• Published 30th Sep 2012
  • 18,173 Views, 2,114 Comments

The Study of a Winning Pony - Ponibius



Twilight Sparkle gets assigned to study the insanity that is Cloud Kicker's life for a sociology report. It's just a matter of surviving her circle of crazy friends, paramours, and disappointed family members to do so.

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Twilight Eats Derpy's Muffin

The Study of a Winning Pony

Chapter 7: Twilight Eats Derpy’s Muffin

I knocked on the door and waited for a reply. The top half of the door opened, and Derpy poked her head out. I had planned on arriving here in the evening, considering Derpy was more likely to be home. Seeing as she was a mailmare and a mother of two, I figured this would be the most likely time she would be available for an interview. The fact she was home was encouraging. I could use some good news after dealing with Spike earlier.

She gave me a cheerful wall-eyed look. “Oh, hi! Twilight Sparkle, right? What can I do for you?”

I gave her a friendly smile. “Hello, um, Derpy Hooves, is it?”

“Actually, my name’s Ditzy Doo,” she corrected me.

One of my eyebrows raised at the name. With her last name I wondered if she was related to Daring Do. I pulled out my notebook and a pencil and made a correction to my notes, and I made a note to ask if she was related to the famous archaeologist, explorer, and inspiration for a popular fiction series. “Okay, Ditzy Doo it is then.”

“Well, Lady Ditzy Doo of Houses Doo and Cumulus, if you really wanna be technical about it." She gave me a playful grin.

I ran a line through some of my notes and wrote down her full title. “Alright, Lady Ditzy Doo. So that’s what you would like for me to call you then?” So a ladyship, but with no actual titles or anything? She’s probably only technically a noble, effectively a commoner with a fancy title and nothing to back it up. She wouldn’t be the first impoverished noble I had ever met. Not that it was any surprise she was impoverished with that pedigree. The Doos never recovered from their part in the Lunar Rebellion, and House Cumulus has always had far too many heirs to build up on any proper holdings.

“Well, everypony calls me Derpy,” she said with a not-so-innocent smile. “You can too, if you like.”

My eye twitched slightly. I crossed out more lines and made more corrections to my notes. She may have been messing with me. Already this interview was starting to rub me the wrong way. “So anyways, Derpy, do you have a moment?”

She nodded her head and put on a bubbly smile. “Of course. What do you need?”

“Um, yes.” I rubbed the back of my neck. This always felt embarrassing to have to explain. “You see, I’m helping with this sociology study for Canterlot University, and I was hoping to be able to interview you about something.”

“What’s it about?” she asked. I found it a bit awkward as her eyes slowly drifted in different directions. I felt like I was staring, but where else are you supposed to look? It was all terribly disconcerting for me.

I tried to keep my smile from appearing strained. “Oh, I was hoping to ask you a few questions about Cloud Kicker. She’s the subject of my research.”

“Okay! Come on in.” She opened the rest of her door and motioned for me to follow her inside. “Shouldn’t be a problem if it doesn’t take too long. We’re just fixing dinner.”

I stopped short of the threshold. “If I came at a bad time, I can always come at a time of your convenience. It’s just I didn’t know what would be the best time to catch you.”

She shook her head and waved me in. “No, it’s fine, Sparkler and Dinky should be alright making spaghetti without me.”

“If you’re sure it’s not a problem.” I walked into Derpy’s living room, taking a moment to glance around. It looked homey, like what you would expect a home to look like in a magazine or a well-produced play. There was a great deal of furniture spaced out around the some, such as cushions and a couch spaced out around the home, and the flooring was made up of bamboo. Pictures were nailed to the wall and there were only a few decorative nicknacks lying around.

Derpy pointed a hoof at a cushion for me to sit on and sat herself on a nearby couch. “Go ahead and make yourself comfortable.”

I placed my saddlebags beside the cushion and sat down. “Thank you. It means a lot to me for you to do this--especially on such short notice.”

Derpy leaned back in her couch and made herself comfortable. “Not a problem. Now, you said you had a few questions about Cloud Kicker?”

I levitated my notebook and pencil before me. “Yes, so how about we jump right into it?” It struck me as odd that Derpy seemed completely unperturbed that I wanted to talk to her about Cloud Kicker. Maybe knowing her since foalhood played a role in that? “When did you first meet each other?”

She gave me a grin. “We first met at Flight Camp. We were in the Flight Camp mess hall, and I saw that there was only one muffin left in the serving line. So I dashed over and crashed right into Cloud Kicker to get to the muffin. She was a bit mad at first, since I did kinda knock her over while trying to take away her muffin. She had eyed the same last muffin as me, and she thought it belonged to her.”

I nodded as my pencil scratched against my notebook. “Sounds like you were about to get into a fight.”

