Wrong Timing
I arrived in Ponyville without problems. Despite my assurances to Psycho, I’d been nervous something might happen now that I was travelling alone even though I hadn’t minded it the last time. Another side-effect of everything that was going on in the hive? Or had Pharynx gotten to me? He’d intercepted me on my way out and had a fit about not bringing bodyguards or weapons or something and I could have sworn he’d have gone with me regardless of what I said or did! Instead, just as I’d begun to resign myself to the fate of having him looking over my shoulder and hissing everypony away from me, he’d suddenly stopped mid-rant, squinted into the distance, and flown off without so much as a word of explanation. I couldn’t see what had caught his attention so, chalking it up to his usual inexplicable behavior, I’d taken my leave before something else decided to halt me.
Maybe I should have brought him along? He’d undoubtedly have made the visit awkward and strained even if he’d agree to restrain himself from lashing out at anypony who dared to as little as look at me, let alone approach and chat, but maybe Spike or somepony would have a suggestion on what to do about him, too? Oh well, I could always ask, assuming the advice about the renegades wouldn’t be applicable to him, and they didn’t necessarily have to meet him to give advice! Not that I didn’t want Spike and my pony friends to meet my brother, but that wasn’t an emergency, and there’d probably be plenty of chances for it later!
I headed for Twilight’s castle, assuming Spike would most likely be there, but instead, I caught sight of him in what looked to be the town square. Curiously, he was holding a long scroll, and a bunch of ponies were setting up decorations in the immediate area. Twilight and Starlight were helping too.
I landed next to him as he was inspecting a fire pit.
“Okay, that’s working,” he muttered to himself, then checked his scroll. “Next should be- Ah! Thorax? What the- I mean, hi, I wasn’t expecting you… today… When did you get here?”
“Only this second. Didn’t you tell me to drop by whenever I could?”
“Yeah, but… nevermind. I… guess I… wasn’t expecting you so soon… eheheh…” His eyes darted around and he rubbed the back of his neck. Meanwhile, Twilight and Starlight had noticed me and were looking questions at each other. And why were their auras getting murky all of a sudden?
“Is this a bad time?” I asked Spike.
“What?! No! Why would it be a bad time?” His eye twitched.
“Because you’re obviously preparing for some kind of celebration, and it doesn’t look like it’s meant for me, even if you hadn’t just said you weren’t expecting me right now.” And your and the ponies’ auras are suggestive of confusion and mild panic. “If I’m intruding, you know you can tell me, right?”
“Yeah! Sure! I know I can tell you everything because we’re friends and all that, and friends tell each other stuff, and… yeah…” He was sweating by now and sporting the fakest of fake grins, and I was starting to ask myself how to proceed. Just leaving would be awkward for everyone involved, but would it be less rude to play dumb or to reveal to him that I wasn’t convinced and make him tell me whatever he was trying to hide? But how to get him to tell me?
“...and, uh,” he continued, “this is… not really a celebration, it’s… uh… a friend’s birthday! Yeah, so we’re setting up a party, you know?”
“Yes, there’s a birthday party here later,” Twilight said hurriedly, joining us. “And we were… trying to get it done in time!” She chuckled awkwardly and shot a glance at Spike. “But it would be… rude of us to, uh, exploit you for the work, so, would you like to come to the castle? Spike and Starlight will join us later!”
Spike and Starlight hurriedly nodded.
“Right!” Spike exclaimed. “I’ll just, um… finish up something here… and I’ll come after you two real quick!”
“Okay then,” I shrugged. “I’ll see you, uh, in the castle, I guess…”
I turned around to tell Twilight I was ready to go, but she was already moving away at a brisk trot, apparently not having realized that I wasn’t following yet. I rushed to catch up.
“So, Thorax,” she said, “I know you’ve been in the castle before, but that was just to spend one night and get your medal, wasn’t it?”
