//------------------------------// // Ember's Glow // Story: Hot Dragon Inaction // by SilverNotes //------------------------------// This was torture. It had to be against some of kind international law to put a dragon through this, being directly next to an attractive member of their species and unable to act on it. And if it wasn't, clearly it needed to be. It was like acknowledging the feelings had amplified them, and now just him moving enough for her to see the muscles beneath his scales, or listening to him talk, had her mind taking a vacation and her body making several increasingly loud demands. And Spike, magma bless his big, smiling, stupid head, was oblivious. It'd taken Ember several minutes to figure out why he was oblivious. After all, she was being incredibly, embarrassingly blatant about it, with more than the placement of her tail. Her body was running several degrees hotter and starting to lightly singe the blanket, the crest of spines along her head were sitting as upright as they could and, to her mortification, occasionally quivered in response to his voice, and she was certain she was giving off the scent of interest... Then it'd hit her. Spike was raised by ponies. The big, softhearted lug wouldn't have been able to recognize an interested dragoness if she literally pounced on him. She nearly did, in fact. The seventh time, when he'd leaned close to brush come crumbs off her chin, had been dangerously close to not being a nearly, and she'd clenched her jaw hard enough that she could hear her fangs grinding together. On one claw, it was perfect, since it meant that everything was only agonizingly awkward from her perspective. On the other, without him giving a clear signal of yes or no, her body couldn't calm down. She could only sit there and stew in this cocktail of desire while desperately trying to hold a conversation. She tried. Let the oldest of volcanoes know that she made every gargantuan effort to calmly sit, eat the food Spike had brought, and catch him up on what she'd been up to these past years. She felt she deserved a reward. A medal, maybe. She was the Dragon Lord, she could totally make up a medal for self-control in the face of the stupidly attractive and award it to herself as the first recipient. Then again, that'd be effectively telling every single dragon that she had a crush. Magma burn it. It was as they were cleaning up the picnic blanket--she hastily folded her end in a way to try to hide the scorch marks--that she saw her chance to escape the torment. "Spike? Can I ask a favour?" Not seeming to notice the quiver in her voice any more than he had at any other time, Spike tucked the blanket into the empty basket, brushed crumbs from his front, and smiled. "Sure, you can always ask me for things, Ember. What do you need?" For you to ki-- Slow inhale, and Ember managed to force some of the feeling down. Thinking about ice cream, cold baths, and flying in hailstorms provided just enough self-control. "It's just that... I've been thinking about how nice it'd be to fly around Ponyville. Not needing to go anywhere or do anything while I'm up there, but just enjoy the thermals." Spike beamed. "Is that all? I'd be happy to fly with--" "No!" Spike blinked and rocked back slightly, and Ember realized how loudly she'd said that. "What I mean is... you know what those boulderheads down in the Dragonlands are like. I can't get a minute to myself without being interrupted by something. Would you mind if I just took some time to fly solo, and we meet back up at dinner?" "Oh, uh, sure." He was drooping and she instantly felt bad. That was the thing that had really gotten under her scales about him at first, that he made her feel bad about being mean. But she knew it was the lesser of evils. "We can always do the other stuff tom--" Despite crude jokes to the contrary, dragons only had fire come out of one end. If anyone else had been there to see Ember rocket into the sky, however, they'd be forgiven for imagining they saw a gout of flame trailing behind her. "--morrow." The thermals above Ponyville were really nice for flying. Then again, ponies could control the weather, so she had no doubt they were being actively maintained by all the pegasi living here. She wasn't completely alone in the sky. There were some of the aforementioned pegasi, a couple of griffons and one hippogriff. A few seemed to recognize her, but other than a few smiles in her direction, none of them reacted overly much and kept a respectful distance. Which meant that she had plenty of opportunity to think as she put her flying on near-automatic, soaring circles above the town. What is wrong with me? Before she'd taken up the Bloodstone Scepter, it would have been nothing to just go into her cave and brood for a month as she figured her emotions out. It was the kind of timescale on personal epiphanies that dragons were supposed to follow. The world was faster now, however, and her time was valuable down to the second. She couldn't waste any of it drawing this out. She needed to think. When had this started? She'd certainly noticed at various functions that he was catching up to her. Each time she'd seen him, he was a little bigger, and little more fit, his wings a little more-- She felt her crest quivering and her body heating up. She bared her teeth and forced it to stop, easier to do when the source of the feelings was not present. Okay, so he was handsome. She'd been around plenty of dragons of all levels of attractiveness and that had never happened before. What was the difference? He was her best friend. He'd helped her at a time when other dragons wouldn't even have the idea enter