Derpy gave me a chuckle. “Yeah, it was a stupid silly-filly fight--the type of thing only kids fight over. She was starting to yell at me when I offered to share the muffin with her. I think she thought I was trying to trick her at first--you know, lure her into a false sense of security or something like that. She was so confused at first and she didn’t even know how to act.”

She looked down at the floor and sighed. “Flight Camp was a rough place when we went there. Kids got into fights all the time, and Cloud Kicker probably thought she was going to have to get into a fight to ‘mark her territory.’ It’s kinda sad, thinking back on how surprised she was by me being genuinely nice to her.” She looked back up at me and gave me another one of those bubbly smiles of hers. “But she let up and agreed to share it, and we split the muffin. We got to know each other over lunch and have been good friends ever since.”

She giggled and looked at the ceiling. “Oh, we did so many pranks together, along with Rainbow Dash. You wouldn’t believe the kind of trouble we got into--Dash would always suggest these awesome pranks for us to do, and Cloud Kicker would always say she didn't want to help, but that didn’t stop her from planning our pranks out. She always told us she just wanted to make sure we were doing things 'the right way.’” She put a hoof by the side of her mouth as if she was whispering some great secret. “Don’t tell her I told you this, but she was a bit of a stick in the mud when she was a filly.”

I pointed my pencil at her. “Wait, you’re telling me that Cloud Kicker used to follow the rules and didn’t want to get into trouble?”

“Yep. Kinda goes with being a military brat.” She stuck her tongue out at me playfully. “But Dash and I managed to loosen her up a bit, and now she’s her big, fun loving self.”

I caught myself chewing on my pencil’s eraser as I reviewed what I had so far and quickly removed it from my mouth. I didn’t want to embarrass myself with that childish habit. I decided to ask more about Flight Camp considering it had come up earlier in my interview with Rainbow Dash. “How would you describe your and Cloud Kicker’s experience at Flight Camp?”

She let out a long breath and rubbed her forehead. “I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it. Flight Camp is supposed to be a pretty amazing time for a pegasus--it’s when you learn how to fly, when you finally achieve your birthright. Before then, you’re pretty much stuck to the ground or the clouds. Those two summers at Flight Camp are supposed to be a huge deal, but ...” She trailed off and leaned her head back against the couch and ran a hoof through her mane.

This was starting to sound very different than what I normally heard from other pegasi about Flight Camp. Most considered it to be one of the best times of their lives. Where they learned to fly, maybe even earn their cutie marks, and made some friends. It was a bit of a rite of passage for most pegasi, a holdover from ancient pegasus history and society. While it was not nearly as militaristic as it once was, it was still an important experience to those involved.

“Take your time,” I said. I lowered my notebook to address her directly. “If you’re not comfortable with this topic we can move on.”

Derpy waved the suggestion off. “No, it’s alright. There are just a lot of ... unpleasant memories with Flight Camp. I got picked on a lot during my first year there. Being a bit of a klutz made me an easy target.”

I could see how her predisposition towards accidents would cause her to get picked on by the other kids. She was somewhat infamous in Ponyville for all the accidents she was involved in. Her demolishing the City Hall being one of her more noteworthy achievements. If there was a pony in Ponyville who crashed into the library more than Dash, it was one Derpy Hooves. She seemed to be holding up pretty well in any event. Her days in Flight Camp were a number of years ago, so these were probably just old memories I was digging up.

I nodded. “So it was a rough time for you before you met Cloud Kicker?”

“Pretty much.” She shifted around a bit in her sitting position. “The camp counselors weren’t really good at their jobs. They were never around to keep an eye on us. The only time we saw them was when they were teaching classes, when they showed up for classes anyways, so lots of kids got into trouble like fighting or racing where they shouldn’t have been. Fluttershy got knocked right off of Training Camp during one of those races, and she could have been seriously hurt or worse if she hadn’t landed on a butterfly swarm.”

My pencil stopped when I heard this last bit of information. “Wait, you said that Fluttershy was saved from a high-speed fall by landing ... on butterflies?” I had to make sure I heard that one right. That didn’t sound ... plausible. The butterflies would have needed to have the mass of dark matter to stand a chance of catching her, and that was an equally ridiculous proposition.

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” she confirmed flatly.

I scratched the top of my head. “You’re telling me that a pony the size of adolescent filly was caught up by a bunch of butterflies? We’re talking about a bunch of small and delicate insects, right?” I was beginning to wonder if Derpy was pulling my leg.

“Yes,” she said as though that were the most natural thing in the world. “Why?”

I rubbed the side of my cranium slowly. “N-no reason, let’s just move on.” One physics-defying friend was more than enough for me. I figured I would just ask Fluttershy about the incident later to clarify. There must be some sort of misunderstanding between Derpy and me.

“Mommy!” I saw a pale purple unicorn filly with a blonde mane come bounding out from where I guessed the kitchen was and into the living room. “Sparky’s cooking all wrong. Nothing’s on fire like when you do it!”