“Yes…”
“How would you like a tour?”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that… I’m sure you have more important things to do…”
“No, not really! I mean, other than helping with that… birthday party… but they didn’t really need me to help out! I kind of volunteered to… to pass the time!”
She was lying too now? Would it be rude of me to ask why? And even if it wouldn’t, would she be willing to tell me? I decided to wait a bit, play along, and try to figure out the matter as I went. Maybe an opportune moment would come up to ask a little more directly?
“Well, I don’t want to trouble you…”
“Come on, I’d be delighted to show you around! I’ve been preparing a tour for you ever since I met you and made that promise that Ponyville would always be a safe haven to you along with the Crystal Empire! Of course, I didn’t expect you to become a king before I could give you the tour… Celestia, how time flies…”
Okay, that at least sounded genuine…
“Will Spike know where to find us?”
“Of course! He lives there; he knows the castle like the back of his claw!”
“Okay… if you say so… I guess a tour would be nice…”
“Great!”
She lit up her horn, and before I realized what was happening, there was a flash of purple magic and we were suddenly in front of the castle’s main entrance. I needed a moment to orient myself.
“Thorax?” she asked with a hint of concern in her voice.
“I’ll never get used to teleporting,” I groaned, then shook myself into focus. “Uh, nevermind. Where were we?”
Her face and aura brightened as she opened the castle doors to let us in and started reciting a detailed description of the castle’s creation, basic layout, composition, magical properties, and cultural significance, all of which got covered in the main hallway. I listened with unbridled awe at how detailed she’d arranged the presentation! Even Sunburst hadn’t gotten that thorough at any point while teaching me about pony society! To be honest, Twilight’s lecture may have been a bit too detailed for an average audience, as I caught myself trying to understand some technical detail or other at several points while she, oblivious to my momentary puzzlement, continued her speech, and I was left struggling to catch up with what I’d missed. Her aura was so bright and warm that I didn’t have the heart to interrupt her! After a while, she proceeded to show me around room by room, and there was something to be heard about each of them! Okay, she may have skipped a broom closet or two, but every other room had at least one point of interest to be shared with me! She made it all sound intriguing, and her pleasant, warm aura made the experience that much more enjoyable, but the castle was huge and seemed even bigger from the inside than from the outside; I couldn’t help but wonder how long the tour was supposed to take. A week? At this rate, maybe longer than that, unless things were to get less interesting once we reached the bedrooms. Unless she had a list of distinguished guests who had stayed there and was to say a few words about each of them and the business that had brought them here? The way this was going, I wouldn’t put it past her!
Oh dear. If this was the norm for giving tours, what was a hypothetical tour of the hive supposed to look like? Certainly longer than the one I’d given to the buffalo! Had they left disappointed? And if tours were really supposed to be this detailed, how was I supposed to pull it off with any future visitors? We’d never be done!
All that, of course, assuming we’d get any visitors in the future. If we kept our current trend, they’d all be afraid to show up, and the few that would gather up the guts would probably get chased away! Had I forgotten what I was here for? Twilight was so ecstatic with the ordeal that I still didn’t have the heart to interrupt her even for a question related to the tour itself, but couldn’t this have waited for some other time? Or couldn’t she have gone with the abridged version, assuming there was one? What if this was the abridged version? I really needed to find Spike!
Actually, could Twilight help me instead?
I started working up the nerve to break the spell and ask her, but as it turned out a few rooms down the line, I didn’t have to. Spike himself showed up! Finally! How long had it been? An hour? Two? Nevermind; he was here and that was all that mattered! We could finally discuss my problem! Unless Twilight intended to shrug off the interruption and continue with the tour as if nothing had happened?
“Hey guys,” Spike said. “Sorry it took so long… I had some… things… to take care of.”
“It’s fine,” I said hurriedly. “How did you find us?”
He snickered. “After Twilight’s endless rehearsing, adjusting, re-rehearsing, re-adjusting, and re-re-rehearsing the tour- wait, was that enough ‘re-’s in ‘rehearsing’? - anyway, after all that and my forced volunteering as a critic throughout the process, I knew exactly where you guys would be! Eh, give or take a couple of rooms.”
