Ch. 2: Learning The Satyr
Spike had already thought the tree home was impossibly cool, and he’d already been living in a tree before this. It was just so generally magical, like the whole house was enchanted, which it likely was. That said, aside from the literal magical feeling, it had a lot of interesting things that gave him a lot of insight into his lodger’s personality, allowing him to compile a list of likely personality traits.
The most important on that list was that Kipkirui capital-’H’ hated being dirty. He explained it as his fur being white made it really susceptible to staining, but he even seemed viscously uncomfortable with his skin or hooves getting dirty too. It was almost uncanny, he washed his hands for almost a full three minutes after getting syrup on them from carrying the breakfast plates. His justification was as follows:
“Syrup is horrible. It tastes amazing, but it’s sticky, hard to see, and if you get even the tiniest amount of it on your hands it immediately is on everything you own. It transmits like a disease.” Honestly Spike could see where he was coming from, but three minutes seemed excessive.
Of course, this excessive cleanliness translated into his living quarters, which were so free of dust and dirt that they might as well have never been, well, lived in. There were three bedrooms on the second floor, the largest of which was Kipkirui’s, but Spike was given a choice between either of the two “smaller” rooms (in quotations because he didn’t believe that they were smaller, he thought they were just not the master bedroom because they didn’t have a bathroom attached).
Speaking of Kipkirui’s attached bathroom, his desire for cleanliness was reflected in both bathrooms, which featured massive bathtubs, with water jets, and various mechanisms that made Spike think he would drown long before he managed to get clean in one of those. That said, the second thing he found was that Kipkirui was prone to either absentmindedness, or forgetfulness.
He couldn’t pick out any one specific example, but there were a handful of moments, like Kipkirui forgetting to explain any of the bath functions to him without prompting, saying he was going to tell Spike the difference between the two rooms, before freezing for a moment, and unintentionally moving on. Even when Spike first met him, he forgot to explain what he was AND forgot to tell him his name. Spike didn’t want to press him on it, but it was odd to say the least.
In any case, he did find that the rooms were virtually the same size outside of layout, and while one was slightly bigger, the smaller one had one of those beds embedded in the wall in a sort of alcove. The moment Spike saw it, he fell in love.
“I want this one.”
“Feels like a cave?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t lived in one, but it feels right.” Kipkirui had a sort of confused smile.
“You haven’t lived in a cave before? Did you not live with dragons?” Spike jumped on the bed, almost wanting to go to sleep right there.
“Nope. I was pretty much raised by ponies.” Kipkirui shrugged.
“Huh. Well, that’s interesting. Either way, if you’re not going to sleep right now, wanna see the green room?” Spike sat up on the bed.
“Green room?” Kipkirui beckoned, and wanting to see how he managed to build a green room not only indoors, but in the weird pocket dimension they were in, Spike followed. Halfway down the hallway, Kipkirui simply sighed and turned around.
“I forgot to tell you about the lights. Alright, look here.” He walked back into Spike’s room, and said, “Purple, four.” The lights illuminating the room grew dimmer, and turned a rich purple. While Spike did note another brief moment of forgetfulness, he was more occupied with the lights, and in a brief moment of childlike wonder, he really, REALLY wanted to sit there and watch the lights change color for the next twelve hours. Kipkirui went into a deeper explanation of how the lights work, including a deeper explanation of the magic behind them, which Spike appreciated, but the demo for how they worked was boiled down to this: The lights worked with twelve colors, and ten brightness settings, with yellow and seven as the default. Spike was now generally pretty convinced that enjoying a cave-like atmosphere was a dragon thing, because the lights set at blue and three felt absolutely perfect. He didn’t linger on it long, wanting to see the green room, but he wondered if he could find a way to get a radio, or whatever the Satyr’s equivalent might be. Having some music would make his living space perfect.
The green room wasn’t half bad either.
It wasn’t anything super special or magical, aside from the crystal heat lamps, but the plants he grew inside were unfamiliar to the young dragon. Aside from the titanic red and purple flower that filled one corner of the room and smelled of ash, other plants included a row of creeping vines that grew pink and blue flowers with intricate petal designs, and a small, Venus Fly Trap like plant, that moved a little too much like an animal for Spike’s comfort, and it seemed almost as conscious as one too.
Then came the Observatory room.
The floor and walls were a pitch black that made Spike feel like he was walking on glass over a very deep hole. The ceiling on the other hand, was a picturesque night sky. There was also a mysterious globe in the center of the room.
“Uh, Kip, what’s this?”
“That is the astrarium. If you find a constellation, it connects the lines for you, here, it’s midsummer, so we might find Scorpius, or Virgo.” Kipkirui guided him in using the Astrarium, telling him which directions to look in and where to move, before stopping him. “Right there.”
The two looked up at the ceiling as the lines formed between the stars, forming the image of Virgo. Spike was entranced.
The tour of the house ended there, and the two returned to the first floor. While Spike found himself involved with one of the programs on the Pictolith, Kipkirui went to his desk, scribbling down various whatevers, and working hard enough that eventually Spike went to inquire about it, after finding out that the Satyr he’d been a fan of on the show was cheating on his wife. That’s what he gets for jumping into a mid season episode with none of the background knowledge.
Either way, he approached Kipkirui’s chair, and before he could even ask, Kipkirui had an answer for him.
