After saying this, Aurora went to prepare the things she needed.
"Wouldn't it be fine to just clean it with a dusting spell?"
Twilight Sparkle asked with confusion.
"In the words of Flying Light, this is a necessary sense of ritual. When doing something you like, no step is superfluous."
Sunset Shimmer shrugged, looking unsurprised.
Twilight Sparkle immediately remembered that the two of them had spent this year's Hearths Warming Eve together.
"Oh! I almost forgot to ask, how was your Hearths Warming Eve? What fun things did you do together?"
Hearing Twilight Sparkle's question, Sunset Shimmer recalled a bit.
"It seems it was no different from usual."
"What do you mean 'no different from usual'? How can your heart be so cold? It seems the affection and time of these past few days were ultimately bestowed in vain!"
Aurora, who had just returned after finding a rag, heard Sunset Shimmer's words and immediately became a drama queen, even using her hoof to gently wipe away non-existent tears from the corner of her eye.
Sunset Shimmer looked speechlessly at Aurora, whose desire to perform was overly exuberant, and always felt that she was becoming more and more uninhibited now.
"Flying Light, don't be sad, Sunset Shimmer probably didn't mean it like that."
Twilight Sparkle put the book aside, wanting to go and comfort the "sad" Aurora.
"Twilight, don't go over there, she's just joking. Flying Light, stop playing; Twilight will actually take it seriously."
"Oh."
Aurora directly performed a face-change in front of Twilight Sparkle.
"But you're also wrong. Although most of the time we were reading and doing research together, we also did some other family activities, and you seemed quite happy with them."
"You also know it was most of the time."
Sunset Shimmer unceremoniously pointed out the hole in her words.
They did indeed participate in many of Aurora's family activities, but the novelty for Aurora was a bit too short; she might have been enthusiastic for the first two or three days, but after that, she was basically just holding a book and devouring it, focusing on her stubborn nature.
"When I was playing ball with Uncle Aster, he complained to me more than once that his good daughter never plays with him."
Twilight Sparkle didn't dare to make a sound after hearing this, because she was the same way at home, although if her brother and Princess Cadance invited her, she would still put down her book, and Spike would also occasionally make some noise to stop her from getting addicted.
"No wonder he said he wanted to adopt you as his goddaughter..."
Aurora muttered softly.
However, these small words still accurately fell into the ears of the other two ponies.
Sunset Shimmer blushed and turned her head away; as the pony in question being asked about, she felt quite awkward and didn't know how to reply, but fortunately, Aster was dragged away by Meteora at the critical moment.
"It looks like Flying Light's dad and mom like you a lot!"
"Twilight, you can come visit my home next time too; they will definitely like you as well, and Spike too."
Aurora remembered something and added.
"By the way, I'm going to have a biological younger brother or sister next year; now even little Spike is going to be a big brother."
Aurora rubbed Spike's increasingly round cheeks and happily shared this news with him.
And although Spike didn't quite understand what Aurora was saying, he knew that what Aurora said was a good thing, so he laughed along, repeating the word "brother" unintelligibly in his mouth.
"This is such a surprise! You're going to be a big sister?! The Foal that gets to be Flying Light's younger brother or sister is truly so lucky!"
"I also feel very lucky to be able to be your big sister."
Aurora said softly.
"I'm the big sister for you two, right?"
Sunset Shimmer spoke up for herself.
It was just that Aurora had always been the one taking care of the other ponies, so her actual age was often overlooked.
"Enough chatting for now. If we waste too much time, we won't finish our work."
Aurora called out to get ready to start, then took all the books out of the box.
"Huh? This book..."
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