“Oh.” Wait, forced volunteering?
“Is the… birthday party… coming along fine?” Twilight interjected.
“Actually… can I borrow you for a second?” He grabbed her by a hoof and pulled her out of the room. “Sorry Thorax!”
“But-”
Great. Now they were both gone and I was left by myself in a random… uh, what was this? Tea room? Why did ponies need a special room to drink tea? I didn’t remember the Crystal Castle having one! And couldn’t tea be drunk anywhere? Did they simply need a fancy name for a surplus room when there were many similar ones in the castle? And what did it matter? If Twilight wanted to have a tea room, a breakfast room, a chair room, and a plushie room, that was her right! She’d earned this castle!
If only she had a talk-to-a-friend room…
Okay, maybe I was freaking out for no reason. Maybe Spike just had to tell Twilight something that wasn’t meant for everyone’s ears, or maybe he needed her help with something that would be done quickly, and they’d be back in a moment. No reason to lose my mind!
Then where had their auras gone to?
Come on, I told myself, just because they may have gone somewhere doesn’t mean they won’t be back quickly! Pull yourself together! They know you’re here and will come back!
Convincing myself to drop the panic act, I sat down in one of the chairs. Twilight wouldn’t mind, would she? Probably not… at the very least, I had no intention of causing damage to the furniture, and the chair was sturdy enough to hold several changelings, though I had to admit I’d seen more comfortable ones, not that this one was uncomfortable as such, just… a little disappointing, that was all. Unless it simply wasn’t meant for someone of my size? I shifted into my old, black self; I probably wouldn’t have experimented like that in Twilight’s presence, but being alone made it only slightly less awkward. Anyway, the level of comfort was about the same in both forms, so I switched back into my new self before somepony came in. Not that anyone did...
Minutes ticked away and my waiting remained unrewarded. On one hoof, I didn’t really mind; the peace and silence was a welcome break from the chaos back at home. But on the other hoof, the chaos wasn’t going to end unless I put a stop to it, and I was wasting valuable time by sitting here like a discarded cocoon! I couldn’t relax knowing what was happening in the hive, no matter how much I willed myself to resist the panic! Eventually I got up from the chair and went pacing around the room. It wasn’t going to help in any meaningful way, but I just had to divert my nervous energy into something!
Spike still wasn’t showing up, and neither was Twilight. Where could they have gone?! This was getting ridiculous!
Had something happened to them?
I wanted to dismiss that idea; this was their home, and Equestria was a nonviolent, low-crime land uninvolved in any wars as far as I knew, therefore, it was unlikely they’d been attacked. Had they had an accident? That was possible, and though I didn’t think it likely, the idea wasn’t leaving my mind.
Should I go look for them?
Again, two conflicted sides fought for dominance in my mind. If they were in trouble, they may need help, and maybe I could provide that help or at least go looking for somepony who could! But if they weren’t in trouble? What if something completely harmless had delayed them? What if they got angry at me for interfering? What if they got so angry that they decided to send me away? What if they stopped calling me a friend if I-
Okay, stop it! Just stop! That won’t happen!
But I could still do something to offend them… friends or not, I wasn’t sure about the exact protocol I was expected to follow! Was I expected to follow a protocol?
But what would some protocol matter if something had happened?
Though still torn between being a polite guest and checking on my hosts, the fear for their safety prevailed even though I didn’t know what I expected to be jeopardizing them, and I opened the tea room doors and stepped into the hallway, only to realize I didn’t know where to go looking for them. Even if I had any ideas, I probably wouldn’t know how to get there! Twilight had yet to show me at least half of the castle, and now that she wasn’t around to point out every little detail of the architecture, everything looked the same as everything else and I had no idea how I was supposed to get my bearings! Even the hive was easier to navigate! How would I know where I’d been and where I was supposed to go? I couldn’t even rely on love auras to act as a beacon of sorts; I could sense several, all coming from different directions, and all of them were tense, some even murky! If any of them were my friends, their auras looked nothing like they had when I’d last seen them! How was I supposed to make any sense of that?
