The Price

A day after the Fabulousified-Ponyville incident, everything seemed like it was back to normal. The roads were made with ordinary dirt, the rooftops were their usual assortments of wood and straw, and all the ponies went about their ordinary everyday lives. Even Twilight was back to her usual polite self after a well-deserved night’s rest.

Spike was dreaming about baking pastries with Pinkie Pie at Sugarcube Corner when the warm glow of the sun gently lifted him from sleep. He sat up lazily with his nose pointed upwards, slowly sniffing the air. As he had suspected, the smell of fresh baking was to blame for his cake-filled dream.

Practically floating on the air, he allowed his nose to carry him downstairs to the kitchen where a distracted Twilight didn’t notice his entrance. Spike quietly seated himself at the table with a vacant expression on his face as Twilight hummed to herself, busy pouring pancake batter onto the griddle.

The baby dragon gazed idly around the room. He looked at the familiar drawings stuck to the front of the refrigerator: a self-portrait he’d drawn with markers, an attempted replica of Twilight’s cutie mark sketched out with colored pencils, and a classic Crayon drawing of himself and Twilight standing in a flat grassy field with the sun peeking out from the top-left corner. He remembered drawing all of them since it hadn’t really been that long ago. The colors in his self-portrait still bothered him a little since there weren’t any markers that properly matched the color of the scales on his belly. He’d mostly gotten used to the imperfection, though, and was actually starting to like the way it complemented the purple of his other scales.

The sizzling of pancake batter on the griddle was lost on him as he shifted his gaze to look out the window. A yellow bird was singing in a bush right outside the library. After it finished its airy, cheerful tune it took off in flight. Spike’s eyes followed its path but were soon caught up by the sight of Rainbow Dash busting clouds to make way for the morning sunshine. Spike was mildly surprised to find that the Rainbow had actually woken up in time for the morning cloud busting. After a second his still-partially-asleep brain kicked into gear and he remembered that he’d never checked in on Rainbow to see if she was alright after an unexpected dress had caused her to lose control and crash. He was glad to see that she seemed to be okay.

Spike shook his head to wake himself up as he remembered the events from the previous day. Up until now he’d been lost in his dreamy state and had completely forgotten that anything had happened. In an instant his ears lowered in a mixture of fear and shame as it struck him that Twilight might still be mad at him. After she had come back inside in a huff and told Spike not to take any books from the castle she had gone to bed and they hadn’t spoken for the rest of the day. Now her back was turned to him and he realized she still hadn’t noticed that he was there. He watched her for any signs of her mood, taking note of her tidy mane and quiet humming. It looked to him like everything was alright. Twilight wouldn’t have been humming like that if she was still mad.

With a deft jerk of her head Twilight flipped the pancakes over. Most unicorns would prefer to use their magic to accomplish such a task but Twilight had learned how to make pancakes from Applejack, so she stuck to using the earth pony style. As the pancakes landed with a squishy smack the sizzling drew Spike’s attention. He noticed more consciously than before just how good the room smelled as it was filled with the sweet scent of fried batter. As he took a big whiff, his stomach growled.

Twilight’s humming abruptly stopped as she exclaimed, “Ahm!” Her mouth was still on the griddle handle and as she spun around to face the noise of Spike’s stomach she brought it and the pancakes whirling around with her. In a moment of panic she accidentally let go, sending the cooking materials flying through the air for a second before she caught them with her magic.

“Spike, you startled me!” she gasped, gathering herself and returning the griddle to the stove, continuing to cook the pancakes.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean too,” he sat up from underneath the table where he’d ducked to avoid the griddle that had been flying directly towards his head. He cowered slightly in his chair from fear that Twilight was mad or that she would start throwing things again or maybe both.

“It’s not your fault,” she smiled apologetically and turned back to focus on her cooking. “I was hoping the smell of pancakes would be enough to bring you down here, but I guess I got a little too focused.”

Spike silently breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like he was in the clear. Twilight was acting perfectly normal, so he relaxed.

“You getting too focused on something?” he joked sarcastically. “That would never happen!”