Derpy turned to her daughter and chuckled. “I’m sure Sparkler knows what she’s doing, Muffin. There isn’t always fire when somepony cooks.”

I was beginning to worry about the quality of Derpy’s meals if fires were such a regular occurrence. This sounded a little too much like Sweetie Belle’s cooking. I suppressed a shudder when I thought about a cookout we had a couple weeks back. Sweetie Belle’s attempts to grill were ... enlightening. Who knew so much destruction could be caused by an innocent barbecue in the park? It’s no surprise she hadn’t earned a grilling cutie mark.

Derpy’s daughter finally seemed notice me. “Oh hi! I’m Dinky Doo, who’re you?”

Derpy smiled and gestured at me. “Muffin, this is Miss Twilight Sparkle--she’s one of Rainbow Dash’s friends. She’s here to ask me a few questions about Miss Cloud Kicker.”

I waved at Dinky and gave her a friendly smile. “Hello there.” No sense not playing nice with the children while I was here. Besides, she did seem to be quite an adorable little filly.

“Ohhh, ooohhh!” She jumped around excitedly. “Can I show her my family drawing from school? Can I?”

Derpy nodded and smiled. “Of course, go ahead.”

“Okay!” And with that she ran off to the kitchen.

I turned to Derpy and nodded towards the kitchen. “She’s a ball of energy.”

She let out a short laugh. “Yeah, which is why I can’t let her have anything sugary. She starts to bounce off the walls if she gets that stuff in her system. Trust me, it’s not pretty.”

Dinky came running back out of the kitchen with a piece of paper in her mouth, and she stepped right up to me and held up the drawing where I could see it. “Hwere ‘ou ‘oh.”

I smiled down at her and lifted up the piece of paper with my own telekinesis--bending down to look at the drawing while she drooled on it didn’t strike me as the best way to appreciate her hard work. “Let’s see what we have here.” She looked up at me with cheerful expectation.

I started to examine the drawing with a critical eye. I hadn’t planned on giving it a full artistic review, considering Dinky couldn’t have been very old. Unsurprisingly, the drawing was done entirely with crayon and with all the artistic talent a child whose birthdays still counted in the single digits could bring to bear.

She had drawn a grassy meadow with some yellow flowers dotted here and there. Given the white squarish blotch, smaller yellow square, and a series of even smaller shapes, I guessed there was a picnic going on. A trio of stickpony figures were at the center of the picture, and were probably intended to represent Derpy, Sparkler, and herself. Above them was a pegasus pushing a cloud out of the way of the sun, next to where the words ‘Mommys friend Miss Clowd Kiker’ were in big, blocky letters.

I smiled down to Dinky. “Aw, isn’t that precious! You all look so happy together!” Dinky looked up at me with pride and gave me the widest smile she could manage.

I resisted my instinct to pull out a red pen and make grammatical corrections to the drawing, but I was going to guess that putting red marks all over it would not go over well with either Derpy or Dinky. Dinky had likely only recently started going to school given her spelling level. I had met Cheerilee on a number of occasions, like when I consulted her to make sure my lesson plans for Spike were in keeping with Equestria’s education standards, and I knew she was a perfectly competent teacher. I kept telling myself that so that I could keep myself from editing my interviewee daughter’s drawing.

Then my brain really started to kick into gear, and the implications of the drawing started to dawn on me. Dinky had seen and interacted with Cloud Kicker at least enough to learn her name and figure out she was ‘friends’ with her mom, and include her in a family picture. My smile suddenly became much more strained. “So, um, I see Cloud Kicker is in this picture. That’s ... nice.”

“Yeah-huh,” chirped Dinky excitedly. “I thought because she and Mom are such good friends, she would give us the perfect picnic.”

I tried to think of something quick to say that wouldn’t sound horribly awkward. “Yes--that sounds exactly like something she would do. Cloud Kicker just loves to spread the happiness around.”

I saw Derpy look back and forth between Dinky and the floating drawing, and we blushed slightly. “Dinky, how about you take that back to the icebox and finish helping your sister? I’m sure she could use your help.”

“Okay! Bye, Miss Twilight.” She lightly bit back down on her drawing and trotted back to the kitchen, humming a merry little tune to herself. “Oh, do you know the muffin mare? The muffin mare, the muffin mare ...”

I waited to make sure that Dinky was out of earshot before turning back to Derpy. “So um, what’s your relationship with Cloud Kicker these days?”

Derpy looked behind the couch to make sure Dinky had indeed disappeared into the kitchen before turning back to me. She gave me what had to be one of the most happy smiles I had ever seen before answering my question. “We bang, okay?”

I dropped my pencil and notebook on the floor. I was lucky I hadn’t been drinking anything when she said that. Even guessing the truth, the straightforwardness of her statement caught me off guard. “Um, alright. Okay then.” I slowly picked my notepad and pencil up from the ground. “That um, so that’s out there then.” I was not feeling my cleverest at the moment.

