, just with more sugar and with raisins." Moony crossed her eyes, trying to look down into the basket. "Though, you probably can't eat many of them… Oh, and the drink's your tea, so that works too."

Felix smiled again -a bit wobbly, Moony noticed with worry- and reached beside the door to put on mittens, a hat and winter coat.

"Let's go eat them somewhere we can talk," he said, and closed the door behind him. Moony followed closely behind, as he trudged through the snow towards the back of the house.

They ended up on a bench under a tree, right beside the stream. It was mostly frozen over, but water could still be heard under the top layer of ice. In the stillness of the night, it made for a pleasant background noise.

Using his long tail, Felix brushed off the snow from the bench and then sat down with a sigh. He carefully shook his tail and curled it around himself, beginning to comb through it with his claws.

Moonstone sat down beside him and gave him one of the makeshift buns from the basket. She then grabbed the thermos, carefully unscrewed the cup-lid and put it on the other side of her on the bench. With a hoof, she found the button on the top of the thermos, opening it and popping out the mouth grip on its side. She hadn't thought to bring another cup, so she just poured the steaming liquid into the one she'd set up. They'd just had to share.

Closing and putting the thermos away, she lifted the cup and turned back to Felix. He hadn't eaten his bun, just played with it in his claws.

"You, uh… might wanna eat that pretty soon," Moonstone said, a bit worried. "It'll go cold quick here."

Felix startled a little. "Oh, yeah, sorry." He quickly stuffed it into his mouth.

"Don't worry 'bout it, I have more in the basket, and it's heating enchantment should last for several hours more." She gave him the cup. "And even if we stay that long, I can probably figure out how to recharge it!

"Mhm," Felix mumbled, and took a long sip.

Okay, this entire thing had been oddly awkward, but now she knew something was wrong aside from Felix being tired. No way he wouldn't try to tell her not to play around with unknown enchantments otherwise. Moonstone waffled, trying to figure out what to do; she hated trying to talk emotions, it was so hard to not just mess things up.

Felix stared down at the cup, holding it close. Maybe he was just warming his claws?

He sniffed, and reached up to rub at his eyes.

Okay Moonstone, stop stalling and be a mare.

"Heey, uh, Felix? You doing alright there, bud?" she asked, and put a hoof on his shoulder.
Then another on her face once she realised what she'd said. Nailed it, good job Moonstone. Hopefully Felix would get the intent and not the execution.

"'m fine," Felix mumbled. "Just… family stuff."

Okay, code for none of her business. She could try to cheer him up, make him forget whatever it was. It would be easy even; there'd been a new issue of the Z-fillies released while he was gone, and it now laid at the bottom of the basket. She had waited to read it until Felix came home. They'd read the comic together, eat more buns, maybe make some snowponies, and he'd be in a better mood and ready to deal with whatever it was that was bothering him. Perfect plan.

Uugh. Stop being selfish Moony. The only people Felix really talks to is her and his family, and if this is family stuff then…

"Do you wanna talk about it? I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to! But I thought I'd offer since, well, I'm not part of the, uh… issue?" Her bravery dried up, so she just patted his shoulder in what she hoped was a supportive gesture.

He fidgeted with the cup for a little bit, looking away. "It's silly”

"I'm sure it's not — um. I mean, even if it is, that's not…" Moonstone's face felt cold as sweat started to form. "I get upset over silly stuff too, but my upset isn't silly because of it." That sounded good, right?

At least it worked in so far that Felix actually looked at her, seeming to try and figure out what she'd just said.

Moonstone pressed on. "Is it about the trip? Did something happen in Griffonstone or Cloudsdale? …wasn't it fun?"

Felix' face crumpled. "Oh it was awful!" He brayed and buried his face in his claws. "I just kept messing up and I didn't know anything-"

It seemed that once he'd started, the floodgates had opened. His wobbly words kept going into neighs and brays, betraying just how upset he was.

"—everyone kept thinking I should know them, since we've sent letters and pictures, but I can't remember everyone? And then they got upset with me! And my little cousins kept sneaking up to jump at me. And and you know I can't hear well on my right side, so everyone made fun of how I never noticed them coming! Then they wanted to play cards but I didn't wanna cause they were playing over money, and I don't have much saved so I said no, but they called me a stuck up snob, and-"

Moony rubbed his back as he stopped speaking and just breathed heavily.

"Was there nothing fun at all?" She finally asked. "What about the midnight songs?"

Felix sniffed. “Y-yeah, I guess that was cool, to sing in the new year. An’ I mean, a lot of my family was nice, and I liked some of my cousins… But I couldn’t spend time with them, ‘cause the mean ones were always there too!!”

“Oh.”

“And I hoped that it’d be better when we went to see Grandma and Grandpa in Cloudsdale, but my uncle was there too. And he’s, he’s so, argh. He keeps acting like we’re all stupid, and walking all over grandpa and grandma. And he always talks down to me, and saying stupid and hurtful stuff and when I call him out, he just tells me I’m too young to understand. I know when you’re being sarcastic and passive aggressive, and when your jokes aren’t jokes! I’m not an idiot! And, and he made fun of me for now knowing how to use the windroads? I’ve never used them before! How am I supposed to know when to do and how to switch in crossroads?? And then you just hover there laughing, you, you—!!”

Felix let out a guttural groan, and tugged on his ears in anger.

Anger was good. Anger was productive! Moonstone could deal with anger.

