A real, casual conversation with the Princess of Friendship! Grey should be freaking out right now, he was having a conversation with his idol! But he wasn’t, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. It didn’t matter, though, since they were talking about magic. Grey’s favorite thing in the whole wide world. His already present smile got a little wider, patiently waiting for Twilight to start the conversation, since he wasn’t great at that. Luckily, the princess took notice of what Grey was trying to get her to do, so she decided to inquire about a moderately complicated piece of magical academia, trying not to be condescending to the griffon, but also trying not to stick him with a topic he knew nothing about, since he was a magicless creature, after all.
“So, would you like me to pick a field of magic for us to talk about?” Twilight started, to which Grey nodded succinctly as a response. “Alright, what do you know about the applications of neutral magic?” Grey didn’t even skip a beat, all he did was shift the way he was sitting slightly and answer Twilight’s question with vim and vigor.
“Neutral magic is actually really interesting to me! Definitely one of my favorite subjects. Okay, so, as you probably already know, neutral magic is a manifestation of the caster’s own magic. It doesn’t do much on its own, it’s just a glowy effect on the caster’s horn, but neutral magic isn’t meant to do anything on its own. It’s meant to be combined with other spells.” Twilight smiled a little. Grey’s rundown of neutral magic was spot on, and she began to think that maybe it was unfair of her to assume that he was likely to know less about magic simply because he was incapable of casting any himself. She decided to up the difficulty of her questions from here on out.
“Yeah, that’s neutral magic in a nutshell.” Twilight said, ready to query Grey on something more complicated next. “What do you know about conjuration?” Grey paused for a moment to look at Twilight before deciding to just answer her question about conjuration.
“Uh, yeah, a lot of the griffons back home seem to think that conjuration magic creates something out of nothing, but what it’s actually doing is summoning something from the Primordial Realm. Only simple items like swords and bows can be conjured, though.” Twilight smiled at Grey, who only shifted his sitting position again, struggling mildly to find a comfortable way to sit on the floor. Grey looked at Twilight, who was positively beaming at how much he knew. Grey coughed, then looked down at the suitcase in front of him. “So do you think we should swap facts about ourselves or something? I mean, we don’t know each other too well.” Grey’s eyes darted up to look at Twilight’s face, which was starting to relax a little.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Twilight shifted on her side as she said this, sitting more casually. “When’s your birthday?” Grey shifted on the floor one more time, then frustratedly decided he had lost his battle with the floor, then climbed up onto his bed.
“January 8th. How about yours?” The conversation had started to go nowhere fast, and Grey’s social ineptitude wasn’t helping. Either he needed to pray that Twilight would come up with a better way to do this icebreaker or he needed to come up with a way himself.
“March 30th.” Grey nodded, making sure to commit that to memory. A palpable silence followed, only broken for a moment when Twilight coughed into her hoof. The two weren’t making eye contact anymore. Grey felt his wings tighten up at his sides. Twilight noticed how tense he had gotten and interjected.
“I was thinking maybe tomorrow I could invite my friends over to meet you. Does that sound okay?” Grey looked at her, trying to force himself to maintain eye contact. He remained silent for a short moment, then responded in a hushed tone.
“I’d love to meet your friends.” Twilight smiled. Grey smiled too, but he also looked down, failing his self-imposed eye contact task. “Sorry if I’m not great at conversations. I was the only griffon back home who cared about what I had to say.”
Twilight looked at Grey’s unfocused eyes in an attempt to regain eye contact. “I can relate, at least a little.” Grey was surprised at this, but he didn’t interrupt. “When I still lived in Canterlot, all I would do was study all day, to say I lacked social skills would be an understatement.” Twilight punctuated her sentence with a small laugh, the accompanying teeth-showing smile being replaced soon after with a mildly guilty expression. “Grey, I’m gonna be honest for a moment.” Grey braced for impact, those words never led to anything good. “This whole situation is weird, don’t you think? You said you wanted to be a magic researcher, right?”
Grey shook his head. “I figured that would be the best job to get with my magical knowledge, but I’ve wanted to be a wizard since I was a cub.” A light red met Grey’s cheeks as he said this, half-expecting Twilight to act just like his peers back home.
Twilight’s face lit up. “Oh, I didn’t know griffons had magic! Can you show me some?” Her question inspired from a false assumption caused Grey to lower his head a little out of embarrassment.
“W-well, I don’t think anygriff has done any magic, well, ever, but I’ve held some measure of faith that it’s at the very least possible. I mean, crazier things have happened in Equestria, right?” Twilight held a slightly confused look while Grey spoke, then she smiled when he finished. She nodded, to which Grey’s smile became a little less forced. There was a silence for a moment, which Grey decided to break. “Can you tell me about your friends? I’m sure they’re lovely, but I’m the kind of griffon who’d prefer to know at least a little bit about someone before meeting them.”
Twilight’s expression didn’t change as she continued the conversation. “Of course.” Twilight proceeded to give a very brief rundown of all 5 of her very best friends, and when she mentioned Fluttershy and Applejack, Grey excitedly interjected that he’d spoken to them the day prior. He was looking forward to saying something along the lines of ‘hello again’ to those two.
