Tales in Thirty Minutes

by Dash2468

426. The First Five Minutes

Prompt 426: when Twilight and Spike met.

For the first baby dragon to be born in Canterlot since anypony could remember, the first sixty seconds of life were alarmingly bizarre.

Upon hatching from his egg, he barely had any time to contemplate his new-found existence, when he suddenly found himself growing, and very quickly. When a ceiling got in his way, he simply smashed through it. And even then, he had no time to think – or enjoy the view of the city – when he was accelerating downward again, and found himself back in the room, and back to normal size.

Given a moment of peace, the dragon could start taking things in. The first thing he noticed was his long, pointy tail, which he immediately discovered was very pleasurable to suck on. Indeed, he preoccupied himself with that activity for two whole minutes before examining his other body parts. Two hands, two feet, fingers, toes, scales – yes, everything seemed to be in order.

Having ascertained what he himself was, the dragon turned his attention to the world around him. What immediately caught his attention was the four creatures directly in front of him. He wasn’t sure what to make of them; one looked about the same size as he was – and the same colour, too! – but the other three were much bigger. Might they be dangerous?

The largest and brightest of the four was facing away from him, and he realised that she had a tail too – only hers was wavy and had lots of different colours in it, and conveniently, it was touching the floor.

The baby dragon decided that he would very much like to pull on that tail, and maybe even find out what it was like to suck on.

So his first adventure in life began, as he took his first stumbling steps off the wreckage of his cart. He lost his balance a couple of times, but soon found that walking wasn’t so hard, and he was quickly making fast progress towards his target.

Soon, that lovely tail was right in front of him. It brushed his nose, making it tickle. He smiled, and reached out to grab it.

Then he was rudely interrupted.

****
Still lost in a daze of euphoria after both becoming the Princess’s student and getting her cutie mark into the bargain, Twilight impatiently stared up at her parents and the Princess, as they talked seriously about boring grown-up things like living arrangements. She wanted to start learning magic now! Why couldn’t they start now?

At that moment, she heard a noise, and turned away.

The baby dragon! She had barely even noticed him; after she had hatched the egg, everything had become a blur, and after that all her attention had been on the Princess. But now he had crawled across the floor – and was reaching to pull the Princess’s tail.

Twilight reacted instinctively to this unthinkable violation.

“No! Bad dragon!” She leapt forward, and almost involuntarily, her horn lit up once again. The dragon squawked in fright as he was surrounded by magical aura and hoisted a short distance up into the air.

Twilight’s rush carried her directly beneath the baby – and then, after just a couple of seconds of exertion, her energy seemed to vanish. Her previous outburst must have exhausted her. The aura disappeared – and the dragon came plummeting down onto her back.

It wasn’t a big enough fall to hurt either of them, but it was enough to send Twilight falling flat on her belly with a decisive thump. She turned to the dragon in annoyance – at which point she remembered that this was, in fact, a dragon.

All the pictures she had seen in books came back to her in a flash: monstrous dragons sitting on piles of gold and jewels, breathing fire, flexing their claws threateningly, sometimes even rampaging through villages. Who was to say they weren’t so aggressive right out of the egg?

Twilight yelped and jumped out of the way, sending the dragon rolling onto his back on the floor. Standing at a safe distance, she considered him, and quickly realised that he was about as threatening as Miss Smartypants. Lying on his back, wiggling his arms and legs, looking more bemused than anything else, he looked like a dog wanting its tummy tickled.

Tentatively, Twilight reached forward and began running her hoof along his belly. The dragon seemed to like it: he gurgled and squirmed, smiling slightly, which made Twilight smile too.

“Well, you certainly seem to be getting along well.”

Twilight’s eyes shot upwards as she realised that the Princess and her parents had gathered around to look at the two of them.

“I must confess,” the Princess went on, “when I set this task, I did not fully consider what would be done with the dragon once it hatched.”

“Weren’t you going to…release it into the wild?” Twilight’s father asked.

“Oh, no,” said Celestia seriously. “He would never survive alone.”

A brilliant idea suddenly occurred to Twilight. “Can I take care of him?”

Her parents looked even more horrified than they had after being turned into potted plants. Celestia, however, smiled sadly at her.

“I’m sorry, Twilight, but it wouldn’t be like looking after a goldfish or a puppy. We know very little about dragons. He’s going to need specialist care from grown-up ponies so we can figure out how best to raise him.”

“Awww.” Twilight hung her head.

“But I’ll be keeping him in the palace, so you can see him whenever you want. You can even help, once we have an idea of what he needs.”

Twilight immediately perked up. “Yay! I could even help you study him, so we’ll know all about baby dragons!”

“I’m sure you’ll be very helpful in that regard,” Celestia chuckled. “Now then, perhaps we should discuss…”

But Twilight had forgotten her studies for the moment; she was tickling the dragon again. “Can I call him Spike?”