Rarity couldn't be certain what it was that had drawn her to this particular shop. A lady of her refinement never visited such dark and scary back alleys, after all, even in broad daylight. Hints of rat life and piles of moldering refuse were nearly enough to make her turn away, but once she had reached the shop, the bell dingling as she opened the door, and let her eyes adjust to the dim interior, she knew it was worth following through on the hunch, if one could call it that.

Through the haze of dust disturbed from shelves of knickknacks and oddities so thoroughly caked in the stuff that they were little more than undifferentiated lumps of grey, she could just make out the back wall of the shop. The door, which opened to reveal the shopkeeper emerging from the backroom, was bordered thickly in a red that was vibrant despite the dreary lighting. In the center of the door was painstakingly painted a depiction of a long, serpentine dragon, its scales gleaming with fibrous gold accents. Red eyes blazed fiercely, defending whatever valuables might be too delicate to leave to the careless hoof of an unsuspecting customer. A mouth full of sharp teeth, pearlescent and softly serrated, completed the artful visage of a truly terrifying beast.

"May I help you?" The shopkeeper's voice was soft, tempered by years of choking on dust and ferreting out the desires of customers who thought they could put one over on him. He raised an eyebrow, drawing attention to his four-cornered toque, a Ponyental style that, along with his garb, lent him an air of exotic mystery. For Rarity, it was a source of excitement, which she unsuccessfully tried to rein in.

"Yes, well, I..." What should she say? She wasn't even certain she knew why she was here, though being in this place felt right somehow.

He cleared his throat. "You know, you're only in here by grace of my having forgotten to lock the door. It's New Year's Eve after all, almost the new year proper, and I am not in the habit of leaving my shop open on holidays."

Hot shame blushed her cheeks. "Forgive my prevaricating, sir. I don't mean to keep you away from your family at this time of year."

"That is a worry you should not shoulder." He smiled. "But I'm not the only one missing out on tonight's celebrations." Drawing up a stool, he seated himself behind the counter and adjusted his pince-nez, squinting at her as she walked closer. "So tell me: what brings you to my little shop?"

"I've lost something," Rarity said, and felt as though it was the thing she had meant to say. "I was hoping you could help me. My timing is of course not the best, but..."

"It was very important, this something you've lost." The tan stallion lifted his chin and tapped it gently. "I notice you never said you wanted help finding it."

"Well..." Rarity's eyes fell upon a glass paperweight, dull beneath its patina of dust, that winked at her. "It isn't so much a thing, you see..."

"Say no more," said the shopkeeper, a smile brushing his lips. "You are not the first with this problem, nor, dare I say it, the last. I know what you need; please wait just a moment."

She watched him hop off the stool and barge through the dragon, effortlessly vanquishing it for the briefest of moments. Rarity craned her neck, wary of the small metal tree on the counter full of necklaces, earrings, and sharp ends, and focused on the dragon, as though it might divulge some secret behind what the shopkeeper might be doing.

She hadn't long to wait. The dragon receded and the antiquities dealer emerged with a tall object obscured by a maroon cloth. Rarity recognized it instantly as being made of velour, and rather poorly cared for at that. The object made a soft noise as it was set upon the countertop, and the shopkeeper looked at her a moment before whipping the cloth off, perhaps overdramatically.

Rarity stared at the thing. "Is that... a milk carton?"

"It is."

"I'm sorry." Rarity sighed. "It's late, and I've bothered you on a holiday. I'll go--"

"You misunderstand," he said, mirth coloring his voice. "I don't know why this works the way it does, but take a look at the side. Tell me what you see there."

He turned it then, so that an image surmounted by the words "LOST" and "HAVE YOU SEEN" was visible. Her breath caught in her chest as she saw the face of Spike, the pink woolen scarf she'd given him last Hearth's Warming wrapped about his neck. His eyes were red, and squinted against the wind. It appeared to be snowing where he was, but that was impossible. The day was cold, but it had been still when she'd entered the shop and there was no snow scheduled until after the start of the new year.

Rather than moving in real time, the picture on the carton shifted every few seconds, showing a new image of Spike struggling to walk through snow that rose above his knees. Rarity's eyes brimmed with tears.

"Oh, little Spikey-wikey," she whispered.

Spike pushed on through the driving snow, but though his legs burned, the rest of his body was cold. Dragons are able to generate fire within themselves, but they are nevertheless cold-blooded, and the wintry landscape drained his energy, slowing his metabolism and dulling the energy he could otherwise muster to warm himself from within.

