The moon was high in the sky by the time Silver finally stepped into the threshold of her house. Even though the hour was late she was filled with nervous energy as she rehearsed her talking points to Twist in her head.
Twist had been pacing the living room when Silver walked in, but hurried over to her as soon as Silver shut the front door. "There you are!" Twist exclaimed. "I was almost ready to go searching for you. Where were you?"
Silver 'ooffed' as her wife pulled her into a tight embrace at lightning speed. She sat and wrapped her forelegs around Twist while giving her an affectionate nuzzle.
Twist broke the hug and glared at Silver accusingly. "I was starting to worry your student's parents ate you! It's late and I had no idea where you were other than you went to see the naga."
"I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd get so worried. It's not like neither of us has ever gotten home really late before," Silver replied.
Her wife stomped a hoof. "You normally leave a note or something. When I'm late I'm working, and the candy shop is a three-minute walk from the house if you need to check on me. If I were going anywhere else that was going to keep me out late I'd make sure you knew so you wouldn't worry."
"I'm sorry," Silver repeated, adjusting her glasses. "It's been a very… I don't even have words for what today has been. We need to talk."
Twist adjusted her own glasses, perhaps as some triggered response to seeing another pony do so. "What happened? I heard about Candy Apple surging, is this what this is about? It's weird, but that filly said something to Bonnie the other day that-"
Silver shook her head. "No, it's not about Candy, or Cheerilee, or whoever she is." Twist raised an eyebrow at that but Silver just sighed. "Let's not get into her issues right now. I'm worried about her, but helping her is out of my hooves. I am much more concerned with Sisstet."
Twist gestured back towards the sofa in the living room. "Okay, come sit down and tell me about it. I know you go above and beyond for that foal, and he seemed worried earlier today."
Silver let herself be guided to the couch. "Where do I begin?" She climbed onto the couch and her wife joined her. "You know how we've been talking about possibly adopting?"
The other pony's eyes went wide. "We've definitely had that discussion a few times, and we're financially in a good place for it now. They aren't asking us to take that new egg, are they?"
"Not the egg. They want to give us Sisstet."
Twist jerked backwards. "What?! They can't be serious. He's their son!"
Silver hung her head. "Actually, neither of them are his biological parents, at least, not that we know of. I've read up everything I can about naga since Sisstet became my student. In the Clutch, naga are raised in groups by a kingsnake. They are raised like- I wouldn't even call them pets, because you love a pet. Service animals, maybe? There's no telling who Sisstet's biological parents are, just two random naga back in the Clutch. His guardians would murder him without a thought if a kingsnake told them to."
Twist gasped. "What did the princess say? Actually- I suppose you haven't had time to hear back from her yet if this just happened this afternoon. Who did you go to? Was it Starlight Glimmer or Mayor Amythyst? What did they say?"
She chewed on her lip before answering. "I haven't gone to either of them, yet."
"Silver! You have to! Why haven't you yet?"
"I plan to, sometime tomorrow," Silver assured her. "I needed to figure out what I needed to say first. Twist, I want to do it. I want us to adopt him, but I need to know you are onboard with that before I go to the authorities."
Twist blinked and glanced away. "I don't know… We were talking about adoption before, but we were talking about adopting a pony- or maybe a griffin chick, a changeling grub, or somecreature along those lines. He's a naga. Can a pony even properly raise a naga? Everything I've ever heard about naga is that they're monsters."
"Sisstet is no monster!" Silver protested. "You just saw him earlier today; how could you say that? He's small and gentle."
"He's small now, but he's going to get bigger, much bigger than us," Twist reminded her. "And we don't know if he's going to get more aggressive as he gets older. Those are purely predator teeth in his mouth, and the naga tried to eat ponies when they attacked years ago. Even you admit there aren't any known nice and caring adult naga."
She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You don't know him like I do. Sisstet is nothing like his guardians. He's far smarter and freethinking. He gets his feelings hurt easily. He gets very nervous. He wants to be liked and loved. Just this morning he got his feelings hurt because a student implied another student didn't like him. He also went and hid in fear under my desk for the remainder of the school day after Candy's magic surge. He deserves better than what he's been given so far. He deserves to be loved and properly nurtured just like any other intelligent creature."
