A Story I've Been Meaning to Tell You

Little Sapphire, what a pleasant surprise! Come inside. The moist ocean air can’t be good for that fabulous mane of yours.

Now, to what occasion do I owe this pleasure? You visit so seldom; it feels like the last time I’d seen you, you’d just barely earned those gems on your flank.

A question of love, you say? What could this prickly old cactus of a stallion teach you about the thunder and lightning of a beating heart? Surely you’ve got somepony better to ask that didn’t necessitate traveling all the way to the shores of the Sparkling Sea. Why, I doubt there’s a stallion alive who wouldn’t—

Ah. I see. One of those problems. Well, it’s nothing you can’t talk to your grandfather about. Have a seat; I’ve got some new cushions by the fireplace.

So. You’ve had some confusing feelings of late, my Little Sapphire?

And no, I’ll never stop calling you my Little Sapphire, even if you are reigning over a fashion empire. Sapphires are precious to me, and you are too, so hush.

Anyhow, these feelings… Well, you’re hardly the first pony to find love someplace unexpected. In fact, you just reminded your old Grandpa Merc of a story I’d been meaning to tell you sometime, and now seems as good a time as any.

Once upon a time, in the Desert of the Singing Sands, a beautiful, pale mare was searching. Searching for what, nopony could say, for every time she was asked she would reply with naught but a smirk and a quiet chuckle.

Now this mare, let's call her Crystal Belle, was painfully clever. Too clever for her own good, some would say. The stallions back home sure did, as she never could be bothered to spare those lackwits’ feelings in her pursuit of a mate.

The patch of desert she was searching happened to be home to a handsome and intelligent blue dragon, who was himself searching for some mortal to outwit. Now, blue dragons are different from most dragons you’ll find out in the dragon lands. While most dragons will try to look fierce to everyone, or try to be noble as Argon, blue dragons can’t be bothered to care about any of that. They put much more stock in cleverness, and go out of their ways to prove to each other just how clever they are, swapping stories of mortals conned and prizes won.

This blue dragon, let’s call him Mirage, found Crystal to be a most curious creature. As he watched from beneath the dunes, he would see her trace nearly the same path every day: She’d walk a thousand paces out of town, zig-zag between landmarks across the Singing Sands, and end up among the crystal pillars of Wyrmhorn Heights. And all the way she went, her shattered-quartz eyes would be scanning the sands in front of her, in search of some inscrutable prize.

One day, his curiosity became too much for him to bear. So he buried himself up to his great, crystalline horn in a nice relaxing sand bath, not-so-coincidentally where the mare would end that day’s search.

When she finally arrived at the base of his horn, he erupted from the sand and offered her a greeting and some sand ensorcelled to appear as water, per blue dragon custom. She said she’d brought her own, took a gulp from one of her canteens, and offered him some sapphires to make up for a generous gift refused. They conversed briefly about the weather and about his fine scales, among other things, and then departed to their respective homes without ever quite getting around to the subject of her search.

Well yes, my Little Sapphire, blue dragons are incredibly vain. Like you're one to talk; you and I both know how much effort you put into looking positively ravishing on a daily basis.

Anyhow, when Mirage got back to his lair, he took a bite from one of the “sapphires” he’d been gifted. To his infinite surprise, he discovered that it tasted of molten sand spiced with some sort of metal, rather than the delicious blue corundum he’d been expecting. How could he have been tricked? And with the same trick he had tried to play on the pony, no less!

The dragon was enraged, of course, but also duly impressed to have found a match for his wits among the lesser races. Mirage swore that one day, he would get the best of this mare who had bested him.

Well, to a blue dragon, all other races are lesser. Especially those with a lifespan typically measured in mere decades. They're a very proud people.

Some time later, he met that mare in the desert again. She asked how he’d enjoyed her gift to him. “Their taste was exquisite, like no sapphires I’d ever eaten before,” he said, eyes twinkling with malice and admiration. In truth, he had put those “sapphires” in a special place in his hoard, along with the half-eaten one, as a reminder of the mare’s delicious trickery.

He tried again to trick her, this time with a description of a beautiful oasis that existed not far to the East. To his knowledge, there was no such place, but after she so vividly described a time she’d visited it, he spent the next three days searching for it to no avail.

They had many more meetings like this over the next few weeks.

Whenever they weren't actively trying to outwit one another (and sometimes even then), they would talk. They'd talk on every subject, from the ethics of applied greed theory to whether the sapphire or the citrine was the superior gem. Sometimes, they'd even abandon whatever wild goose chase they were sending each other on that day if the conversation was engrossing enough.

Not often, though: These were two beings dedicated to their craft.

Eventually the dragon, whose admiration (and frustration) only grew with each meeting, got around to asking Crystal her name, and gave her his in return. He asked her why she kept coming to the desert. “After all,” he said, “one can find lizards, crystals, and flowers in far more comfortable climes than this.”

She gave him a rueful chuckle. “It seems you’ve found me out. In truth, I’m after something far rarer.

“It is said that in the Desert of the Singing Sands, there lives a certain handsome, clever stallion. I’d utterly failed my first impression with every stallion of interest back home,” she said, “and there were precious few of those to begin with.”

It was then that Mirage hatched a plan to finally get the best of this mare, Crystal Belle.