“What a jerk!” Moony slammed her hooves down on the bench with a satisfying ‘bang!’. “And your dumb relatives who made fun of you too!”

“Y-yeah!” Felix sniffed, and banged the cup on the bench too. “They all sucked!”

They sat there with angry expressions on their faces for a few seconds, before breaking into giggles. Moony smiled as she saw Felix’ shoulders finally relax for the first time that night.

“So, what’s your moms going to do about it?” Moony finally decided to ask. She wanted to just take out the comic and ride the levity they’d finally reached, but decided that it was probably better to make sure the issue was dealt with. Rather than just figure out what it was and leave it at that.

Felix' ears dropped and he gave her a confused and sad look. “I uhh, haven’t really talked with them about it. I mean, what are they even supposed to do?” He looked down. “They saw some of it and told them off then, but they can’t just hover over me all the time.”

Moonstone gave him an incredulous look. “They could make sure you only visit the nice side of the family? And not visit your grandparents when your uncle is there??”

“They’re family, we can’t just stop visiting them!”

“Of course you can!”

“Maybe you can, and maybe even I can, but my moms won’t do that!”

This wasn’t working. Moonstone wracked her brain on how to get through to him… she had an idea but wasn’t sure if she wasn’t supposed to talk about…

“Okay…” And there she went. At least she knows that Felix keeps his word. “Can you promise to keep a secret? Like, really important one?”

Felix nodded hesitantly.

“You know my auntie Scootaloo?”

He gave her an unimpressed look. “You know I went to the crusader day camp as a kid.”

“Right. But, uh, do you know about her parents? I mean, her bio parents, not her aunties.”

“I …can’t say I’ve thought any of it?”

“Okay, so, um… they’re not very… good parents? She, um, she used to live with them until they left for work when she was little. But they didn’t really set things up right, so everyone thought someone else was taking care of her. Like, she had a long string of babysitters who all thought she had someone taking care of her long term. It wasn’t until they came back and tried to make her move away with them that she complained about it and everyone figured out just what a crapstorm the whole thing had been. That’s when her aunties adopted her.”

“Oh. That sucks.”

“Yeah, I, uh, only found out about it ‘cause they apparently came by a couple of years ago? And tried to get back into Scootaloo's life or something. Aunt Sweetie came by to vent to mom about it, and I uh, happened to overhear them.” She waved a hoof around awkwardly. “So since they didn’t tell me directly, I’m not sure if other people aren’t supposed to know? That’s why you can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“They’re technically our ‘family’ but they’re not actually family because they lost that privilege when they didn’t treat one of us like family. Your moms love them but they love you too, and if they knew—”

“Well, yeah, but that’s different! That was, like, illegal. This is just people being rude and annoying.”

Moony frowned at him. “They made fun of you and called you names! That’s not just rude, that’s bullying. And your uncle isn’t just annoying, he was being purposefully mean —not just to you if he was being like that to your moms and grandparents too!”

Felix fidgeted with his tail, and didn’t meet her eyes. “So? My momma still cares about him, he’s her baby brother. And mum’s so protective of her siblings, ever since Grandpa Gruff passed, she’s the one who looks after everyone!”

“And that means they should just be allowed to go around being jerks?”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” Felix asked, tugging on his ears again. “Go and whine that they can’t see their family ‘cause I feel bad?” His voice wobbled, and Moonstone saw tears prickling in his eyes before he turned his face away from her.

Moonstone should have stopped when they were mad together. She shouldn’t have kept pushing. She knew she always made things worse when she tried to help with feeling stuff, and here she went again!

Felix whimpered.

“Your moms love you.” Moonstone had to at least try and fix this. “Sometimes parents just say that, but I know your moms and they love you more than anything.”

She hesitantly reached out and put a hoof on his back. He shrugged her off.

She gritted her teeth. “It doesn’t have to be a black or white solution! Maybe your moms can visit the jerk sides of their families by themselves and you can stay over in the castle. Or, um… your moms can talk with them and make them stop? Or… look I don’t know.”

Moonstone leaned forward and tried to catch his eyes. “But there’s a ton of options that’s better than just living with it and being miserable.”

Felix finally turned back to her. His eyes were red, and the fur on his cheeks was wet. They glinted in the light from Moonstone’s crystal horn, and she saw them already start to freeze.

Moonstone winced, and leaned down into the basket to pull out another bun. Felix looked at it confused as she handed it over.

“I didn’t bring any napkins,” Moony explained. “I, um, don’t want you to get frostbite on your face.”

Felix stared at her for a few seconds, and then chuckled wetly. “Desperate times?”

The bun did work to dry with, even if Felix did get a face full of crumbs instead. He threw the rest of the bun back into the basket; it could be dangerous to some of the poor animals that lived nearby if they tried to eat it.

“I’m not sure…” Felix finally continued. “…how I’d even start to talk about it.”

Moonstone hated having emotional talks.

“I could come by and help if you want?” She threw a leg over his shoulders. “Be your backup?”

Felix smiled, and leaned into the hug. “Yeah. Thanks.”

They sat in silence for a little while, staying in the hug to keep the warmth for a little while longer. Moonstone remembered something.

“Oh, I almost forgot! I brought the latest issue of Z-Fillies, do you wanna read it?”

Felix shot up, jamming his elbow into Moonstone’s stomach, causing her to let out a whinny-mixed-'oof' in pain.

“The new one is here already?!”