Would it help if I tried to follow one of the auras to its source? Even if it turned out to be no one of interest?
In the old days, such a strategy had been vital to the prey hunters when tracking the soon-to-be-food ponies, and sometimes to fighters and infiltrators too. I’d never even been considered for an assignment that would have relied on figuring out the exact location of a source of a love aura, and because of that, I could only tell roughly where an aura was coming from. Not that it would have mattered right now because there weren’t that many auras to distinguish and track, and anyway, I wasn’t yet entirely familiar with the castle’s layout. I ended up making a wrong turn or walking into an empty room on several occasions because I’d misjudged a direction or a distance! Another thing that complicated matters was that the auras’ sources were moving about, which had to be expected in all honesty, but that did nothing to curb my frustration! In due course, I was so frustrated that I could hardly keep up the whole strategy!
So when I pretty much collided with Spike at an intersection, it came as no surprise to me that I’d failed to register his approaching aura.
“Whoa!” he cried on impact. “What the-”
“Sorry!”
“Thorax? What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t I say I’d be right back?”
“Well, yeah, but… I don’t know… I kind of got bored… and worried something happened to you…”
“What would happen to me? I live here!”
“I know… it’s just, you said you’d be back in a minute and I waited for much longer that a minute…”
“Oh. Right. Must have lost track of time, heh…” He glanced around himself.
“Is something wrong?”
“No! Of course not! What could possibly be wrong here? I mean, this is Ponyville and Twilight’s castle… nothing wrong ever happens here, y’know?”
I tilted my head at him. “Didn’t you once tell me that half of Twilight’s world-saving adventures happened at least partly in Ponyville? And that you get a rampaging beast from Everfree Forest on a monthly basis? And that Starlight broke into the castle once and-”
“Okay, okay, I get it, we get our share of excitement, but there’s nothing going on now! Honestly!”
I wasn’t convinced but decided not to push it for the moment. Maybe it would come up in a conversation at some point? “Okay, if you say so,” I shrugged.
“Hey, wanna go back to the tea room?”
“Will you stick around this time?”
“Uh, sure.” He glanced around himself again. “How did you get so far away from it, anyway?”
“I did?”
“Dude, it’s three levels below us and on the other side of the floorplan.”
“Wow… I never realized…” I made a mental note to give up trying to chase auras unsupervised.
“You’re lost?”
“Kind of…”
“And you find your way in that hive of yours just fine?”
“I don’t know the whole hive inside-out, for the record, but I did grow up there and… well, I guess I understand its logic, so to speak. But this castle… I can count on my hooves how many times I’ve been inside, with a hoof or two to spare. It’ll be another while until I can reliably find my way around it.”
“Eh, fair enough. Twilight and I were confused too in the beginning. I just assumed, you know, since the hive is so chaotic, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure this out.”
“It helps if I know where I’m trying to get to, as in, the room is on the tenth level, east side in the surface layer, or something like that. Or at least, take a right, then left, then up the stairs, and fifth door on the right, that sort of thing.”
“I get it. Maybe I should get Twilight to draw a map?”
I chuckled. “That would help, yes!”
We walked in silence for a little while. Spike led the way, still glancing around himself at every turn and intersection. I didn’t think much of it at first, having assumed he was simply making sure we were on the right path, but pretty soon, my nerves calmed down enough to start perceiving the love aura in a little better detail. A few sources of that aura were still moving about seemingly randomly, but since Spike was here and insisting that everything was alright, I decided to ignore those sources. Spike’s aura was still tense, though, and I assumed it had something to do with why he’d left me sitting alone in the tea room for so long. Did it have something to do with that birthday party in the town, too? He’d been acting weird ever since I arrived! Was he too having problems? But we were friends; if he had something on his mind, why didn’t he want to tell me? Was it simply because I’d hinted at needing help and he didn’t want to burden me with his own worries? Didn’t he know I’d gladly help him out any way I could, even if I could do nothing but listen?