Derpy laughed and added to my embarrassment. “You’re pretty easy to get riled up, you know that? You sure you’re going to be able to study Cloud Kicker if it’s this easy to get you flustered? She can do a lot worse than that, trust me.”

My ears flicked in irritation. “Oh I have a good idea already. She’s been no end of irritation for me thus far.”

She tsked and shook her head at me. “You just need to give her a chance and not let her teasing get under your coat. She’s a good pony when you get to know her.”

I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes at that one. I wondered if Derpy could roll her eyes like a normal pony, or would it just look like both of her eyes were circling independant of each other like a pony who had hit their head too hard? Anyways, on the laughable subject of Cloud Kicker being a halfway decent pony. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure that’s why she has made it a point to drive me up the wall every opportunity she gets.”

“Just don’t let her get to you so much.” She giggled as though at some private joke. “Trust me, you only need to worry about her actually banging you if you want it.”

I huffed at that suggestion. “Oh, there’s no worry about me banging her. That is never going to happen if I have anything to say about it.”

Derpy gave me a smile that suggested she knew more than she was letting on. “Come to me in a couple months and tell me if you have the same tune. I certainly never saw myself going beyond casual friendship with her, certainly after all these years, and now we're ...” She raised and lowered her eyebrows suggestively to me. “She can be a very persuasive pony. ”

“Wha--No! I’m not ... No, I don’t--not with her. No, not happening,” I spluttered out. I shook my head from side to side. “That’s a terrible idea. It would taint my study, for starters.”

She leaned back and grinned at me. “So you’ve never considered saying yes even once?”

I shook my head again. “No, never. I couldn’t imagine even being friends with her, much less doing ... that with her.”

Derpy frowned at me. “You don’t really like her very much, do you?”

“Of course I don’t,” I snapped. I rubbed my face in irritation. “She has done nothing but make my life difficult. She has harassed me, made fun of me, and made this study one of the worst assignments I have ever had. And I’m counting that time when Princess Celestia made me count all the scales on a dragon.” I vigorously rubbed my face. “They have one that guards the royal treasury, she’s big ... and irritable. Very irritable. I had no idea an assignment could be both dangerous and boring at the same time.” I stopped rubbing my face to look at Derpy. “Cloud Kicker is about the last pony I ever wanted to study for the sociology report.”

Derpy’s ears fell flat on her head. “I’m sorry to hear that Cloud Kicker’s giving you such a tough time. If her teasing is really bothering you so much, why not just ask her to back off a bit? She’d understand.”

I quickly ran my hoof through the back of my mane. “Yeah, I’m sure that would work. I’m sure just asking her to stop would make her quit trying to make out with me.”

Derpy shook her head slowly. “You just don’t know her well enough yet. Give her a chance, and you’ll see she’s a good pony at heart.”

I looked away from her. “Somehow that seems hard for me to believe. She’s only humiliated me multiple times in public.”

She pursed her lips. “If this assignment makes you so miserable, then why are you doing it?”

For a few seconds all I could do was stare at Derpy. “What do you mean?”

She gave me a confused frown. “You could just, you know, not do it. You don’t have to do it, right?”

I was having trouble understanding what she was getting at. “But ... I can’t just not do it. The Princess has expectations of me. I’m her personal student, I can’t just turn down assignments.” Plus I was given this project by Princess Luna herself. How do you turn down an assignment given to you by the Princess of the Night herself?

She gave me a level look. “Even if they make you this unhappy?”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “It’s fine, I’ll just work through this assignment, turn it in, and then forget about it. No long-term harm or consequences. It’s not so different than any other difficult assignment I’ve had. This one just happens to have a particularly annoying research subject.”

Derpy continue to frown at me. “If you say so. But really, just don’t let what Cloud Kicker says get to you.”

“How about we just skip to the next question?” I flipped through my notebook to double check what my next couple of questions were. “So then, how long have you and Cloud Kicker been seeing each other?”

She rubbed her chin. “Oh, for a couple of weeks now. We’re pretty much just friends-with-benefits right now.” After a shrug she continued. “But we’ll see where it goes.”

I wrote down what she told me and jotted down a couple other question ideas. “Were you and Cloud Kicker ever more than friends before recently?”

“You’re asking if we ever banged before? No.” She shook her head. “I came on to her when I was pregnant with Dinky. The hormones were driving me a bit crazy at the time, but Cloud Kicker declined.” She gave a remorseful sigh. “Kinda a shame really. I’ve really liked having her around.”

That took me a little bit aback. “Wait, you’re telling me that Cloud Kicker actually turned you down? We’re talking about the same pony, right?”

“That’s right,” she said with a nod of her head. “She felt that would have been taking advantage of me at the time, so she turned me down. She does have standards and rules. Like I said, she's a good pony once you get to know her better.”