He blinked against the flakes assaulting his vision, raising a hand in a feeble and ultimately fruitless attempt to block them. The only thing that entered his vision was white, after all. The landscape stretched in every direction, flat and featureless save for the hints of trees in the far distance. He couldn't even see where he'd come from, as his footprints filled in immediately. The wind whipped his breath from his lungs, and though tears were in his eyes, they had nothing to do with the weather.

A year's-end kiss, a ritual that was supposed to determine who you'd spend the next year with: that's all it had been.

She had been right, after all. He should face reality, the reality that said they could never be together, that he was young and foolish and entirely not what she was looking for. Some small part of him had always known that this would one day come to pass. But until it had, it was easy to convince himself that things were fine and she would give him a chance one day.

Now that rejection had been leveled in no uncertain terms and with no deadline, he'd had no choice but to react, and it hadn't been the most dignified of reactions. It had carried him through to wherever this place was, sniffling, the aching in his legs long since having dwindled to numbness.

He stumbled, as though his entire body had hesitated at once, and couldn't recover. He fell into the soft snow and dull exhaustion swept over him. He curled into a ball and wept, though no tears came, as though he had been used up. He kept his eyes squeezed shut and it seemed, over the driving winds, that he could hear a voice calling him. It was familiar.

"Spike, where are you? You know mom's going to be worried about you!"

Mom? What was Twilight talking about?

"Spike, come here at once! I'm not telling you again! We have to clean up the library before she sees!"

Twilight was right, they did need to clean up the library. But he couldn't force his limbs to move for some reason. Sorry, Twilight; I'll help clean up just as soon as take a I nap, I promise.

He thought he could see mom right in front of him. She was sitting up late, like Twilight tended to, but poring over her photo albums instead of studying. Wasn't it a holiday today? Maybe she had a glass of wine.

It was port wine, actually, and the glass was half empty, which didn't matter much, because the bottle was still half full. Velvet sighed and took another swallow, not even pretending to sip in temperance anymore. The wine was rich and woody and warmed her from inside without any burning; it was good stuff. Night Light had conked out in bed hours ago, his share of the wine drunk, and she was once again alone with her photographs.

This was not a good ritual to keep, but it was always New Year's that sent her back to these albums, above and beyond even Hearth's Warming and the kids' birthdays. Maybe it was the close proximity of Hearth's Warming to the new year that sent her into a whirlwind of nostalgia and loneliness, a tidal wave of emotion that broke on this day every year.

Her hoof passed over Shining Armor's first Nightmare Night dressed up as a guard. Next to it, Twilight hugging her Smarty Pants doll, her face alight with wonder at Velvet's ability to repair missing eye buttons. Twilight's first cutie mark picture, taken after an entrance exam to the School for Gifted Unicorns that Velvet did not entirely recall, lay nestled beside the first of a series of photos from their trip later that year to Baltimare. Twilight had been ecstatic at seeing the beach. Velvet felt laughter burst forth as she recalled her daughter rushing out to the tide pools and bringing her a new creature, one by one, back to her, just to let her know what it was.

That had been their last vacation as a family, she realized with a soft sickness. That fall, Twilight had started at the School, while Shining had continued with his second year of guard training. It was just her and Night Light now in a Canterlot two-story that was far too big to hold them. Visits from her sisters were infrequent, and Night's family was all too far away to stay over, so it really was just them.

This had especially been true since the wedding. Cadance used to visit even after Twilight was too old and too involved in her studies to require a foalsitter. It was fortunate, Velvet thought, that she'd gotten so close to her future daughter-in-law so early. After all, she'd only ever wanted the best for either of her children, and Cadance definitely fit that label. It amazed her how easy it was, being around Cadance, to forget that she was royalty.

Another swallow drained the glass and after a moment's hesitation, she lifted the bottle for a refill.

"No more than one bottle this time, I swear," she said to the unmoving house. It gave no reply, instead letting her have her space.

Velvet leaned back in her chair and let the wine add flush to her cheeks. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply and felt the cold dryness of winter creep into her nostrils. It took her three tries to adjust the thermostat from afar, after which she also swore off magic for the remainder of the night.