Twist sat silent for a moment, and Silver sent Princess Twilight silent prayer that her wife would come around. Twist eventually let out a long breath and turned and touched a hoof tenderly to Silver's face. "We can bring him here, and take care of him for now. We still need to go to the princess with this to get her recommendations and instructions. This wouldn't be formally adopting, yet, it would be fostering. It gives me time to get to know him, hear back from the princess about how she wants to deal with this, and find out if there's going to be any problems you didn't anticipate, not to mention the princess might just tell us no to keeping him. You've had him as a student, but having him living here is a whole other type of grain. Can you accept that?"
Silver relaxed slightly. "That's perfectly fair, and rational. You'll see what I see when you get to start spending time with him."
Her wife pursed her lips. "Keeping it rational for the moment, let's start thinking about the next thing to ask. If he comes here, where does he sleep? We don't have a spare bedroom ready."
"You and I have separate office rooms. They can be condensed into a single office. You hardly use yours except for storing some legal papers. We can keep an extra file cabinet in mine for your stuff," Silver suggested.
Twist rolled her eyes. "Fair enough. Although, I do take care of some other business related stuff at home from time to time, even if Bonnie tends to do most of it." She then chuckled. "Sharing the same space as you when working at home has its benefits, though. I can pick that business school brain of yours quicker if we're in the same room. I still find it ironic that, out of the two of us, I'm the one who ended up having to worry about profits, ledgers, and franchises."
Silver shrugged. "You can have them. My heart was never in it. I just went off to business school to go chasing after a mare who I couldn't have. Luckily, none of that worked out, and I ended up with someone better." She gave a wistful sigh. "I really am happy with how things ended up going. I thought I knew what I wanted years ago, but losing out on that was the best thing that ever happened to me."
"I'll agree, since I ended up getting you because of it," Twist replied with a smile. "Funny how life goes sometimes."
Silver nodded. "Being forced by my parents to find a job and other place to live gave me the opportunity to live with you and find real love. It was also one of my luckiest breaks when I took a substitute teaching job at the School of Friendship in order to make some bits to make ends meet. I'd never have even thought I could love teaching until after I started doing that. I'm so lucky to have so much opportunity come about because of a bad situation. Sisstet is going through a situation where his world might feel like it's ending too, and I want to make it the same blessing-in-disguise that I had."
Twist's expression sobered up. "I promise you that I'll do everything I can to be open-minded and try to make this work, but I don't want your heart broken if it doesn't. This is going to be more challenging than bringing home a pony foal, and on top of that the princess might still decide she thinks something else would be best for him. You're right that he deserves the best home he can get, but we have to be open to the possibility that might not be necessarily with us."
"I'll do whatever is best by him," Silver replied, hardening her conviction. "And I'm confident we can provide that home."
The answering smile on Twist's face seemed a little forced, though only Silver would be able to tell. Twist gave a brief nod. "Okay, so, we need to have that room cleared out by tomorrow if we-" A sudden knock at the door interrupted her, and she narrowed her brow. "Who could that be at this hour? You don't think they decided to just drop him off, do you?"
"I'm not sure," Silver replied. "I'm not even sure they know where we live. My address is on the report cards, but they don't really read very fast or well, though they can read. Sisstet normally reads things that are more than a few words long for them, just to save time."
"They rely on him to read for them but they're kicking him out, what a brilliant move. And creatures wonder how the princesses kicked their scaly hides so easily," Twist said dryly. She then got up and headed towards the door. "I'll go see who it is."
Silver jumped up and ran ahead of her. "No! If it's the naga it is probably better I answer it than a pony they don't know. Sit tight. I'll be back."
There was another knock at the door and she yelled out an answer to it. "I'm coming! Who is it?"
"Miss Silver Spoon? It's Lantern Light, can you open the door? It's kind of important."
Lantern Light? Her thestral student that had graduated a few years back? "Lantern? What are you doing here so- well, I suppose it's early for you."
"I- um, well.. found- you just need to see."