That was a bit different than what I would have expected from Cloud Kicker. I would have to look into that later. I tapped my pencil against my lips and I looked at my list of questions. I thought this might be a good time to bring up one of them, though it could be a bit of a touchy subject. “So, you don’t have to answer this one if you aren’t comfortable. I heard some rumors in town and--”

“Cloud Kicker didn’t sire Dinky,” Derpy replied levelly. She must have seen the perplexed look on my face, because she chuckled at me. “You’re not the first to ask me that, and I really doubt you’ll be the last--especially now that Cloud Kicker and I are seeing each other.”

It was not hard to imagine why some ponies would think Cloud Kicker had sired Dinky. Even accounting for the fact that hereditary traits seemed to be a crapshoot with ponies, Dinky looked an awful lot like Cloud Kicker. That didn’t always mean anything though, my brother and I looked nothing alike despite having the same parents. There was also the potential of a union producing different breeds of ponies than the parents--the Cakes and their foals, for example.

“Okay, I’ll just cross that one out then.” I wrote down her answer. I didn’t give that rumor much credence anyways. You either needed True Love between two mares to produce a foal, or fairly expensive magic to help conceive a child. I doubted Derpy and Cloud Kicker had the True Love thing going given Cloud Kicker’s lifestyle, and she didn’t strike me as the type who would spend that many bits just to experience the act a little differently. “Sorry, I have to be thorough with this study.”

Derpy waved off my apology. “Don’t worry, you’ve been a lot nicer about it than a lot of ponies. If anything, you seem embarrassed to ask half of these questions.”

I couldn’t really argue with her. Cloud Kicker by her very nature was an embarrassing subject. Though the fact Cloud Kicker wasn’t Dinky’s father did bring up an important question. “Um, if I can ask, do you know who Dinky’s father or sire is?”

She let out a long sigh and ran a hoof through her mane. Derpy was quiet long enough that I knew I was treading on uncomfortable ground. I was about to change the subject when she spoke up. “Could you not give any names for this part of the study?”

“I can keep this part completely anonymous,” I promised. “We can leave out anything out you don’t want in my report.”

She nodded gratefully, then checked behind her to make sure that her children were well out of earshot before answering. “I ... don’t know who her father is. It was the end of my first year at Duke Polaris University, and he was ... cute. And horny.” She snorted. “‘Horny’, heh .… uh, sorry. He was a unicorn, white coat, cute--and that’s it, really, I don’t remember much else. We’d both had a lot to drink at a party that evening, and once everypony else had left ... I found out a few weeks later, after I missed my period.”

“Ah, I’m sorry to hear that.” I paused for a moment as I tried to think what to say. What could I say about that she had probably not already heard a hundred times? “Must be hard being a single mom.” Yep, that was one hundred percent original.

“I’ve managed alright.” Her smile didn’t look completely forced. “I love Dinky more than anything, but ... well, I wish I had been a bit older when I had her. But we’re making it work.”

“I’m glad things seem to be working out for you.” I mulled over what she just told me, and I flipped through a couple page of my notebook. So Dinky’s father was some white unicorn in Canterlot? A disturbing thought crossed my mind. “How old is Dinky, by the way?”

Derpy smiled and glanced towards the kitchen. “She’ll be seven in a few months. Funny, I can still remember the day I held her for the first time in the hospital.” Her gaze turned to look at a nearby wall, probably to look at one of the photographs nailed against it.

I thought back to when Shining Armor had gone for his graduate degree at Duke Polaris. It was probably just a coincidence. White was a common color for unicorns in and around Canterlot--hay, most of Rarity’s family was made up of white unicorns based in the photos I had seen in her home. I was just worrying about nothing again. No need to panic.

Yet.

“Everything okay?” She tilted her head in a questioning manner. “You were staring off.”

“Oh, yes, everything is fine. Perfectly fine.” I gave myself a mental shake. Interview now, nieces I may or may not have later. “How about another question? So, where do-”

“Mom! Dinner’s ready!” Dinky came bounding out of the kitchen again. “Though I still don’t think Sparky was doing it right. There weren’t any fwooshing, crackling, or banging noises.”

Derpy turned to face her daughter as she got up from the couch. “Just go ahead and set the table, Muffin.”

“Okay.” Dinky turned around and walked back to the kitchen.

Derpy turned back to me and gave me an inviting smile. “Would you like to join us for dinner?”

I stood up from my cushion and stretched my legs a bit. “I wouldn’t want to impose. I’ve already taken up too much of your time.” I was a bit irritated that my interview had been cut short, but I could always pick up at another time to get more questions. Derpy had given me some facts to chew over anyways. Not like I didn’t know where to find her, or that she didn’t come by the library everyday.

“No, it’s fine.” Derpy stepped up to me and started to maneuver me towards the kitchen. “Please, any friend of Rainbow Dash is a friend of mine. You didn’t have any other plans, did you?”