_\|_/^\_|/_

Whenever Mirage saw Crystal after that, he would ask about the stallion. She would say she hadn’t found him yet, and then he would get her to describe some aspect of him so that Mirage might be able to find him for her. Eventually, Mirage was able to use his excellent memory (even for a dragon, which is saying something) to construct this stallion of her dreams from whole cloth.

So he did.

No, not literal cloth, but that’s not a bad notion.

The next time Crystal saw Mirage, it was in the company of the very stallion she’d been describing those past several weeks. Down to the least detail.

Crystal had been very descriptive.

Well, Crystal tried to show how calm and collected she was at meeting the stallion she had been searching for, but Mirage knew better. He could see through her calm façade to notice the twitch of her tail, the way her ears stood straight up, the way she licked her lips…

“Hello, good sir!” she said to the stallion of her dreams. “What brings such a fine stallion to the middle of the desert, and in the company of a dragon no less?”

“Dragons make for fine company. Well, finer than cacti and scorpions at any rate. Still, I might ask you much the same question, my fine mare.”

When asked his name, he gave it as Mercury with only the slightest hesitation. He claimed that he hadn’t had reason to give his name to anyone in much time, as she was the first pony he’d seen in years and blue dragons were notoriously close with their names.

Yes, “Merc” is short for Mercury. It's a fine name for a stallion, if I do say so myself.

Crystal, unfazed by his hesitation, continued the conversation raptly and starry-eyed. Smirking, the dragon walked over the horizon, and winked out of existence.

_\|_/^\_|/_

For the next several weeks, Mirage waited impatiently for Crystal’s return. His mood shifted from anxious anticipation to disappointment. How fitting that the mare who’d so piqued his curiosity had gone on to drive him to the peaks of pique. He’d finally won, and then she’d denied him the chance to properly bask in his victory!

His souring mood might also have had something to do with her having been the best conversation he’d had in the Desert of the Singing Sands, even including other blue dragons. Their verbal sparring, their arguments, debates, and discussions. She was constantly challenging and one-upping him in such delightfully infuriating fashion. Perhaps it was the jarring absence of the face he'd grown so accustomed to, mischief sparkling behind her eyes as the desert sun would dance in her fiery citrine mane.

One day, though, he saw her again. And so he set his trap.

As Crystal Belle took refuge in the shadow of one of the desert’s many sandblasted crystal spires, the crystal erupted from the ground, taking her up with it.

“Greetings, Crystal,” Mirage said to the unicorn perched on his snout. “It has been too long! How did you like my latest deception?” Though Crystal could not see his maw, she could tell the blue dragon was clearly grinning.

“It wasn’t too impressive,” she replied. Now that he could see her properly, she looked different. Heavier, curiously rounded, and as smug as any dragon he'd ever met. “All I had to do to find you was look for a familiar-looking spire. It reminds me of the first time we met, really.”

Mirage’s grin widened and his eyes narrowed. “Oh, that? Greetings hardly count. I was talking about the last time we met. I understand that you and Mercury had a wonderful time together.”

No, Little Sapphire, I have no intention of going into detail there. This isn't quite that kind of story.

The smug smile failed to fall from the female’s face. If anything, it deepened. “That’s actually exactly why I took so long to come back. I hated to keep you waiting, but I wasn’t certain I was with child and you hadn’t just cast some spell on me until I started belching lightning this week.” Now her smug grin faltered a bit. “I— I was worried you’d caught on and finally gotten the best of me.”

Then her cheeks bulged, she turned her head, and a gout of crackling energy connected her mouth to a nearby crystal spire. “Excuse me,” she said. “Thank you for ‘Mercury’, by the way. He was everything I’d ever dreamed.”

Mirage’s jaw, though she still couldn’t see it from atop his snout, dropped. How could she have seen through his ruse? His clever ruse that had been so long and so subtle in the making? Unless… Unless it had really been her ruse all along.

She was such a clever girl.

“So you knew it was me the entire time, and… you still went along with it?” the dragon said.

“You didn’t think I would lie with a stallion I’d just met, did you?” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “And like I said, ‘Mercury’ was everything I’d ever dreamed. The stallions back home are insufferable and dim besides, and I like you. You pay attention.

“After growing frustrated with the pony stallions my town had to offer, I started looking into… other options. From what I studied about blue dragons, they’re fiendishly clever, beautiful as the sky, and they always look after their young. And then I met you, and… Well, you didn’t disappoint.

“When I head back home, I’d…” She paused, staring down at the brilliant blue scales beneath her hooves. “I’d like you to come with me. While I’m well-off enough to take care of our child on my own, I’d much rather they grow up knowing the fascinating drake that is their father. Even if he is their father only because I tricked him.”

She waited for a few moments, and his jaw continued to fail to rehinge itself. It did, however, turn up at the corners, and sparks of joy began to dance in his enormous eyes. “Of course I’ll come with you. I’ll follow you 'til the world’s heart freezes and the stars fall from the sky!” he bellowed. “But on one condition: We go together, as husband and wife. You are the single most interesting creature I’ve ever met, dragon, pony, or cactus, and I want to see everything you do to this world. And besides, I really want to meet our child.”

Tears welled up in Crystal Belle’s shattered-quartz eyes as her perpetual smirk defrosted into a genuine smile, and she leaned in to plant a kiss between his eyes.

And that, my Little Sapphire, my darling Rarity, is how your great-great-great-grandmother and I fell in love. Now, tell me more about this charming young drake you’ve been seeing…

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