It was a busy afternoon at Manehattan's Museum of the Ancient World, and now that it was one-o'-clock, the café was packed. Gilbert, the young griffon, loaded his tray with some unappetizing fish—you couldn't be too picky when it came to meat in Equestria—and searched for a free seat with his keen avian eyes. They weren't all that keen, really, but surmounting his big hooked beak, which was easily his best feature, he looked like an all-seeing eagle, and could convincingly lie of being able to see something miles away. Suddenly, jackpot: Gilbert saw a free stool right next to just the dragon he wanted the ear of. He flew over, muttering an excuse-me as he brushed past a bulky pegasus, and landed gently on the floor nearby. He cleared his throat and said "Mind if I…"
"Siddown." said one the dragon's dining companions, in a friendly tone. The speaker was a largish teal earth-pony stallion with a cutie mark of a rabbit. "I'm Hearty Hooves. This is Whisperwing—"
"Good afternoon." said a pegasus through a mouthful of oatburger.
"—and Crag."
"Hey." said the dragon. He was even more intimidatingly huge up close. He was relatively skinny, like most young dragons seemed to be, but his head was easily eight feel off the ground while he was sitting. He had dull green scales and two stubby white horns.
"What's your name, buddy?" said Hearty Hooves.
"Gil." said Gilbert. He settled down and folded up his wings. "So, you guys know each other?"
"Whisp and I have been friends for a long time." said Crag. "We met at the School of Friendship, and then, conveniently, he got a job in Manehattan. Hearty's the new guy." Hearty laughed in a manner befitting his name.
"So you don't all work here?" said Gilbert, glancing between the three of them.
"No, just me." said Crag, drinking some soda out of a very long straw. "And most of the time, I'm on campus, anyway. Or what passes for a campus at ESM."
"That sounds fun." said Gilbert. "What do you do?"
"Complain about the state of higher education in Equestria, mostly." said Whisperwing. He had white fur, a dark, short-clipped mane, wings that seemed a bit too large for his scrawny body, a cutie mark of a lemniscate, and a remarkable ability to talk while inhaling fast food. "Not that the Dragonlands have any education to speak of, so he's one to talk."
"Education comes in a lot of forms, all right?" said Crag. "And now I have a better appreciation of how messed up Equestria's supposedly world-leading one is."
"Are you a professor?" said Gilbert.
"Nope, doctoral student." said Crag. "I'm in my second year in the history department. I'm only fifty-two." Gilbert looked at him with some puzzlement, and he went on "Adulthood for dragons starts at fifty."
"Gee, long time to wait." said Gilbert. "I'm nineteen. Say, that yellow lady dragon, you work with her, right? Do you know her?"
"Yeah, that's Magma. She started a moon ago. Why?"
"I was hoping to maybe get a date with her." said Gilbert, grinning. "She's a cutie. Any hints?"
"Wait, wait." said Hearty. "Even if you're okay with dating a dragon… and the age gap… she's a lot bigger than you, bro. Is she bigger than you, Crag?"
"Probably." said Crag.
"Yeah," said Hearty, turning back to Gilbert, "so, do you have, like… specific tastes? Giantesses, maybe? Or are you one of those bang-everypony-that-moves types?"
"Kind of the opposite." said Gilbert, looking away. "I'm a virgin. Not for lack of trying, but here I am."
"Didn't you say you're nineteen?" said Hearty. "Relax, buddy. It'll happen when it happens."
"I always screw something up." said Gilbert. "I haven't even gotten a second date. My parents were an arranged marriage. All griffons were, for generations. But I didn't get a match, and in the Equestrian dating scene, I'm just floundering." He scratched his beak and scowled. "I feel like, without any sex, I'm missing out on the best part of life."
The other three looked at each other.
"Sex is not the best part of life." said Whisperwing with mild disgust.
"There's no rush." Hearty insisted. "It'll happen when it happens. You don't want meaningless boning, anyway, bro. It's satisfying as an integrated part of a loving relationship."
"I'd certainly be willing to settle for some meaningless boning." said Gilbert, crossing his forelegs.
"You know dragons don't have sex for fun, right?" said Crag.
Gilbert looked gobsmacked. "No. I guess that changes things with respect to Magma, huh?"
"Yes." said Crag. "I'm sure there are dragons in interspecies relationships who have sex because their partners want it, but… so far as we're concerned, it's for having children. We look forward to the eggs, not the cloacal kiss."
"The what?" said Gilbert, looking worried.
Whisperwing winced, and Hearty Hooves laughed. "What sort of sex education did you get?" said Whisperwing.
"That's not a thing in Griffonstone." said Gilbert. "Unless you count porn."
"I emphatically do not count porn." said Whisperwing. "Pop quiz: what sex is this creature?" He pointed a hoof at Crag.
"Muh—male?" said Gilbert.
"Yes," said Whisperwing, "but, important follow-up question, what sort of genitalia does he have?" Crag looked only mildly embarrassed at being made an example of.
"…Is he trans?" Gilbert ventured.
"No." said Whisperwing.
"So he has a penis, then." said Gilbert.
"No." said Whisperwing. Gilbert blanched, and Hearty Hooves's laughter collapsed into coughing. "You have some reading to do."
"Museums are supposed to be educational." said Crag, patting Gilbert on the back. "Ask us what you want to know."
Gilbert smoothed some of the feathers on his head. He looked at the faces of the other three. They might be having some fun at his expense, but they looked friendly, too. He felt relieved. "Well… is the old joke true? Are unicorns horny?"
"Absolutely, judging from the ones I know." said Hearty Hooves. "I can't blame 'em. My first girlfriend was a unicorn, and magic in the bedroom is absolutely something else. If I could make my dick feel like that whenever I wanted, I'd probably never leave my room."
"You do clop anyway, right?" said Gilbert.
"Oh, for sure." said Hearty. "Whispy does too; he just won't admit it." Whisperwing frowned. "It must be a lot easier with those flexible bird toes, huh?"
"Don't know what I'd do without 'em." said Gilbert, smiling. "How do you manage?"
"Oh, we manage." said Hearty. "There's toys, furniture, and Old Reliable: your own barrel. In the old days, every colt and filly had to figure it out for him- or herself. That's earth-pony ingenuity for you. We manage."
Gilbert nodded, and ate the last bite of the fish he could stomach. He looked up at Crag. "What do you think of all this? I mean, dragons don't masturbate, right?"
"Ponies are weird." said Crag. "They all look the same, they're obsessed with making friends and having sex, they build ludicrously elaborate homes, and they're always bursting into musical numbers. And the most famous dragon in a pony's mind is a baby, his wings less than a decade old, who's now some kind of advisor to the head of state, who's also his adoptive sister, or mother, or something. And for a brief moment in history, he was Dragonlord. Living in Equestria as a dragon is about acceptance." He removed a shard of quartz from his teeth. "Being straight with you, I only learned a few years ago that griffons have mammalian genitals. They look avian, so I assumed avian anatomy."
"See, even Smarty-Pants here doesn't know everything." said Hearty. "Or didn't always, anyway."
"I'm the designated smart guy in this friend group." said Whisperwing. "We've been over this."