In response Twilight just smiled and rolled her eyes, admitting to herself that Spike made a good point. She did in fact have a habit of getting wrapped up in things.

A minute passed which was filled with nothing but a somewhat awkward silence, occasionally broken by a pop or a sizzle from the griddle. Then Twilight busied herself lifting the pancakes off the griddle with a spatula and dropping them onto a plate. After she set down the spatula she started to speak while she turned off the stove and floated the pancakes to the table with her magic.

“I made these to apologize for my behavior yesterday,” she explained quietly, looking down and not making eye contact while she placed the plate in front of Spike. The dragon’s features suddenly exploded into ecstasy when he noticed that the pancakes were sparkling with tiny pieces of gems. These were no ordinary pancakes. They were jewel-pancakes! “Oh wow, Twi--”

But then confusion replaced the joy. “Wait, you’re apologizing to me?”

“Yes,” she answered, taking her usual seat across the table from Spike and looking into his eyes. “I’m really sorry I was so mad at you yesterday. I was stressed out and exhausted, and I was too harsh on you. I realize now that you were just doing whatever you could to help out one of our friends. You didn’t know any better than to borrow a book from the castle, so it wasn’t fair for me to be so mad at you.”

During her apology Spike had gone wide-eyed. He had certainly not been expecting Twilight to consider herself to be the one at fault. He blinked twice, still taken aback a little by the time she was done.

“Don’t worry about it, Twi,” he grinned, waving his hand to dismiss the hard feelings. “The past is in the past. I’m willing to forgive everything that happened yesterday as long as you are.”

“Thank you Spike,” Twilight smiled gratefully. “And you’re right. The past is in the past. Now just promise you won’t borrow any more books from the castle without permission, okay?”

“Trust me,” Spike laughed knowingly, “after all the trouble just one book caused, I’m not going to be borrowing any more any time soon.”

“That sounds good to me. Now eat up,” she cheered. “I made a bit of a mess looking for a counterspell yesterday, so we’ve got a long day of reshelving ahead of us.”

Spike sighed, not too fond of the prospect of climbing up and down ladders with armfuls of books all day. Twilight’s forgiveness along with the jewel-filled pancakes helped soften the blow, though, so he dug into his meal with vigor.

With his mouth already full he stopped and looked up at Twilight, who was watching him with an amused expression. “Did you want some?”

“Oh, no, that’s alright,” Twilight’s smile danced as she laughed. “I’m on a no-crystal diet.”

“Alright,” Spike shrugged and went back to eating.

By the time he was done, which in truth took less than two minutes, his stomach bulged and he sat back wearily in his chair. “Those were really good, TiliUUURP!”

A belch forced its way out of Spike’s mouth, but that wasn’t the only thing. Both pony and dragon stared dumbfounded at the table which had been empty save for a plate and tablecloth only moments earlier, but was now occupied by an enormous diamond.

“Um,” Twilight looked at the jewel curiously. “Did Princess Celestia just send us the world’s biggest diamond without any explanation?”

“No,” Spike said thoughtfully, tasting the inside of his mouth. “That didn’t feel like it was from Princess Celestia. It didn’t really feel like it was from anypony at all.”

Spike watched the many defracted images of Twilight furrow their eyebrows as he looked at the diamond.

“That’s really weird,” he continued. “I was just thinking about how jewels make everything taste so much better and then...”

With a look of horror Spike grabbed his stomach with both hands then looked up fearfully at Twilight. “I think I just used the magic of the Inspiration Whatever-It-Was-Called.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Twilight shook her head, getting out of her chair and walking around the table to Spike. “How could you have gotten the enchantment? Those sorts of spells are only supposed to work on unicorns.”

“Well, I know how we can find out for sure,” Spike declared. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes in thought. After a second he let out another belch and a piece of paper with a Crayon drawing of the two of them standing on a grassy field with the sun peeking out from the top-left side flew out his mouth. He snatched it up in his claw and quickly ran to the fridge.