I tried to think if I did have any other plans, but I really didn’t. My lab was nothing but ash and molten metal, and I was not looking forward to another argument with Spike. Plus there were still a couple of questions I would still like to ask. “Um, I guess it’s okay if I stay for dinner then.”

I hadn’t thought it possible for her smile to get any wider, but it did. “Great! The dining room is right this way.” I followed her to the room where the dining room table sat, a solid piece of furniture with a plain table cloth on top, and four cushions surrounding it. Dinky was finishing setting up the silverware and dishes, and a young mare with a lavender-pink coat and a violet mane came in levitating the bowl of spaghetti. That was most likely Sparkler if I had to guess.

Sparkler stopped in her tracks when she saw me and nearly dropped the bowl. “Oh, hey. Mom invited you to dinner?”

“Sparkler, this is Twilight Sparkle.” Derpy gave me a nod before turning back to her daughter. “Twilight, I’d like you to meet my other daughter, Sparkler.” Derpy scrunched up her nose as she looked back and forth between us. “Err, I guess you have similar names. Good thing you have your first name to keep things simple, Twilight.”

I let out a lighthearted chuckle. “Yeah, that would be a bit awkward to have to go back and forth between Sparkle and Sparkler, wouldn’t it?” I gave Sparkler a friendly nod. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Yeah, hi. Nice to meet you.” She didn’t seem particularly perturbed by my presence at the table. “Sorry, but I better put this bowl down before I drop it.” She walked past me and placed the spaghetti on the table.

Derpy, Sparkler, and Dinky each took a seat around the table and I walked around to sit in the last remaining cushion. Dinner was primarily the aforementioned spaghetti and some bread with melted cheese on it. Derpy tried to make some small talk with her children, mainly asking how their days had gone at school. Dinky listed off some of the lessons she took part in, and then talked about playing with some of the other children during recess. Sparkler gave some vague information about her school, then spent a fair amount of time listing the virtues of a particular young stallion that had caught her eye.

Teenagers, sheesh. Glad I never went through that stage in life.

I mostly just sat to the side in silence while Derpy talked with her children. I had done such a thorough job of fading into the background that I nearly jumped when Derpy addressed me. “So Twilight, how was your day?”

“O-oh, it was--um, fine,” I managed to stammer out. I was surprised that she actually asked me that. I didn’t want to bring up my recent troubles with Derpy’s family. I’m sure they had enough on their plates without me bringing my issues with Cloud Kicker or Spike into the mix. I had just met them, after all.

Derpy didn’t let me off the hook that easily. “So what did you do today? I heard there was another explosion in the library.”

Dinky looked between Derpy and me. “Is that why you won’t let me go to the library alone? ‘Cause it blows up a lot?”

I hadn’t blow up the library that much. Only about three times since I had come to Ponyville, and it had only been the basement that had suffered catastrophic damage. For the most part anyways, the library has only suffered some major structural damage above ground level. I’m not perfect.

“I just don’t want you walking around town alone, Muffin,” Derpy patiently explained.

“I can walk ‘round town by myself,” Dinky said grumpily. She bent down to take another messy bite of spaghetti. This meal was perhaps not the easiest for those without telekinesis to eat cleanly.

Derpy frowned at her younger daughter. “I would just be worried about you, Muffin.”

“Statistically speaking, she would actually be quite safe walking around town on her own,” I added helpfully. “Even the damage to the library was restricted entirely to the basement. The public rooms of the library are still completely intact.”

Dinky turned to look at her mother with a hopeful grin. Derpy gave me a narrow-eyed glare that made me realize I had spoken out of turn. “I would prefer to play it safe with my youngest daughter, Twilight.” Her normally warm and happy tone now had a subtle edge to it, like–well, like a mother correcting a filly that had crossed a line. A 'Sorry, Mom' was half-formed on my lips before I realized what I was saying.

“Oh! Um, sorry, right.” I tried to think of a way to correct myself. “It’s, um, you’re right, Dinky should have somepony walk with her around Ponyville. Statistically speaking, fillies are even safer when they have somepony with them walking around town. Especially since this is Ponyville...” I tried to give Derpy a reassuring smile.

Derpy gave me a smile in return. It seemed that I had corrected my error. “Exactly, little fillies need an adult to walk with them around town.”

“Aww,” whined Dinky. “I wanna be a big pony so I can go where I want.”

“Um, you should listen to your mother,” I said. “She knows what she’s talking about.” Derpy’s nod of approval eased my worry about the fact that I had undermined her. It seemed my dad’s tactic to mimic whatever my mom said where Shining or I were concerned was the winning strategy. Sparkler had been a bit wiser than myself and had simply tried to not be noticed.

Derpy picked up a napkin and started to rub Dinky’s face where she had gotten a generous helping of spaghetti sauce on her face. Dinky tried to move her head away, but Derpy held her in place with practiced calm. “So how about today? I figure you’ve spent most of your day cleaning up after the explosion.”

