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// Chapter 1 
// Story: The Dragon and the Pony 
// by ScrimpyMule 
//------------------------------//

It was a warm summer afternoon in Ponyville and a young couple was strolling just outside of town. They had known each other for five years, but their love had been mutual for less than one. His feelings had taken hold at first sight. She had only begun to reciprocate those feelings in the fall of the previous year.
Spike and Rarity were anything, but an ordinary couple. She was a unicorn, twenty-five years of age. He was a dragon, five years her junior. He had technically been just a baby dragon when they had met due to the fact that dragons aged at less than one-tenth the speed of ponies. Over the past couple of years he had reached the very beginning of his adolescent years, hitting a very minor growth spurt. His body was beginning to match his mental and emotional maturity, which had developed long ago. This opened the way for Rarity to think of him as something more than her “little Spiky-Wiky”. He did not yet match her in height, but he had broadened slightly and the green scales at the top of his head now came up to her eyes rather than her chin.
To her this was nothing more than another one of their casual and rather frequent dates. To him it was so much more, and it was making him nervous He was more apprehensive now than he had ever been in all his life and it was making him sick. So sick in fact that Rarity was beginning to worry. 
“Spike Dear, are you alright?” she asked, “you look positively green…and I’m not talking about your naturally green scales.” 
She was referring to the scales that jutted out of his body, lining his spine and the top of his head. He had a white underbelly and the rest of his body was covered with purple scales. If his purple scales were discolored he was more nervous than he realized. He was beginning to wonder if this was a bad idea.
Spike smiled through his nerves. “No, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure dear? Perhaps we should get you back to the library to rest.”
Before he could answer she put her hoof to his forehead. “Spike!” she exclaimed, “you’re running a fever. Come on, let’s get you home and into bed.”
He grabbed her front leg before she could go any farther. “I’m fine my sweet, it’s not a fever.” He marveled once again at how caring she was. He didn’t know how he could love her more than he already did, but somehow his love grew every time he looked into her eyes. It was thoughts of her that kept him from repeating his sixteenth birthday, when he succumbed to greed (every dragon’s weakness), turned into a full-grown dragon, and nearly destroyed Ponyville.
“Then what is it?”
Spike took a deep breath. “Rarity, I love you. I have since the first time I saw you. Ever since we started going out I feel myself falling deeper in love with you every day. I’m at the point where I can’t imagine life without you.” He got down on one knee and produced a ring made entirely of gemstones, which he had painstakingly created using his own fire-breath and his ability to chew the world’s hardest rocks like candy. “Rarity, will you marry me?”
Tears of joy were falling from Rarity’s eyes and her beautiful face was beaming brighter than the sun. Her lips began to move as her answer came out. “Father Spike.”
Spike was dumbfounded. That wasn’t one of the answers he had prepared himself for. That wasn’t even Rarity’s voice.
“Father Spike.” The voice came from Rarity’s lips again, louder this time. She seemed just as confused as he was, though her confusion was rooted from his behavior rather than the voice.	
“Father Spike!”
The third call pulled Spike from his daydream in the past and into the reality of the present. He was in his cave, sitting on the ground against the wall. He looked down to see his best disciple, Dusk. She was the one responsible for pulling him form his personal paradise.
“Yes Dusk, what is it?” he asked, trying not to sound as irritated as he was. He did not want to snap at anypony who had done nothing to deserve it.  
Dusk just stared up at him for a moment, clearly worried about him. “Princess Celestia is going to come by later today to visit with you. She asked me when the best time was for her to come and I said that late afternoon would be best. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine.” He wanted to show some more enthusiasm about seeing his oldest living friend again and getting the chance to catch up, but he was too weak and his breathing too shallow. 
“What’s wrong Father Spike?” asked Dusk, “the whole clan is worried about you.”
Spike gave a half smile and a slight chuckle, coughing afterwards. “Of course they are. I’m alright” He saw the light coming from the opening of the cave. He couldn’t see the outside world because even sitting down he towered over the cave entrance and he was too weak to maneuver himself to a better viewing position. The way the light was coming in he judged that mid-day was still a way off. “You should get to your morning chores and then to your studies.” 
“Yes Father Spike.” Dusk left, turning back at the entrance to look into his eyes again. She tried to hold back tears, but with little success. She walked outside and left him alone.
Spike hated making the clan worry, Dusk most of all. She was closer to him than anypony had been in a long time. Sighing, he allowed himself to return to his paradise in the past. With no effort at all he was once again face-to-face with his beautiful Rarity. She uttered one word that calmed the butterflies in his stomach and returned the color to his face. One word that seemed to make him utterly weightless.
“Yes.”