“Okay, here we are,” he said eventually, opening a door. “After- you…”
“You!” barked a raspy voice from inside the room. “Finally! Where have you been?!”
Spike cast a panicked glance at me and gulped. Whoever was in that room, was she the reason for everypony’s strange behavior?
“Uh.. hi…”
“I didn’t come all the way to Ponyville to be left waiting!”
“Sorry… I-”
“Where did you go?!”
“Nowhere! I’ve been… here… the whole time…”
The visitor marched out of the room and I finally got to see her: a blue dragoness, roughly my size, spouting smoke from her nostrils and gritting her teeth worse than Pharynx on the day I’d gotten expelled from military training. Her aura wasn’t much less red-hot than Pharynx’s had been on that day, either, but it had only gotten like that a moment ago; I realized one of the auras I’d been attempting to track earlier must have been hers.
“Then why did I have to tear down this castle to find you if you were ‘here the whole time’?!”
“Um…”
“Spike had something important to do,” I interjected in a hope to calm her. “I think-”
“Oh yeah? And what would that be?”
“Uh, I’m not sure exactly, but I came to visit him earlier today and he kind of disappeared and left me to wait-”
The dragoness faceclawed. “So you treat all of your guests like that?! I can’t believe I expected to learn about friendship from you…”
Something clicked in my mind. “Was your visit planned?” I asked her cautiously.
“Of course it was! Didn’t you see how they decorated the whole town?”
“Spike?”
He was by now biting his lip and wringing his tail so hard that I half expected scales to start popping off. A whimper that might have been a ‘yes?’ escaped his mouth.
“Birthday party, huh?” I stated, glaring at him.
“Uh- I- um- well- What was I supposed to say? I thought Ember would kick your flank all the way back to the hive!”
“...what?”
“Don’t you see how tough and intimidating she is? And you’re so gentle you couldn’t bring yourself to slap a rabid timberwolf to save your own life!”
“So what?” she protested. “Just because I’m tough and intimidating means I go around kicking flanks unprovoked? You think someone like that would be even remotely interested in learning to be friendly?”
“Well I couldn’t know that nothing would provoke you or that you’d restrain yourself! And I forgot to tell Thorax to not show up on this particular day, and now that he did, I didn’t want anything to happen to him!”
“So that’s why you’ve been shutting me out all day?”
“Thorax, I-”
“I appreciate your concern, Spike, but just because I’m struggling with the changelings doesn’t mean meeting Ember would have turned disastrous! You could have at least given it a chance!”
On an impulse, I stormed towards the nearest window and, opening it, flew out of the castle. I could hear Spike shouting after me but didn’t care. Something had snapped in me in that hallway and I couldn’t bear listening to him anymore! I couldn’t believe I’d trusted him against my instincts! Even worse, he’d done something similar once before, way back in the Crystal Empire, and I’d trusted him regardless! He was reliable most of the time, but… if he was to keep relapsing into this kind of behavior… but he’d done so much to help me too and I couldn’t ignore that!
Ugh, why did this have to be so complicated?! I needed a place to sit down and clear my head!
I found it on the outskirts of Ponyville, near a lake currently devoid of ponies. I wasn’t in the mood for wondering why the place was abandoned - in fact, it suited me perfectly - and just slumped onto the ground next to the water. My mind was a jumbled mess of images of changelings bickering and fighting among themselves, of ponies looking down on me, of other creatures refusing to heed my pleas for friendship… of Spike acting like I was a gullible fool…
Maybe I was a gullible fool. I shouldn’t have accepted his excuses so readily when I’d known they weren’t true; I shouldn’t have taken it for granted that he’d tell me the truth afterwards at a convenient moment! I should have pressed for an explanation right away! I should have pressed for an explanation… but how? I’d never been any good at the stern approach! If I had, I may not have needed to rely on Pharynx to defend me all my life, I may not have been a target of constant bullying… I may not have had a reason to run away from the hive, and if I hadn’t done that, I’d never have befriended ponies and learned the power of shared love! Ironically, my meekness had turned me into what I was today against all odds, even though it was a hindrance most of the time, and now more than ever, it was time to learn to set it aside when a stern approach was necessary. If only I knew how!