I scratched the back of my neck. “Um, not exactly. I spent the morning getting some tea and a few potions from Zecora. That took a bit longer than normal due to all the trails being muddy from last night’s storm. Then I stopped by the library, and ...” I found myself trailing off as I tried to think of something other than my fight with Spike to talk about. “And then I came over here to interview you. That’s pretty much been my entire day.”

Derpy gave me a slight frown as she finished wiping Dinky off. Sparkler seems to be concentrating on her dinner while looking at me through the corner of her eye. “So are you waiting to clean the library’s basement?” asked Derpy. “I can’t begin to imagine how much of a mess that will be to clean up.”

“Oh, I had Spike get started on that.” I shrugged as I levitated over a piece of bread for me to eat. “It was his fault that the lab in the basement was destroyed in the first place, so it’s his job to clean up.”

Derpy gave Dinky’s face one last look over before letting her go back to her meal. “Isn’t he, uh, still kinda young?”

“Well yes, by dragon standards he’s still a baby.” I took a bite out my bread.

Derpy slowly ran a hoof back and forth along her jawline. “Wouldn’t cleaning the basement after, you know, an explosion be a bit much for him, all on his own?”

I had to take a moment to think about that. “Well um, I was going to help him this evening, but ... stuff got in the way.”

“If you say so.” Derpy didn’t sound particularly convinced by what I had said. What was I supposed to tell her? That Spike and I had gotten into a fight over him destroying my lab? I’m sure she had more than enough problems to deal with as a working mom with two children.

Sparkler said something about needing to go to the restroom and excused herself from the table.

I then felt something a bit--odd–off really, with my magical senses. I turned to see Dinky concentrating hard on trying to levitate a cylinder of parmesan cheese to herself. Her horn was giving off sparks and the strain on Dinky’s face was plainly obvious. My eyes widened and I reached out with my own magic. I canceled out the spell Dinky had been attempting to cast and locked her magic down--a relatively simple pair of tasks to do with a very young unicorn. Shutting down another unicorn’s magic was essentially an instinctual thing for most unicorns. It’s a bit of a necessary skill to have in order to deal with unicorn foals and their wild magic surges, or in this case, prevent an untrained and young unicorn like Dinky from hurting herself by trying to use her magic. It was virtually impossible to pull off on a full-grown unicorn who didn’t want you to do that to them, but Dinky was far from that stage in her life.

Dinky blinked a few times in surprise and looked up at her horn. “Woah, easy there!” I said cautiously. “Be careful, or you could really hurt yourself. You need to wait until you’ve been taught how to control your magic flow before you should try to levitate anything.”

“It’s fine, Twilight, she’s just practicing her magic,” Derpy tried to reassure me. “Her spilling a bit of cheese onto the table isn’t a big deal--I’ve done worse.”

I turned to Derpy and tried to not let my jaw drop. Didn’t she know how much Dinky could hurt herself? I looked to see Dinky squeezed her lips together in a pout and looked down at the table. Derpy didn’t seem to be particularly concerned that Dinky could have accidently hurt herself. Perhaps Dinky’s tutor hadn’t explained that Dinky shouldn’t be casting spells she wasn’t completely ready for at her age?

I decided that given my previous gaffe I better try a more private conversation with her instead of trying to contradict her in front of her children. “Um, Derpy, could we talk in private please?” I didn’t particularly like the idea of telling Derpy how to raise her child, but I didn’t want Dinky to hurt herself because her mom didn’t know any better either. I figured Dinky’s long term health was the higher priority here than Derpy’s feelings.

Derpy briefly hesitated before answering. “Um, of course, Twilight.” She stood up slowly from the table. “Dinky, help your sister clean up when you’re done eating, okay?”

“Okay,” Dinky said dejectedly. She reached over to grab the parmesan cheese with her legs and started messily pouring it onto her spaghetti.

I stood up and followed Derpy out of the dining room and into the living room. She turned to face me and whispered, “Was there something you needed to talk about, Twilight?”

“Um, yes, of course.” I shuffled from hoof to hoof. This wasn’t going to be a particularly comfortable discussion. “How much do you know about unicorn development and magic?”

Derpy glanced towards the dining room and then back to me. “Not all the much really. I grew up as a pegasus in a pegasi family, so it didn’t really come up when I was growing up. I’m having Sparkler teach Dinky magic, and that seems to be working out fine.”

I watched as Sparkler returned from the restroom and set back down at the table. “Exactly how old is Sparkler?”

“Sixteen,” she said immediately. “Why, is there a problem?”

I organized my thoughts as I thought of the best way to explain things to Derpy. “I’m going to be honest, that’s a very young age to be teaching another unicorn. Too young really.”

Derpy glanced back to her daughters before looking back to me. “What do you mean? She’s been doing fine teaching Dinky the basics.”

