Frederick watched patiently as Twilight organised her endless supply of quills, placing each item into a neat section in a particular order Frederick couldn't recognise. He leaned back in his chair, tapping lightly on the hard backrest while imagining a tune in his head.
Twilight tried desperately to keep her excitement in check as she prepared her questions. She didn't know what to ask, and with so much to explore, Twilight couldn't come to a simple conclusion. An entire day wasn't long enough to detail every little piece of information, and she wanted to make the session short of Fredrick's sake and to allow herself to plan for future interviews with the human.
"Sorry for the wait, I would've been more organised, but I was called on such short notice." Twilight apologized.
"It's fine, I can wait," he replied to his interviewer calmly.
While he waited for Twilight to finish her unpacking, Frederick lost himself in his thoughts. Honestly, the long wait started to make the boy anxious. He trusted Twilight, but Frederick knew that, when the time came, she would dig too deep and he only hoped that she would understand given her intellectual status. But even then, he had doubts.
Twilight sat up and beamed excitedly, finally completed with her preparations to begin the interview. She had created a mental checklist of all different topics and assigned questions, designed to last for the duration of her stay here at Canterlot. Personally, she was proud of herself of being able to complete a task with a span of only a few minutes.
The alicorn took a piece of parchment and a quill from the stack and quickly wrote the time and day in the corner, as well as the first set of questions, leaving a generous space in between each one. Ever since she became friends with Frederick, she always wanted to learn about his home and culture, but whenever she asked he would always shrug her request away and say that it wasn't that important. This, obviously, disappointed her, but now she finally has the chance to learn about what his life at home and his home itself.
"You seem awfully happy for something so minimal," Fredrick commented after noticing Twilight's face of accomplishment.
Flustered, the purple alicorn sat back with a noticeable blush appearing across her cheeks, "sorry, I'm just so excited!" At this point, she was no longer trying to retain squeals of exciting from leaking into her words. "You've never talked about Earth ever since I met you, and you know how much I've been trying to get you to speak. This is like a one in a lifetime opportunity for me!" she looked up with the cutest smile which could make kittens keel over. "I may be a princess, but I'm still a student and teacher at heart."
Fredrick smiled and rolled his eyes. "Rainbow Dash did mention something about you smuggling books from the nearby library here," he replied jokingly, remembering a small catch-up chat he had with her the previous week.
"And when was this?" Twilight groaned into her hoof. "Do you know how many times she has tricked ponies into thinking that I either own all of the libraries on the planet or have robbed every library on the planet?" Frederick couldn't tell if she was actually being serious, but considering the fact that it was Rainbow Dash that they were referring to, it didn't surprise him in the slightest. He even found it humorous.
"It isn't funny," she whined after noticing the boy's amused chuckles.
"I don't know, it kind of is," Frederick almost broke down after hearing Twilight's whines, seeing her curled, puffed up, lower lip in an attempt to make herself appear upset.
"Fine, I guess I'll start my questions now," Twilight stated sternly.
If he didn't know any better, he definitely would've mistaken her for a teacher from his secondary. Unfortunately, this meant that there was no way he was going to be able to apologise his way from answering his questions. "Alright," Frederick groaned quietly like a child being told off.
"So before I begin, I want to give you a quick rundown of what you will expect. I six short questions that I will ask you about yourself, you have all the time you need in order to answer each question. Please answer truthfully, and remember you don't need to answer if you're uncomfortable. My first question, where did you live before you appeared in Equestria?"
Frederick looked up surprised, all of a sudden she was a completely different mare. No longer could he hear the fun and joking mare behind the calm and cheerful voice. Her voice was stern and serious, yet it was calm, not overdoing and tensing her syllables. He didn't even know the mare was capable of such change
"I lived in London which is the capital city of England," Fredrick replied to Twilight. Both Frederick and Twilight hoped for a longer answer, but the question was so simple that it
"Can you describe the place you live in? The people or the buildings you lived nearby?"
"London is very old, and extremely busy most of the day. A lot of tourists visit the capital." The more he went on, the more he realised that he barely knew his own home. Well, maybe it was because he hadn't lived there his entire life, but it's no excuse as to why he could only picture a vague image of what he thought the structure of London was.
Twilight hummed in thought to herself. "Who are your family?"
His family... he almost forgot about them. It isn't often that he thinks about his parents, not even for a second. His emotional ties with his parents are strained thinned because of the fact that he doesn't know them, though it didn't mean to suggest that he hasn't seen them. Now that he thought about it, he often wondered what they were like if they were to come home or even contact him to say hello.
"I- I don't know," he whispered underneath his breath.
Twilight paused midway in translating his words onto paper, confused after reviewing his response in her head. Did she just hear him write, or was her ears deceiving her? She looked into Frederick's now downcast eyes and realised something was wrong, the way he was fidgeting on the spot, the way he shifted in his sheet, and his eyes reminded Twilight of herself when she was young. It looked like she was going to have to end this session prematurely.