I absent-mindedly kicked a pebble into the water.
Maybe the stern approach was what I needed with the renegades, too? Not the Chrysalis-fury level of sternness, of course - I doubted I could ever go that far even for the purpose of casual imitation - but something halfway: mot meek, but not murderous either, just enough to get the message across when politeness failed? Oh, but how would I figure it out? Pharynx was the master of harshness, but I didn’t see the point of asking him to teach me; he’d been trying and trying and trying to do just that ever since we were nymphs, all the way up until my escape, and I’d never picked up one little thing! True, I hadn’t been interested at the time, but even if I tried harder now, would he be interested to give it one more try? The way things were going with him lately, he’d more likely mock me and refuse, or gloat about me having come to my senses at last, or something along those lines! And even if he agreed to teach me again and I ended up making some progress, what promise did I have that it wouldn’t take my sternness too far?
But whom else to ask for help? Everypony I could think of was either too friendly to give sternness lessons, or I’d never seen them in action and therefore couldn’t know whether or not to take them into consideration, or were presumably too busy!
I kicked another pebble into the water and jumped in apprehension when a loud thud and a roar resounded just as I was expecting a tiny splash from my pebble. It sounded like it had come from somewhere not too far… maybe from behind that small hill? Then, a couple of thuds more and another roar followed. Curious, I flew up to investigate. Pretty soon I sensed an aura from behind the hill: mostly jumbled, but with a noticeable red-hot overall flavor. That explained the roars, at least!
The thuds were explained pretty soon too when a flying boulder nearly crushed me as I passed over the hilltop. Ember the dragoness was there, punching and kicking at the boulders and flinging them around one after another, pouring that red-hot aura into every move she made yet failing to ease its intensity within herself.
Then she noticed me mid-roar and dropped the boulder she’d probably intended to catapult to the moon.
“You’re still here?” she asked, eyeing me half-curiously, half-suspiciously.
“Uh… yes?”
“Why?”
I stared at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“You left because of what Spike did and I got the impression you didn’t have any other business here at the moment. I figured you were already halfway to the hive or wherever.”
“No, I needed to clear my head first, and… well, I didn’t even get to do what I came here to do, so…” I shrugged. “What’s the point of going home?”
“Hm. I could say something like that, too.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She crossed her arms. “No.”
“Oh. Okay… It’s just, you know, it might help you feel better…”
“I don’t do feelings!”
“Your aura would disagree-”
“My what?!”
“Your love aura.”
She stared at me blankly.
“Okay, it’s called love aura because love is the component we changelings feel the strongest, and the one that’s the most important to us, but it reflects an individual’s overall emotional state. Yours is red-hot at the moment, which suggests you’re angry at something… hopefully not me…”
“I’m a dragon! That’s pretty much our default state!”
“But Spike’s a dragon too, and his aura is nothing like that!”
“He was raised by ponies; figures he’d be like them.” She looked into the distance and huffed. “That’s kind of why I came here…”
“Yes?”
“You know how dragons are fierce and competitive?”
“I’ve heard stories, yes.”