She was, upon reflection, quite lucky to have such a remarkable family. Yes, they were all away on their own adventures and living their own lives, but that was what children did. You raised them from birth, taught them everything you knew, and then hoped that they wouldn't need you anymore. If that was the measuring stick for parental success, then Velvet was perhaps the most successful mother in history. She'd given birth to a mare who was already the personal protégé of Princess Celestia, who had saved Equestria twice by virtue of being the bearer of an ancient magical artifact, and who, judging by common opinion, was destined to become the greatest unicorn mage since Star Swirl the Bearded. Her other child, no less impressive, was the youngest pony ever to hold the title of Captain of the Royal Guard, and had married a mare who was among the few who called the Princesses "aunt". Velvet was quite nearly the sister-in-law of Celestia herself.

She couldn't blame her children for not visiting during the holidays. That she missed them nevertheless meant she was a pony. That they were away for her to miss them meant she had done well by them.

A smile passed across her face and she wiped at a tear that was not born of emotion, but of relief. Then drunken clarity hit her and she wondered if the Princesses ever felt this way. Like most ponies, even those Canterlot-bred, Velvet really didn't know much about her regents' personal lives. There had been Luna's 'return' just two years ago, three if one counted the new year coming, but it was an event so shrouded in secrecy that few truly understood what it meant. Velvet had heard something from Twilight about it, and knew that her daughter had been entangled in the happenings of that day, but had never pried, never having wanted to use her daughter's privilege to her own advantage. The only suggestion was the disappearance of the Mare in the Moon, but even that only left more questions for the normal ponies.

For Celestia, it was hard not see the Mare still up there, a silent reminder of what she'd done to her younger sister. Two years had passed, three if one counted the coming new year, but she still felt the burden of guilt like a yoke that weighed her inexorably to the ground any time she so much as looked at Luna.

Her sister didn't blame her. She'd tried time and again to convince herself of this, but she couldn't believe it. The guilt was all her own making, all of it projected onto other ponies. It was becoming more than she could bear, and keeping up centuries-old rituals like this one weren't helping her to alleviate it.

Every year since that first one, on New Year's Eve in the dead of winter, she would remove her raiments, returning her mane to its natural state, don a scarf, and hide her wings with a spell. As a pink-maned unicorn she would then join in the revelries carried out by her subjects through the night. Inevitably, she would look up at the moon, the very same moon that to her still featured that shape staring coldly back at her, and simply watch it.

For her, it was not the desolate prison so many believed she had banished Nightmare Moon to, but a living symbol of her sister's legacy, a legacy she had only recently handed back to its rightful owner. It was good, not having that extra burden to bear, coincident as it was with the rising and setting of the sun, but at the same time, she missed it. Every night, when she raised the moon, it was liking taking her sister's hoof and pulling her up to a high ledge, like when they were fillies and Luna was just learning to fly. Lowering the moon so the sun could come out felt like tucking her sister in to bed. That's what she'd told herself at the time, anyway; that she could still touch her sister with her magic, however far away she might be.

"Tia..."

Celestia turned, surprised to see the midnight-blue unicorn, her lighter mane hidden under a knit cap.

"Lulu!" She needed a moment to compose herself from the surprise; it was not often she needed these moments, and thus they tended to last. "What a pleasant surprise to see you out here tonight!"

Luna gave a half-smile, tilting her head slightly. "I thought it odd that you had left so late in the evening. You aren't normally awake at this hour."

Celestia nodded, her breath curling out in vapors. "I have always come out to look at the moon on this night."

Luna turned her head upward and slightly away from Celestia, a small smile on her face. "Even now that I am back by your side, sister?"

For a moment, Celestia took in her sister's profile, let the reality of their sharing this moment wash over her. Then she looked up at the moon as well, and saw the superimposition was gone. Luna existed only as a real pony beside her.

"Old habits and all that, Lulu."

"You know I've forgiven you, yes?"

"I do." Celestia sighed. "And I don't."

Celestia saw motion out of the corner of her eye, then felt a warm body press against her.

"Let us pay tribute to the moon together."

Bells tolled midnight and fireworks began to rise into the sky, exploding and showering Canterlot with light. The first salvo roused Twilight Velvet from her drunken stupor, and she panicked for a brief confused moment, until her clock began striking twelve. The darn thing always ran slow, no matter how they tried adjusting it.

Her bleary eyes showed her a near-empty wine bottle, then the opposite wall of the room being lit up by numerous colored bursts. She groaned slightly, rubbed her forehead just under her horn, hopped off the chair and wobbled to the door. Remembering the headache had made her vow against using magic for the remainder of the night, she grabbed her scarf from the rack with her teeth and set it in a slack loop around her neck.