She hurried over to the door and opened it. Lantern Light was a young thestral stallion, and had filled out quite nicely since graduating from school. He had his patented vest on that had a firefly lantern embedded in it, and it lit up his face with an eerie glow. He would have blended right into the night with his black for and dark blue mane without that light.
He rubbed a wing against the back of his head nervously. "Hi, Miss Silver Spoon. I was just doing my nightly patrol when I happened across our resident naga foal wandering around with just a backpack. I know a runaway when I spot one, since I've caught several of them since I started doing night patrols. Given who his parents are I didn't feel it was prudent to take him straight back to them, just in case he had a good reason to be running away."
"He was running away?" How much of that was her fault for running off like she did? "Wait… you escorted him all the way over here in the middle of the night?"
Lantern shook his head. "Of course not. That wouldn't be practical. I flew him here in a net."
"You what!" She screamed as she shoved past her former student. Sure enough, right behind the thestral was a net filled with the whimpering form of Sisstet. She rounded back on Lantern. "How could you? Do you have any idea how traumatizing that must have been? He's not a common criminal, he's just a kid!"
The thestral pointed a wing at Sisstet. "That 'kid' could easily rip off one of my wings if he got a good bite on them. Runaways don't typically come along easily, and there was no way I was going to put myself in close contact with a squirming naga that was fighting me. I did him the best favor I could do by bringing him to you rather than his parents. My only other option was taking him to the holding cell back at the police station, and as you said, he isn't a criminal."
She was at a loss for words again. Giving her former student a further piece of her mind would need to wait. She had a current student that needed her right now.
"Sisstet…" she called out gently, approaching him slowly. "It's Miss Silver Spoon. Are you hurt? I promise I'll never let anycreature do something like this to you again."
Sisstet had apparently been working on freeing himself as he whimpered, because he pulled the net off himself as she reached him. He didn't try to get away, just recoiled into a ball. "Not hurt."
It was hard to tell in the dark if that were true or not. She closed the rest of the distance between them and looked at his small quivering form. He'd need to get inside, but there was no making him crawl in his current condition. She might not be the strongest earth pony, but she was still enough of an earth pony that carrying him on her back wouldn't be much effort, especially if Lantern was able to carry him across town with no problems… she decided not to think about that any more at the moment so she could try to calm down. Her anger wasn't what Sisstet needed right now.
"I know that this entire day has been a harrowing one for you… harrowing means very upsetting. You must be very scared, angry, and sad, and have every right to be feeling those things," Silver began, then took a deep breath. "I need to apologise to you. Earlier today Mishtet and Sythel said something shocking to me, and I'm sure you overheard it from wherever you were. Right then I was scared and confused, and because of that I ran. I know you are running because you are scared and confused too, even more than I was. So I don't blame you for it. However, I do want to try to make things right."
There was no response other than whimpering. She moved closer to him and laid down beside him. As she was doing that she saw that Twist had come out to see what was going on, and was looking on anxiously as Silver settled closely beside the young naga. Sisstet went still as her fur brushed up against his scales.
"Miss Silver Spoon, be careful," Lantern called out. "That might be a kid, but it is also an angry and scared snake."
"He not it!" Silver yelled back. She then reached a leg up and over Sisstet. The reaction was immediate. Sisstet's head jerked up and went to strike her leg. She didn't even flinch as she felt his teeth touch her leg.
"Silver!" Twist yelled out.
The pain of them sinking in didn't come. They were definitely in place to do so, and it wouldn't take much pressure from Sisstet to skewer her leg in multiple places. They also were drawing blood in a few places, but naga weren't venomous, so it would be just a few scratches. She had her eyes locked forward, meeting his. His eyes were wide as they could go, and he seemed petrified with fear.
"I trust you," she said quietly. "And even if you do end up biting down, I'm still not leaving or sending you away."
Sisstet remained frozen for a second more, then the dams broke. He released her leg and hurried his head against her fur while loudly sobbing. She hadn't moved her leg through the entire ordeal, and now pulled him closer to her with it.
As she laid her head against him she reaffirmed herself one more time. "I'll make this right. I promise."