“I was like that until not that long ago, then the time came for the old Dragon Lord to step down and a new one to take his place, and Spike helped me win the competition for the throne against all other dragons. He did it out of what I eventually learned was friendship - long story - and it… kind of… started to look like it might not be such a senseless concept as dragons normally see it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and came to the conclusion it can benefit us, and since Spike was my first contact with friendship, he seemed like a logical choice if I wanted to learn more about it and, with any luck, to figure out how to get the other dragons to give it a try. Somehow I don’t think I got what I came here for…”
“Didn’t he welcome you and-”
“Oh, he welcomed me alright. You saw the decorations. There was a welcome committee and a musical band and everything. He even tried holding a speech in my honor.” She rolled her eyes. “Then I asked about Twilight and he let it slip that she was in the castle so I asked to go there and see her, and we did, except he sat me down in the, what’s it called, dining room? Whatever, he told me to wait a second and disappeared, and I went looking for him-”
“-and eventually you ran into him taking me around. And I didn’t know today would be inconvenient for him and wondered why he coerced Twilight into giving me a tour of the castle and then showing up later only to disappear with her…”
“You went looking for him too?”
“Yeah…”
She burst out laughing. “And he must have been looking for one or both of us during that time! No wonder I couldn’t find him!”
“Twilight and probably a few other ponies must have been looking for us too.”
“How do you know that?”
“I sensed sources of love aura moving around the castle-”
“Oh, right, the freaky changeling sense. Wait a minute… Spike called you Thorax… that wouldn’t be the same ‘King Thorax’ who sent me a declaration of peace a little while ago, would it?”
I smiled sheepishly. “Maybe…”
She snickered. “Might have guessed. You and that courier were acting so polite and timid that I’d never take you for changelings if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes that he could shapeshift and didn’t fizzle into that black thing when Garble bonked him unconscious!”
Garble? Bonked? “Uh…”
“Nevermind,” she said hurriedly.
“Hey, I think we owe Spike an apology,” I said. “At least I do. Or at least an explanation. I mean, the whole thing fell apart for all three of us because of a misunderstanding…”
“...and lying and pretending,” she interjected. “Or do you ignore that out of habit?”
“No, of course not! Okay, he lied to us, but I know him! He must have done that as an attempt of damage control!”
“And we should be apologizing or explaining, why exactly?”
“For jumping to conclusions, if for no other reason.”
She just stared at me with a frown that again reminded me of Pharynx.
“It’s what friends do?” I tried.
“...ugh, fine. But don’t expect me to get all sappy or whatever ponies do when apologizing!”
“You don’t have to, but don’t hide your feelings, either. You’ll feel much better!”
“What, because my aura is too hot for you, wimp?”
I winced.
“...I’m guessing I said something I shouldn’t have?”
“I’ll tell you later. Come on, let’s find Spike!”
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Ember and Thorax really do work well together. Even if it isn’t romantic, their personalities mesh enough to be good friends.
Yay! Thorax meets Ember!
Now if he can get some good advice from her.
Btw, Thorax and Ember are my two favorite characters
Oh yeah spike is expecting a visitor coming here and it's the dragon lord herself ember
I get it there a little bit different from each other but still later they're going to find out
Yeah changelings can sense there's something wrong the ponies and creatures kind of forgot they can tell if they're lying
Well I wouldn't say nothing going on here a lot of things happen ever since Twilight came to Ponyville
Oh my gosh it's ember 😍 and to be honest I kind of ship between thorax and ember so cute together
Ohhh yeah I remember back in season 6 that was pretty painful experience he went through poor guy
Yeah as I expected this would happen thorax came in the wrong timing where Spike was inviting ember and he was afraid that these two were not get along with each other since they're different which I guess but the problem is you got to give them some credit that maybe these two can actually help each other that's what being friends are for and again I've always liked these two together how much opposites they are but yet they so blend with each other yeah that's right I ship thorax and ember but anyway thorax has been having some conflict about whole situation he he is upset with him but he can't bring himself to hate him either and then she came along and explained why was he doing here and they both kind of asked the same thing about how to become friends and even try to get control of their Kingdom so now they have to find Spike and explain the whole situation and hopefully he explained as well well let's find out next time
Ooh, I must say, I like this version of the events! And don't Thor and Em make for such good interactions!
Nice take on the event. Thumbs up 👍!
I simply skipped Spike's attempts to keep Ember and Thorax from meeting eachother.