2nd Cup: Chamomile and Mint
Tavi had now officially worn off the shiny newness of his now-functional legs. In fact, he now bitterly resented the muscle atrophy that rendered him much less fit than his previous state, the one before the accident. He remembered running miles with ease, and this pitiful walking pace had worn him out in little more than a few hours. He was a bit disgusted.
Unfortunately, flying was also out of the picture. His wings had regressed to the point where they no longer supported his weight while flying. He seemed to be in an odd state halfway between childhood and puberty. He was too tall and thin to be a child, but his wings were practically vestigial, his fire was not that of a teenager or an adult dragon, and to cap it all off, ponies seemed to be the apex evolutionary form.
Now, he didn't eat meat, but no (other) vegetarian is going to look into a maw full of teeth like his and not have at least a few uneasy thoughts. Let's just say his walk through the town he found leading toward the possible interim-den was not filled with delightful encounters with friendly locals.
When he'd come to the place, his natural awkwardness around others had resurfaced, compounded with consciousness about what a fearsome figure he no doubt struck to the ponies around him. His natural politeness and diffidence rose to the fore, and he knocked rather lightly and apologetically on the door.
There was no answer, although there was movement inside the...tree-house/library sort of structure. Tavi raised his claw for another polite tap when a purple unicorn opened the door with an exasperated yank with her magic.
The poor mare the proceeded to gape at him for a total of two and a quarter seconds before beginning to babble strangely. “Can't be happening... must be dreaming...” and her rump hit the floor with a wince-inducing thump. One of her eye's twitched, and a little giggle escaped.
Tavi barely had time to react to this when something else grabbed his attention.
“YOU!” came an infuriated yell from the inside of the library, and a very irate purple and green dragon appeared within Tavi's line of sight. “WHO ARE YOU? This is MY home.” the hatchling yelled, green flame flaring out of his nostrils.
“Oh, dear.” Tavi said weakly. To cap it off, a group of ponies in the library came forward and began to react as well. The yellow one made an impressive swan dive beneath a table, the blue one yelled something and launched herself at him with prodigiously high speed, which he barely dodged, the white one dramatically fainted, and the orange one tried to calm everything down while the pink one suddenly appeared in front of him.
“Hi! You're new here, I can tell. What's your name? Ooh, do you like parties? I like parties!” the pink one said excitedly, managing to nearly shake a hand off while he tried to fend off both the blue pony and the purple/green hatchling.
“Oh my,” Tavi said faintly. It all seemed a bit too much, what with all the walking, he hadn't had a drink of water since before the council meeting in the other dimension, and now he was being positively bombarded with a mix of emotions.
And dragon or not, it had been a long day. So he promptly fainted.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Twilight's day could not possibly get any worse. Spike had reacted in a fairly typical dragon fashion to this intrusion, but she hadn't expected it... well, at all, really. But now that she had time to think (sort of) it scared her because this kind of reaction hadn't been predicted until Spike was older.
On top of this, all of her friends were rattled, except for Applejack and Rainbow Dash, one of whom was trying to keep the peace while the other was itching for a fight. And all of them had been there to witness her...moment of weakness. Which was not optimal. Sure, they were her best friends, but still. In comparison to other days she'd had, this one was a piece of cake, and she'd had that kind of reaction anyway.
She was just so tired.
And there was a somewhat large-small dragon who was unconscious on her floor.
Twilight sighed, and her friends looked at her expectantly, waiting perhaps for the usual flurry of research, writing lists, and deciding to pen a report to Princess Celestia. Twilight rested her chin on the table. Well, today wasn't that kind of day. She would just wait until the dragon woke back up again.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Tavi woke with a grinding headache, an unusually dry mouth for a reptile, and a rather menacing young hatchling hovering over him emanating a hesitantly threatening atmosphere. He was also rather ominously surrounded by a group of four stern looking ponies and one tremblingly nervous one.
Tavi smiled nervously, wrinkling his scaly brow and resisting the urge to rub his forehead. That wouldn't be good idea right now, not with the young one obviously challenging him with all the rights of the Lore behind him. Doing anything that could be construed as disrespect or an aggressive response to the challenge would bring the full might of the Noble Dragon code against him.