“Look, I made a copy just by imagining it!” he exclaimed, holding the pictures next to each other and inviting Twilight to compare them.

“But… I still don’t understand,” Twilight hesitated. “You gave Rarity the spellbook and when she read from it you saw the magic enter her horn and she went all fabulous-crazy with the power to create things with just her imagination. Then you broke the spell by telling her how you really felt about her creations, right?”

“Yeah,” Spike answered, thinking for a second. “That sounds right to me.”

“Did the spell say anything about being transferred from one being to another?”

“I don’t think so.” Spike wasn’t exactly over-confident in his answer.

“Well then what am I missing? How could the magic possibly have gone from Rarity to you if you never even read the spell all the way through?” she asked frantically, talking to herself as much as Spike. The dragon cast his gaze downwards.

“Well, there is one little detail I kinda left out,” he said carefully.

Twilight was immediately suspicious. “Spiiike, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Uh, you see, when Rarity was getting crazier and crazier I knew I had to do something, and I thought the book was the only source of her magic, so I took it and… I...”

“You what?” she asked very seriously.

“I swallowed it,” Spike cringed as he finished his own sentence.

“You… WHAT!?!” Twilight glared at him with an unbelievably intense mixture of disbelief and anger. A few of her hairs were starting to fall out of place.

“I’m sorry!” he begged, throwing himself at her hooves. “I didn’t know what else to do!”

“So you ate a book!?! Even worse, you ate an ancient spellbook? The only copy known to be in existence?” she screamed, her eyes growing bigger as here irises shrank to be not quite the same size as each other.

He pleaded pitifully, “I had to do something! Rarity was going to--”

“Out!” Twilight commanded, staring straight ahead, refusing to look at the dragon clinging to her hooves.

“I... what?”

Twilight lowered her head to glare down at him then lifted him up with her magic. She threw him towards the front door and opened it with her magic so he went sailing through. “GET OUT!” she screamed, as if Spike would have been able to stay if he wanted to.

The dragon landed outside and bounced a couple times on the dirt. As he sat up and brushed himself off the door slammed shut and he could hear Twilight screaming and ranting to herself. He knew eventually she’d cool off and it would be okay for him to go back in, but for now he was better off giving her some space.

“So much for it being alright for me to ‘do whatever I can to help one of our friends’,” he thought grumpily to himself. “I was just trying to break the spell. Eating the book seemed reasonable at the time.”

“Oh well,” he sighed. “She’ll get over it eventually. Maybe then she’ll cook me some more jewel pancakes,” he grinned at the thought.

Then a little lightbulb went on in his head. He breathed in, closed his eyes, and belched. Next thing he knew, there was a plate of fresh-cooked jewel-filled pancakes steaming on the ground in front of him. “Haha, yes!” he cheered triumphantly.

Sitting down to enjoy his second bedazzled breakfast, he looked around to take in the view. It was a quiet day, as most mornings are in Ponyville, and Rainbow’s early cloud-busting work had really paid off. The sun shone beautifully, warming his scales and lifting his spirits. He couldn’t have asked for a better day on which to enjoy his favorite breakfast.

As he began to contentedly shove clawfulls of jewel-pancake into his mouth, he looked back at the library, where he could still hear Twilight carrying on. He looked back and forth between his home and his meal like he was contemplating something.

After a few seconds and a few more bites of breakfast, he patted his belly, nodded his head in agreement, and grinned.

“Worth it.”

Author's Note:

I wrote this for the Equestria Daily Writer's Training Ground #017. The prompt was that Spike would have some side effects from eating the Inspiration Manifestation book.

I actually followed the prompt for once! Woo! Go me, right?

I really had no ideas when I started writing, so I think it turned out alright, considering. Thanks for reading and I hope you liked it!

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MysticStoryThePegasus

MysticStoryThePegasus #1 · May 1st, 2014 · 7 · ·

Bahaha!
Spike was so in character, I think I agree with him. Swallowing that book was very worth it.
....I'm hungry now...
....For chocolate chip pancakes.

Spike Swallowed a Book - RenaissanceBrony

The Price

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