She felt like she needed a walk.

The cold night air almost snapped her back into sobriety, and she shivered against it. The streetlights had been dimmed, to let the fireworks and full moon illuminate the city during the festivities, and she found she enjoyed the effect of seeing everything around her change color once or twice every few seconds.

She trotted aimlessly through the streets of Canterlot, now and then passing other ponies who wished her a happy new year and received the same in turn. Everypony was smiling; most were enjoying the festivities in silence. Near a fountain, she saw a pair of tall unicorn mares, one white and the other nearly black, leaning against one another, and she caught her eyes filling with emotion.

There was, however, one pony in Canterlot who was not having a good time, and it was just Velvet's luck that she would come upon her. Velvet happened to live nearby a liquor store, the very one that had supplied the port currently fueling her purposeless meandering, and in front of that store there stood a magenta mare, slightly older than Velvet's daughter, who wailed softly at the ground.

"Why, why, why..."

Velvet considered herself a compassionate pony. One had to be, after all, to be a mother. So it was with this in mind, as well as her current lack of good decision-making skills, that she approached the mare and said, "Why dear, whatever is the matter?"

The mare looked up at her with forlorn, watery eyes as she said with complete seriousness, "I'm outta booze."

Velvet raised one eyebrow. "Really? Is that it?"

The mare nodded sadly. "An' I got here a hour late to get more! They's closed for the holibay!"

"It really isn't worth getting worked up over, you know." When the mare frowned at her and began working on a new wave of tears, Velvet let out a sigh. "I've got some wine back at my place still. Nopony should be alone on New Year's; would you like to join me for a glass?"

The mare sniffed and scrubbed at her nose. "What kind?"

Velvet could not believe what she was hearing. "It's... port."

The mare's eyes lit up with more than just fireworks. "Oh, that's my favorite! I shall most humbly accept your offer, madame!" She attempted to bow, but nearly fell over, remaining upright only due to Velvet's reflexes, which weren't all that hot, either.

"What's your name?" she asked as they got underway back to her house.

"Berry. You?"

"You can call me Velvet."

Berry smiled. "Thank ya, Velvet. I camed up to Cannerlot to see my family, but... Not too many ponies want nothin' to do with a drunk like me, even on a holiday."

Velvet made a disparaging razz. "I'm hardly the pinnacle of sobriety myself."

"But you can say pimmacle," Berry said with utmost solemnity. Velvet burst out laughing.

"You'll have to be quiet," she said after a few moments had passed. "My husband went to sleep early tonight."

"Aw, tha's a shame," Berry said, then added, "You ain't, y'know... Pickin' up mares so you can..."

"Oh, heavens, no!" Velvet was too drunk to be offended, and she laughed again. "If he wakes up still as drunk as he was when he went to sleep, he might very well ask us to put on a show. You know how stallions can be."

"I sure do, sister!" Berry giggled and pushed Velvet playfully, and she responded with a shoulder-check. The mares passed by an antiquities shop as they wobbled to and fro down the street, their progress noted by an older stallion in a four-cornered toque and pince-nez.

He turned from the window, walking back to a door with a large dragon emblazoned on it, whose metallic scales caught the reds, blues and greens of the fireworks display and threw them back against the walls in little sparkling needles of light.

"Did you find what you were after?" he asked softly as he passed through. The unicorn mare on the other side of the counter looked up, startled, and dropped the milk carton on the countertop.

"I... Yes." She swallowed, then forced a smile. "I'm awfully sorry to have bothered you, sir, but... Thank you. Thank you so very much for letting me see this. What do I owe you?"

He held up a hoof. "Oh, you needn't worry about that. The carton I bring out only when it's needed."

She smiled, and her horn glowed. "At least let me compensate you for lost sleep if nothing else. It is New Year's Eve, after all." Three coins clinked onto the countertop beside the jewelry tree and rolled to a stop.

"You mean New Year's Day, madam," he corrected her, and her eyes widened.

"Oh my goodness! How long was I..." She turned and bolted to the door, stopping momentarily to look back over her shoulder.

"I have a friend out there who needs me. Thank you, again, sir, and happy New Year to you."

She pushed the door open, then vanished into the alley from whence she had come. He trotted to the door, turned the sign so that "Yes, We're Open!" faced inward, and drew the tattered bamboo shade over it.

"Happy New Year," he said softly. "And best of luck."