Tavi stilled, and waited for the hatchling to make the first move. The young one showed a marvelously precocious amount of Discipline for a dragon so small, keeping himself largely still and venting only smoke instead of flames when he was so obviously roused into a protective instinct.
The hatchling's Discipline called to mind Tavi's own dedication to the art, and he stilled himself further. He slowly uncoiled tense muscles, relaxing both his body and releasing the hold of his emotions and instincts upon his consciousness. When he reached the proper state of peace, he turned his attention back to the hatchling.
The hatchling had obviously practiced his own version of Discipline (although it was obvious that he was self-taught) and was no longer even venting smoke, relaxing in response to Tavi's slow release of tension and challenge in his body language.
“Spike. Are you going to do something?” the blue pony asked impatiently, obviously being driven crazy by the combination of silence and lack of movement, bumping the hatchling. The hatchling barely reacted with a mildly irritated look, and then settled back into a state of relative relaxation. Then he spoke.
“You are trespassing.”
Tavi moved slowly, trying to imbue the traditional response with the proper physical grace. He brought his head down to snout level and revealed the softer under-scales of his throat. “I meant no disrespect. I will claim no territory, gather nothing that has already been claimed for my hoard, and in all things your decision will be final while I remain here, if you so allow me to visit.”
The hatchling... no, Spike, watched him with cautious eyes. “So you swear?” he said.
Again, Tavi tried to imbue the traditional movement with a sense of grace. He drew himself back together and made the proper bow, which revealed the proper physical acquiescence by exposing the vulnerable knob of bone at the rear of his skull, directly underneath which the thin wall of bone that was the back of his head was exposed to the proper blow.
“So I swear.” Tavi replied.
- - - - - - - - - - -
When they had first seen the rather menacingly thin dragon on Twilight's front door-step, none of them had quite imagined this. Anytime you see a fairly large, probably carnivorous reptile, you don't immediately break out the tea and biscuits. And you certainly don't go and fetch the kettle.
But within short order of waking up, the six friends had seen an amazingly fussy set of actions put into motion by the rather frightening looking dragon. After his initial acquiescence to Spikes rights as a Dragon, he had wistfully requested a cup of either mint or chamomile teas, and had reacted with delight upon learning that a blend of both was available. After which he had reacted with pleasure upon learning of the presence of other tea within his immediate area, closely followed with rather pointed questions about a kettle.
At which point he bustled around Twilight's kitchen rather busily with his long, whip-like tail draped over one shoulder to be kept out of the way. The six watched, fascinated, as he precisely boiled the water with his breath to the exact temperature for proper steepage, and carefully doled out the loose-leaf tea, and consequently steeped the tea for a precise amount of time and poured each of them a cup of tea with the graciousness of a practiced host before sitting down semi-comfortably at the table with all of them.
Somewhere between then and now, all of them had long lost their fear and trepidation about his imposing stature. Or, to be blunt, Rainbow Dash finally got bored.
“Are you going to tell us anything or what?” Dash asked vehemently, . “And what are you doing here?” In a moment Rainbow was up in the air, flying small, rapid patterns in the air. “You better not be here to hurt Twilight!"
If a dragon with a long snout can put on an affronted expression, this one did. “Of course not,” he snapped huffily, “I would never do anything of the sort! I swore not to, and I would never be so crass as to hurt anything that isn't legitimate prey. And besides, I was a vegetarian long before I went Drake, and nothing changed when I discovered my heritage.”
Twilight's intellect and curiosity, although on temporary hiatus up until this point, now both immediately caught fire upon hearing the words 'went Drake'. “Do you mean to say you didn't start off as a dragon? I mean to say, you weren't hatched, like the majority of Draconus Nobilis?”
The dragon switched conversational targets almost immediately, recognizing with relief a creature that traveled similar conversational circles. “Why, of course. But I am afraid that's nothing new from where I originate. I'm afraid that I cannot speak for dragons here. I know only the details of dragons in my world.”
