A fiery autumn sky filled the last of the short day with a mild warmth that almost reminded Sweetie Belle of the summer, almost. The sun had fallen behind a cloak of trees, gilding the leaves in flame-like

radiance that only seemed to exemplify the dwindling magic that burned within them.

Ever since her journey earlier that summer, she found a new beauty in admiring the leaves on trees. Not only could she pull on their magic to fuel her own spells, causing them to dry out and turn to naught but dust as she did so, as if she brought the whole of the season of autumn upon each leave, one at a time. She understood better now why autumn really was the harvest season.

We use the plants' energy, whether it's fruit, vegetables, or in my case, leaves. She plucked a golden leaf from a nearby elm tree. It's shape of a spiked spade was satisfying to look upon. Losing stuff is the natural order of things, isn't it? The trees lose their leaves, and I lost... Sweetie Belle looked down at the amulet around her neck. Yet most of the time, the loss isn't without a gain or some keepsake. Or memories...

She eased a trickle of magic from her horn and directed a tendril of it upon the leaf before her. The magic inside it was a small thing, as dew upon the morning grass, slowly dissipating as time went on, yet her magic was just as small an gentle. With a smooth motion she coaxed the latent magic out gently, at first there was a small tug of resistance, but in the next moment, the magic flowed free, and the golden leaf darkened, first to brown, then to grey, before finally falling to pieces of dust, catching upon the evening breeze.

Her magic glowed brighter from the additional magic, it wasn't much, there couldn't be in a single leaf, yet it comforted her to know that the magic never truly left, it just left its old body behind, to be used elsewhere, to help life continue on. With a smile, she drew her magic back into herself.

“Hey Sweetie!” a peppy voice called out to her, distant yet strong.

Sweetie turned her head from the sight of an autumnal Everfree Forest to face the approaching voice.

Scootaloo was running along the crest of a nearby hill, straight toward her, Apple Bloom following right beside her. They raced each other, stride for stride, neither willing to give in to the other until they reached their destination. A destination which Sweetie Belle was quite certain was none other than herself.

Sweetie's smile widened as she fished two small gemstones out from her pack. In a moment, she stripped both stones of their magic, turning them into naught but dust. That was all it took for her to feel her own magic increase twenty-fold. With a playful finesse, she joined the race in a different way. She couldn't run like her friends, so that would be no fun. But magic on the other hoof.

Before the overwhelming magic could slip from her grasp, she weaved it as quickly as she could into the most complex spell that she knew. She lead the two endings of the pattern to their proper destinations, one to herself, and the other to the hill just behind her fast approaching friends.

She felt the slightly nauseating tug toward her destination, and the tingling spark of her body being pulled into the spell. For a second, to world around her ceased to be. Yet she could still feel the magic: bright and lovely grass below her; the hum of pulsing magic which coursed through her friends' muscles, tendons, and breath; she could taste the fresh and soft scent of magic in the air which she passed through; and she could feel the soft earth form under her hooves.

Her senses revived around her and she let out a triumphant shout as her friends skidded to a stop where she had just teleported from. “I win!” she proclaimed with a shout.

“Well, I can at least get second!” Scootaloo shouted back and buzzed her wings while sprinting forward.

Sweetie Belle felt her legs get knocked out from under her, as Scootaloo tackled her to the ground.

“Alright!” Sweetie Belle wheezed from under her friend. “You get second place! Now get off me.”

Scootaloo complied and extended a hoof to help Sweetie up.

“So why were you two out here runnin' to me like a pair of mad mares?” Sweetie looked to Apple Bloom, who was just finishing walking over, hoping for the more straightforward explanation.

“Well,” Apple Bloom said. “We're challengin' you to take the ice-bucket challenge.”

“The what now?” Sweetie raised an eyebrow.

“It's a charity fad going on right now,” Scootloo said eagerly. “Apple Bloom and I both did it. You just have to have a bunch of people witness you throwing a bucket of ice-water over your head.”

Sweetie searched between her two friends, looking for some inkling of sense. “And how is that a charity?”

“It's ta raise awareness for a good cause,” Apple Bloom explained. “'Cause sometimes what a good cause really needs is the attention of everypony in order ta really take root.”

“Oh, really?” Scootaloo turned to Apple Bloom and seemed to borrow Sweetie's own look of confusion. “I thought it was just a fun thing to do in front of everypony.”