Grey’s wings were now sprawled wide across his bed, that being the most comfortable way to rest them for him. After hearing about Twilight’s friends, Grey naturally asked how they all met, and, naturally, Twilight gave Grey the whole story, which he listened to eagerly.
“-and that was when I learned that the Magic of Friendship is the most powerful magic of all!” Grey was simply lying there, listening contentedly to Twilight’s story and reacting at the most reaction worthy parts. He looked over at the clock, which displayed that it was 6:00 PM. He looked over at the calendar, since he had absolutely no idea what day it was, and saw that it was Friday. He blinked twice, remembering something important, then started to panic. He went into his suitcase and rooted around, eventually procuring his ticket to the Wonderbolts show, scanning it over quickly.
“Please don’t have been today, please don’t have been today, please don’t have been today!” Twilight simply looked at Grey, puzzled, until he sighed. “Oh, good. It’s tomorrow.” He turned to Twilight, understanding that she was confused. “I made a friend on the train here, and I promised her I’d go to this Wonderbolts show.” He held the ticket up so that Twilight could see.
“Oh! The show tomorrow! I was planning on buying you a ticket as a surprise, since all my other friends are going too, so you could meet them there!” Twilight and Grey shared the same level of excitement, but Twilight still needed to confirm something. “Out of curiosity, where did you get that ticket?”
“Oh yeah, the friend I made on the train gave it to me. Her name is Surprise.” Twilight gasped lightly upon learning Grey’s new friend’s name, then smiled.
“Grey, did you know that Wonderbolt gift tickets are also backstage passes?” Grey looked at the ticket. As much as he enjoyed Surprise’s company, he didn’t care too much about the Wonderbolts, he was mainly going just to see what it was like, and also because he had promised Surprise he would.
“Really? That’s pretty cool.” Grey’s mildly disinterested response confused Twilight for a moment before she realized that the Wonderbolts didn’t have celebrity status with a group of creatures who barely even knew what they were. “Honestly, though, I’m looking forward to that show, it sounds exciting!”
“About tomorrow, I won’t give you any tasks tomorrow, not because it’s the weekend or because of the show, just because I don’t have anything that needs to get done that day.” Twilight smiled excitedly. “And I probably won’t be busy, so if you wanted to go through some griffon history books to look for any account of griffons using magic, I’d very much like to do that with you.”
“Oh, are you sure about no work tomorrow? I kinda want to get used to having tasks every day.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I understand you wanting to get into the rhythm of your tasks here, but since the show is tomorrow and you promised your friend you’d go, I think it’s best if we just treat tomorrow as an off day.” Twilight looked over at the clock, which now read 6pm. “Well, time sure went by fast, didn’t it?” Twilight got up, motioning for Grey to follow her. “Come on, let’s go have dinner.” Grey followed without a complaint, he forgot to eat yesterday.
Dinner consisted of grilled asparagus with a light caramel glaze, cooked by Spike, as he so proudly declared. The combination confused Grey at first, but upon trying it, he found that the caramel was a lighter sweetness than he expected, and it complimented the grilled asparagus well. He made sure to thank Spike directly for the meal, though his thanks was ignored.
During dinner, Twilight and Grey heartily discussed the next day’s activities, which instead of being focused on the Wonderbolt show, instead mostly was dominated by their plan to come home afterward and dig through griffon history books to look for any mention of any griffon magic use. They were excited for the show, but they were both nerds, and nerds have an undying natural affinity for books.
Grey took it upon himself to wash the dishes, making a point to offer twice to do so to Spike, who needed Twilight to ask him nicely to accept the offer. “Hey Twilight?” She looked over at Grey, who hadn’t looked up from the dishes when he spoke up. “Do you think this whole thing will amount to much? I mean, even if I do manage to by some miracle use magic, is it really gonna be that big of a deal?”
Twilight frowned. “It would be a pretty big deal, yeah. Are you trying to be a big deal with this whole thing?” Grey looked at Twilight, half because this was a serious conversation, and half because he had finished the dishes.
“No. I don’t think I care if my magic gets me famous. I just think it’s fascinating. I mean, using nothing but your own mind and willpower to change and shape the world around you? That’s nothing short of incredible to me.” Grey’s eyes had a sparkle in them that was very familiar to Twilight. If griffons could get Cutie Marks, she thought, Grey’s would definitely be in magic.
“I admire that, Grey.” Grey looked over at Twilight quickly, but his expression didn’t change much. “Don’t get me wrong, I still love magic, but it’s become so normal, y’know? I’ve done it all my life, so I think I’ve lost that spark that you have.” She suddenly stood up. “I swear to you, I will not let that beautiful spark of yours die out.” Grey continued to look at Twilight, at a loss for words. He felt tears stinging the back of his eyes, though they didn’t become anything other than a sting.
“Nogriff in Griffonstone ever cared that much about my dream…” He trailed off, lost in thought for a moment, before being interrupted by his own yawn. “Anyway, I’m gonna go put my books up, then I’m going to bed. Goodnight, princess.” One of Twilight’s ears drooped just a bit.
“Goodnight, Grey. And please don’t call me ‘princess’. We’re friends, remember?” Grey looked back at Twilight, the two of them exchanging a smile, then continued walking back to his room before he stopped.
“Uh, where’s my room again?”