While the rest of her friends sat staring, Twilight giggled with joy and wiggled in her seat. “You mean you don't come from Equestria! You don't even come from the far edges of the world, do you?” She squealed. “You come from another entire universe! You do! And somehow you got here! Do you know what this could do for the fields of Magic Theory and Thaumatic Physics?”
Twilight laughed and started hopping about the room delightedly, saying everything in a sing-song voice. “ComPLeteLY chANge EverYThiNG WE Know!” she shouted delightedly. But then another thought occurred, stopping her completely righte where she had been previously sitting.
Then she turned suddenly to him, “But why are you here?” she asked, her brow furrowed and eyes narrowed in thought.
The dragon immediately began his explanation, “Well, the Council of Drakes was being held in my hoard- I mean, library, and because of my magical precautions, the only spells that could be cast were joke spells."
"Even Fire-breathing was dampened. (I'm rather proud of that spell you know)” he added as a quick aside and then continued with barely a breath.
“Two of our younger, less Disciplined members were fighting and had charged up joke spells to a potentially harmful degree when I stepped in to...mediate. Then, when the spells reached their full Thaumatic Mass...”
Twilight shook her head violently, her mane flying everywhere. “No, no. Why are you here?” she asked pointedly, carefully looking down the dragon in her living room. “And I mean here rather specifically.” she added, seeing the pained look on his face.
The dragon took a deep breath and sighed, shifting uncomfortably on his tail. He closed his slit-pupiled green eyes and took a sip of his tea, in the largest mug in Twilight's kitchen, and held it there to breathe in the steam and the scent of the tea. He set it down carefully on the table, barely making a sound, (much to the envy of Rarity) and then opened his eyes.
“Well,” he said, sounding reluctant to everypony in the room. “I'm afraid I came because I was trying to avoid possible disaster.” The dragon fidgeted. “You see, I left my hoard...back home. And, as the young dragon here can no doubt attest, due to his apparent, and rather remarkably precocious, development, that can be a very large problem in a short time.”
Spike shifted uncomfortably, but after glancing at Twilight and a short look at Rarity, nodded his confirmation to this claim. Remembering his greed-growth, the six friends stayed silent, not wanting to touch upon that painful memory just yet.
As the thought hung in the air, the six nonetheless remained silent. None of them liked where this was going. The dragon obviously didn't either. “And it looks like I'm going to be living here, in...Equestria,” he said, struggling a bit for the name of the country. “For better or for worse. And until I get a new hoard and a legitimate way of supporting myself in the fashion in which I am accustomed, I need a temporary hoard to prevent...”
At this point, the dragon stopped, a distressed look on his face as he searched for a way to get his point across without unduly upsetting his (hopefully gracious) hosts. But to his visible surprise, the six ponies looked at the purple-green hatchling for a moment before turning their eyes back to him.
“Greed-Growth.” they chorused.
- - - - - - - - - - -
The relief Tavi felt at their familiarity with a dragons traditional... problem was huge, but it increased his interest and (dare he say it?) brotherly inclination towards the young purple-green dragon. Obviously they'd run into this before, with such a precocious young dragon. It saved him a great deal of explaining, but it also meant the poor young one had either had a very close call with Greed-growth or had even actually managed to recover from it.
But none of this was currently relevant. So he swallowed his relief and interest, stilling himself internally with an exercise of Discipline and moved on with the business at hand. “Yes.” he replied to the group of ponies in front of him. “And in line with my avoidance of that, I moved toward the biggest possible...feeling... of the right kind of books and objects that could hold me over until I could find a niche and begin a proper hoard. One which I will actually own.” he added, looking nervously over at Spike, who narrowed his eyes a bit, but kept silent.
Twilight looked vaguely displeased, but not unduly upset either. “I...see.” she said, lost in thought. Obviously her visitor, although menacing looking, was quite gentle and well-mannered and the source of an absolutely fascinating hint for possible new theses. On the other hoof, the tension, although eased significantly, was still vaguely palpable in the air.
There were, of course, other considerations as well. All of which added up to one big decision for Twilight (and Spike, Twilight admitted to herself) and a significantly increased chance for a headache.
Both Spike and Twilight sighed simultaneously, taking sips of tea in hopes of easing the oncoming headache. And both thought.
'Oh, bother'.