“Well that too,” Apple Bloom admitted. “It's more memorable if it's silly after all, but it comes down to getting more ponies to do what they can for the cause.”

“Well, it's kind of late now,” Sweetie mused aloud. “It's not really worth doing this challenge if you two are the only ones who are going to see it.”

“But it's a lot of fun,” Scootaloo argued. “Like how often do you get a whole bucket of ice-water thrown on you when you're doing a jump on your scooter?”

“I remember that time with the tree sap,” Sweetie supplied thoguhtfully.

“Ugh, don't remind me. It took me two days to get that out of my mane, you know?”

“We know,” Apple Bloom stated dryly. “We were there for those three days, and you wouldn't stop complaining the whole time. But that's beside the point. Sweetie, ya still have ta do the challenge.”

“Why?” Sweetie asked simply. “Isn't telling me about it enough?”

“Well, if ya want ta play chicken, then ya can do that, but for a price.”

Sweetie frowned. “A price?”

“Donate to the good cause.”

“But I don't have any money! Besides, that's just extortion.” Sweetie rolled her eyes. “Rarity warned me to never fall to the guile of an extortionist.”

“It's not extortion if it's for a good cause,” Apple Bloom argue back. “Besides, we both did it, so why don't you?”

Sweetie let out a huff, then sighed in resignation. “Fine, but since it's my challenge to face, I'll figure out how I'll face it. What are the rules?”

Scootaloo grinned. “At least one bucket of ice-water, and how you decide to throw it on yourself is up to you.”

“At least one bucket...” Sweetie trailed off for a moment as she observed the last of the setting sun. “Alright, let's go to the lake, I think it'd be quickest to do it there. Besides... it's probably ice-cold or thereabouts by now.”

“Alright!” Scootaloo cheered, and Apple Bloom nodded. Together, the trio cantered down to the lakefront just off of Sweet Apple Acres.

They arrived at the secluded shoreline, a small bank of sand sheltered by a number of half-barren trees.  They carried a single metal bucket in tow, just as the last embers of the sun dwindled and the moon began its ascent from the east. Sweetie felt the chill of nighttime beginning to fill the air, perhaps as a precursor to the inevitable approach of the winter season.

“Okay,” Sweetie announced to her audience of two. “I may be doing this challenge, but I might as well be doing it in a way that represents who I am as a pony.” She glanced down at the shadowy shape of her cutie mark, its familiar shape granting her comfort and the inevitable tang of melancholy. At least I'll always have the memories.

Quickly, she got to work, and sent her magic out to the bucket, she lifted it easily enough and sent it into the lake to fill it up. Once it was full, however, pulling the metal bucket back out left her huffing in only thirty seconds.

She glanced around her for a moment, with the bucket sitting by her hooves, when her eyes caught sight of pale moonlight caught in the half-skeletal branches of the nearby trees. Smiling to herself, she extended her magic out and split it, then split it again, and did as many times as she had to until her wispy grasp of magic touched down on every leaf in those ten trees.

At once, she pulled the magic from them into her own pattern, each individual trickle feeding toward her as small streams forming a flowing river, and cascading into a lake itself, a lake of magic which she could use if she acted quick enough.

With as much speed as she could muster, Sweetie threw her magic toward the lake and patterned it into a telekinesis spell, and not only that, but she manipulated the pattern to touch on the air and pulled outward from her tube of magic. At first, she felt only a breeze of cool lake air pass over her, then in the next moment there was a crashing sound, and she let out a gleeful laugh as huge tendril of water shot out of the lake, as if it were reaching right toward her.

Just before the jet of water crashed upon her, she shot a sinister smile to both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, with a jerk of her head, she shifted the closer end of her hose of magic, and the tendril of water became serpentine wave which crashed down upon all three of them.

Cold! The shock filled her mind, and she felt the magic slip from her control. The magic simply dispersed into its immediate surroundings, as all telekinesis spell sigils did when they broke.

She let out a gasp and turned to her water-logged friends. “Wow! That was a lot bigger than I expected!”

“Whoa, that was way more water than one bucket,” Scootaloo said with a shiver.

“You did that on purpose Sweetie Belle!” Apple Bloom accused, shaking herself off.

“Did I?” Sweetie asked with a small laugh as she created the sigil for a small drying spell which she had finally learned to perfect.