“Okay, so you remember the fly trap plant in the Green Room?” Spike nodded, choosing to just jot it down as being a predictable question. “It’s a prototype for something bigger. Have you ever had the misfortune of dealing with Timberwolves?”
“I’ve heard of them. I lived near the Everfree forest, but I never saw them myself.” Kipkirui nodded.
“Well, in short, they’re aggressive, smelly, very large, and despite no one knowing if they actually have to eat or not, they have a tendency to attack virtually anything that moves. That said, most people assume they don’t need to eat outside of typical plant stuff, so they could make excellent pets. I’m trying to create a potted version first, but it’s rough. See, we tamed wolves and made dogs by feeding them and housing them, and eventually they transformed. So, how do you tame something that doesn’t need to eat?”
“Er, how?”
“Complex magical plant growth formulas and equations.” Spike perked up at that. This was something he was familiar with, he could help!
“I know all about those! I used to be a unicorn’s assistant, and we did magic equations all the time. I still remember her transmutation formula, she almost turned a rock into a drum instead of a hat. Not that fun considering it was on my head, but it’s funny looking back at it.” Kipkirui smiled, spread out his notes across the desk, and moved his chair over.
“In that case, mind pulling up a stool? Let’s see if what this needs is a fresh set of eyes.”
Working with Kipkirui revealed trait number three. He and Twilight were almost uncannily similar in their work habits.
Spike ended up being a common sense filter more than anything else, it was just a thing with smart people apparently, they usually ended up being too smart to see where they had made either really simple mistakes, or where they made things way too complicated. The difference was, Kipkirui wasn’t as big of an overachiever as Twilight, likely because he didn’t have anyone to impress, meaning that he usually ended up being more receptive to simple solutions and taking the easy way out rather than being so by the book.
Mostly because there was no book.
That’s one big thing he learned, Kipkirui was entirely self taught, he’d grown up an orphan, and didn’t have any teachers or mentors. The reason he was so advanced was because, in his own words, Satyrs were “progressively traditional”, doing the same thing with new technology since they’d been in Equestria. He said that even though the methods worked, they were pretty outdated, and he had a pretty big number of discoveries under his belt at how young he was because he learned on his own and learned how to take shortcuts. The conversation came up at lunch one day, when Spike got the courage to ask about Kipkirui’s background. He felt a pang of sympathy for the Satyr. He’d been lucky to have Twilight and Shining Armor when he was growing up, and growing up by yourself seemed so… sad.
“Well, what about you, Spike. You’ve got me telling my not-so-sob story, mind telling me yours?”
“Oh, sure! See, it starts with this pony, Twilight Sparkle, my kind-of-sister, kind-of-mom? She technically hatched my egg, but she’d only six years older than me and her parents did most of the raising. She’d hatched me as an entrance exam thing after a crazy wild magic surge. Until around last year we lived in Canterlot,”
“Pony capital?”
“Exactly. Then, Celestia sent her to Ponyville on a mission so secret that even Twilight didn’t know about it. She told her to oversee the Summer Sun Celebration, and while she was there she made some friends, and stopped Celestia’s sister with some powerful magical artifacts called the Elements of Harmony. We’ve been in Ponyville since.” Kipkirui nodded, finishing the hot chocolate that he was inexplicably drinking in the summer.
“Well, if you don’t mind me asking, do you want to go back?” Spike paused, before heaving a sigh and shaking his head.
“My friends probably miss me alright, but with how little Equestrians know about Dragons, and the fact that I nearly destroyed a town because of that, I think staying with you until I learn what makes me tick is the best plan of action.” Kipkirui reeled, and Spike realized that he hadn’t told him why he’d run off in the first place.
“Destroyed a town?! No offense, but you barely seem capable of killing a spider, much less destroying a town.” Spike cringed at the very true but still very embarrassing observation.
“Yeah, it was an accident. After a bunch of birthday gifts I got real takey, and just turned giant from some weird greed growth. I didn’t hurt anybody physically, but I messed up a lot of people’s houses or businesses, or just generally scared a lot of people. The ponies of Ponyville are nice, but be honest with me, wouldn’t you find it pretty hard to live with someone if you knew they had the potential to cause that much damage?”
“I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t this Twilight manage to pacify an Ursa Minor? Sounds like a big damage potential to me.” Spike looked a bit like he’d been slapped with some unfamiliar news. “I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s not like it wouldn’t be hard, but honestly it would be pretty easy if you know what to deal with.”
“That’s the problem, they don’t. Ponies don’t know much about dragons.” Kipkirui raised an eyebrow.
“Have they tried? I’ve found that dragons have pretty good memories, and are more than willing to talk about themselves or Dragons in general.” Spike thought it over, and his outward expression reflected his inward confusion.
“I… really don’t know. Anyway, I really don’t think I can go back until I get it all sorted out.”
“Maybe you could write your own book about Dragons?”
“Do you know any?”
“Excluding you, five.”
“Huh.” He pondered the idea, but it was being forcefully shoved to the back of his mind by another thought. His friends. Twilight in particular. She was prone to overthinking, worrying, and worst case scenarios, and he hadn’t even thought to tell her where he was going. His eyes went wide at a very real possibility.
For all Twilight knew, he was never coming back.
No, for all Twilight knew, he was hurt, or dead.
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I actually don’t mind the shorter chapters.
10826899
Awesome
Keep up the SUPERB work.
Why do I feel this will end horribly?