their mind. He'd even given up power in order to give it to her. He'd always tried to make time to see her even a little bit, including today. She was a priority in his busy life, and he cared, openly, without needing to veil or deny it. A different warmth came to her this time, settling in her chest. She'd watched other young dragons become adults. It kind of came with the job, or at least it did now. Somehow she'd managed to turn being the Dragon Lord into becoming dragonkind's collective mother. In all of those cases, though, there'd never been a moment when she didn't still see them as one of the kids. Smolder was a good example, really. She'd grown to be a pretty dragoness, but to Ember, she was still Garble's kid sister. It would never cross her mind to be interested in her, and in fact the thought made her immediately queasy. Even dragons who'd always been close to her in age... Garble was a good enough looking guy, and she'd never thought about it. She'd known the big lug from when he was at his worst, and she was in charge of making sure he had encouragement to be less of a pain in the rear. There were plenty of dragons who she could objectively assess and say, sure, they weren't hard on the eyes, but ultimately... Ultimately, she'd either been around them most of her or their lives, or they were dragons she was otherwise directly responsible for. Spike wasn't one of her subjects. Technically, she could summon him just like she could any dragon using the scepter, but ultimately he was Equestrian, and if she tried to boss him around, his big sister with the big wings and big horn would come with a list of objections and the magic to turn her inside-out. In a lot of ways, they were on equal footing, her a ruler and him an adoptive relative of one. He'd been a kid when they'd met, but he'd never been one of "her" kids, not really. Was that it, then? She was lonely and being the Dragon Lord made the pool of potential mates that small? Ember cursed under her breath. Then a couple of chattering changelings flew past, light dancing over their shiny carapaces, and Ember quieted herself as she absently returned the wave one of them sent her. She then angled her wings, trying to get up higher, as if the altitude might help her think more clearly. Spike was her friend. She owed it to him to determine whether this was something real or not. Hm. Friend. Spike liked to talk about how friends working together could overcome impossible obstacles. Maybe she should ask a friend for advice? Smolder was pretty emotionally intelligent, thanks to her schooling and adventures, but going to her for advice would result in no end of teasing. She would never, ever let her forget that she once asked her for romantic advice. Maybe as an absolute last resort. Ember glanced at where the changelings had been flying past before. Thorax probably knew a lot about love. He used to eat it, after all. He could probably stroll up to her and smell her emotional state. The problem was that he was way off in his kingdom, and she'd only just started being able to carve out time in her schedule to travel. A letter wouldn't cut it for this. Garble had, surprisingly, become one of her biggest supporters these days, and she could even potentially call him a friend. But romantic advice? There were probably rocks more suited to that conversation. Her father? She would rather fly directly into the ocean. Who else? Ember flew a few more laps of the town. I... don't have a lot of friends, do I? It wasn't her fault. The job made it hard, especially when it felt like a ticking clock until the first elder woke up and everything went tails-up over her decisions to do things like play nice with ponies. Ponies. Ponies sometimes asked experts instead of friends for advice, didn't they? Maybe she could do that. That one cotton-candy looking princess pony with the heart on her butt was supposed to be an expert on love. The problem was that, if the Changeling Kingdom was hard to travel to on sort notice, the Crystal Empire was even worse. Twilight and her friends were supposed to be experts on friendship and romance was... friendship-adjacent, right? It was supposedly good to be friends first and foremost with a mate, or at least she'd heard that sentiment before. Of course, there was no way she was going to go see Twilight herself about it. Between her being part of Spike's family and being a monarch of a nation with a close association with her own, there was no measurement system that existed that could record the mess that that would be. Awkwardness off every chart, with a side of diplomatic incident for flavour. The other ponies... Ember found them blurring together in her mind. She hadn't gotten much better about telling ponies apart than she had been during her first visit to Ponyville, try as she might. At least Twilight had the decency to now be taller than any of the others. But one of them had to be good with this, right? Surely Spike had told her something about them that she could remember that was relevant to this situation. Wait. Ember paused, going into a hover. She barely noticed a gargoyle glide past, and didn't notice at all them tilting in the air as they checked her out. There was one of Twilight's friends that Spike always talked more about than the others. The one with tasty-looking gems on her butt. What was her name again? Novelty? Elusive? No. Rarity. It was Rarity. Maybe Rarity would be of help. Ember went into a dive, spooking a squawk out of--Wait, had that been a cockatrice casually sitting with a newspaper? Focus. Finding Rarity now, reflection on exactly how much a misnomer Ponyville was these days later.