//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: The Traveller 
// by Phxntxm 
//------------------------------//

After receiving the tightest hug I'd ever had in my life, Twilight Sparkle told me that she apparently studies ‘friendship’ and that she'd probably be one of the best people to teach me about it. She didn't take too kindly to me laughing at her for studying friendship as if it were a collegiate subject. She wiped the smirk off my face when she told me that Princess Celestia herself had told her to study it and send reports on what she and her friends learned. I was then about to laugh at her for having to learn how to make friends in such a ridiculous way...until I remembered I was probably going to do that too, with Twilight as my mentor. Well I guess there's no better way than to learn to have friends by someone who studies it for a profession. Or hobby. I'm really not sure, I'm going to assume she's a librarian by profession as she lives in a library.

I decided to ask her. 

“Hey, are you a librarian?”

Twilight raised an eyebrow at me, “Er...yes, I'm a librarian. Hence the library." Were you even listening to anything I said?” 

"...maybe."

She facehoofed and I took a bite of the sandwich  while she sighed.

“Mmm, this is good! Seriously...it's almost as good as pancakes out of the trash. I do love pancakes, do they make pancake sandwiches? That would be amazing.”

After receiving no answer I looked at her, she was looking back and forth between my horn and the sandwich with her jaw wide open. It took a second to figure out what she was looking at specifically, she noticed that there was no aura around the sandwich or my horn. I'd never seen anyone else have that before, and anyone who saw it was completely baffled. I thought about this and found a perfect way to prank Twilight.

I swallowed the bite that I had taken and glanced at the sandwich. I let my eyes go wide and stammered, “G-G-G-GHOOOST!” I ran upstairs and after turning the corner I waited a second and peeked around the corner. I saw her staring at the sandwich and she had literally turned white. Then all of a sudden she screamed and began running around in circles while picking up books and throwing it at the sandwich. I began to make the sandwich chase her and her screaming got louder.

I noticed Spike had come downstairs to where I was again and after noticing that Twilight was being chased around the room by a sandwich he just rolled his eyes and walked back upstairs. I laughed a bit at that and apparently Twilight heard me, she ran up to me with frantic eyes and yelled at me, “KILL IT! KILL IT!” I'd decided that I'd spare her more worry and decided to tell her what was actually going on.

“Twilight it's okay, calm down. There's no ghost.” I said.

“B...but...the sandwich is just floating!” She pointed back at where I had forgotten I was still levitating it to prove it. 

“Think about it Twilight, why would a ghost be feeding me...and then chase you around with a sandwich?” I smirked at her as she realized she was being a bit foolish and blushed a little bit.

“But...what's going on then? It's just floating there...” She eyed the sandwich curiously as it went back towards me so I could take another bite.

After swallowing I responded, “That's something that I've always had; no aura when I use magic. I don't know why, but I actually like it. I think it's cool.”

Her eyes widened as I explained, “But you can't not have an aura! It's always been a part of magic!”

“I don't think that I don't have one per say, I think it's just completely translucent. The aura is a physical manifestation around the object getting manipulated, it's what actually moves the object, or teleports it, shrinks it, enlarges, whatever you're doing to it. It has to be there, but who says it has to be visible? It's just like the aura of somepony; I bet if someone went up to Luna without ever knowing her would be intimidated immediately. They might not know whether it's because of fear, simple power, or her royalty. Yet they would still be affected, but you don't see an aura around them. For some reason that's the same way my magical aura works I guess, I'm not sure if those two types of auras are similar in any way, but it's a comparison I've thought of before.”

Twilight looked on in interest as I explained how I thought of my aura, or lack thereof. “You know, no offense or anything, but I thought you weren't going to be very...uhm...smart.” She bit her lip as she heard how what she said came out, “I didn't mean it like that, but since you lived on streets and stuff...I don't think you would have gone to a school or anything. So I thought you'd be...unintelligent. Okay that still sounds bad. Um...You're not as stupid as I thought you'd be. No! Grr!” She lowered her head in defeat as she gave up what she was trying to convey.

However, I knew she wasn't trying to be offensive and I knew exactly what she meant. I just chuckled which cause her to look back up at me, “I know what you meant Twilight, you don't have to worry. That's why I used the word 'ignorant' earlier. I am pretty ignorant of many things, yes, but I also do like to read. I have plenty of free time on my hooves with my kind of life, and I've gone to libraries when I could to learn about new stuff. The stuff I'm ignorant on is more of the basic type of things, like I was talking about earlier, the idea of ownership and what to eat. That's the type of thing that will come up and make me look stupid.” 

Twilight sighed, “Yeah that's kind of what I was trying to say. Stupid mouth not conveying what my brain wanted to correctly. Hey wait a minute, I should be mad at you for pranking me!” She pouted at me and swung a hoof out at one of my front legs.

I caught it with my magic and forced it back down with her other hooves, she looked startled when she looked down at her own hoof, then she looked back up at me. I just looked back at her with confusion and asked, “Why did you just try to hit me? Was pranking you seriously bad enough that you don't like me anymore?” I noticed that I sounded a bit sad as I ended my question.

“What? No! I wasn’t going to hurt you, I was just going to hit you playfully!” 

I just continued to look at her in confusion, “Why would hitting somepony be playing? That's violence...that doesn't seem like playing.” 

She just looked at me sadly, I had a feeling one of those times where I wasn't getting something that everyone knew was happening. “It wasn't going to hurt, I promise. It's just something friends do...trust me.”

I continued to stare at her for a couple more seconds before releasing my hold on her hoof. After I let go there was an awkward silence that occurred, neither of us knew what to say until she broke the silence. “Hey,” she said softly, “we should go meet some of my friends that I talked about before, you can make more than just your first friend that way.”

I sighed as I felt thankful that she tried to act like my stupidity didn't happen. I nodded and beamed before leading the way out of the library. I let a couple thoughts brew inside my head as I followed her out as a more comfortable silence filled the air this time. Before this town my life was simple, a bit crappy. I just went in and out of each day doing the same thing, and I was happy about it, because I wanted to be. Then I got here and all of the emotions I was getting felt more genuine. There were also plenty of times when the bad emotions felt better than the fake happiness I always had before. Perhaps it was because it actually meant I cared about somepony, and they cared about me. I smiled at that thought, it was really pleasing. I lifted my head up as I followed the mare that cared about me to meet more ponies that might care about me. And the feeling I felt was nervousness. I was nervous that they might not like me, but the funny thing was that the nervousness felt good.