I put a comforting hoof on Derpy’s shoulder. “Look, I’m sure Sparkler has been doing the best she can, but there’s a lot that goes into teaching a unicorn about magic. It’s a long process, and learning how to use magic is an important part of a unicorn’s development, essential really.” I saw that Derpy was continuing to glance towards the dining room and I moved to block her view and make her look at me. I needed to make sure she was listening to me. “A unicorn learning how to use their magic properly is as important to their health as a pegasus learning to fly. In fact, it’s even more important. Improperly learning how to control their magic can potentially be dangerous, and not using their magic at all can be atrophic to their magic, which in turn can cause serious long term health problems.”

Derpy was giving me her full attention, and she nervously swallowed. “I didn’t know it was quite that serious. I thought it was like with pegasi where learning magic wouldn’t be big deal until they reached adolescence. I thought Sparkler would be fine with Cheerilee covering the more theoretical side of things.”

I motioned for the two of us to sit on the couch. Derpy was listening to me now, and it looked like we might need to talk for a bit. We both made ourselves comfortable on the sofa. “Cheerilee is a good teacher, but this is a case of the blind trying to teach somepony else how to read. While Sparkler may be able to use magic herself, and this is no insult to your daughter, but she isn’t going to have the experience and depths of knowledge to really know how to teach a unicorn Dinky’s age. She might be able to teach another unicorn a spell she knows, but that’s all she’s really going to be able to do at this point in her life.”

“I don’t understand.” Derpy shook her head in confusion. “Isn’t that all there is to it, just learn spells and cast them?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not that easy.” I thought of a way to explain it to a non-unicorn who had no real experience with unicorn magic. I was going to guess that Derpy hadn’t learned much on this matter due to her upbringing, and the fact she had lived in Ponyville, an earth pony town with relatively few unicorns. “A unicorn learning how to use magic is like building a house: you need to build a solid foundation before you can start on the rest of the building, and that’s the point Dinky is in her life, foundation building. There are a lot of things she has to learn to do properly before she can safely use her magic. It’s a long learning process that takes years, but it’s very important that it be done right.”

Derpy chewed on her lower lip as she listened to me. “What should I do then? I just want what’s best for my daughter. I-I didn’t realize.”

“It’s alright.” I put one of my own hooves on hers to reassure her. “The answer is pretty simple: Ponyville doesn’t have the educational institutions to teach a young unicorn like Dinky, so you just need to get her a proper tutor. You had the right idea with Sparkler, but you just need somepony who's a bit older and experienced.”

Derpy’s ears perked up. “Oh, do you have any suggestions?”

Now there was a good question. The lack of unicorns in Ponyville didn’t exactly create a large pool of candidates for Dinky’s tutor. Tutoring a unicorn like Dinky could be a long and time consuming process. Most of the time this would be covered either by family members, family friends, unicorns within the education system if there was a large enough unicorn population base in an area to be of assistance. Another option was to pay for a tutor like my parents had done considering they had the bits to do it.

Derpy was staring at me intently and she had grasped my offered hoof with both of her forehooves. “Um, Twilight, I know it’s probably a lot to ask of a pony ... and I don’t exactly have a lot of bits to pay for lessons, but Rainbow Dash says you know a lot about magic, and ...”

It didn’t exactly take a genius to guess what she was trying to ask, but this wasn’t something to be taken lightly. Teaching a young unicorn to use magic was a huge responsibility. “Oh, so you would like me to, err ...”

She grasped my hoof tighter. “Please, this would mean the world to me.”

I was kind of trapped. She had let me into her home, let me have an interview with her, invited me to dinner with her family. How could I just turn her down when she needed me so badly, with her staring at me with the pleading eyes of a mother who just wanted the best for her child? The answer was I couldn’t. “Sure ... I can teach Dinky, at the very least until Sparkler is old enough to take over.”

My answer made Derpy look like she had just won a million bits. Her eyes lit up and she gave me one the most stupidly happy smiles I had ever seen. She grasped me in a rib-cracking hug. “Oh thank you Twilight, thank you, thank you, thank you! I don’t know how I’ll pay you back, but I’ll think of something!”

“Letting me ... breathe ... would be ... a start,” I gasped. Call me selfish, but I liked being able to take in oxygen and having all my ribs intact.

“Oh, sorry.” She let me go and let out an embarrassed chuckle. “I just get a bit excited sometimes.”

I took a moment to catch my breath. “No, it’s fine. I don’t think any of my ribs are cracked.” I took in a couple more deep breaths. “We’ll just need to hammer out when to schedule Dinky’s first few lessons, and work from there.”

“Okay.” Her bubbly demeanor was suddenly tempered by a slight frown. “But like I said earlier, I don’t exactly have very many bits to pay you. If you’d be willing to wait until I get my Hearth’s Warming bonus, I can probably scrounge up enough bits to—”

I shook my head. “I don’t need the bits, so don’t worry about it.” Now I just need to write up a syllabus, come up with lesson plans, make sure I have all the materials I need—

She gave me another, thankfully lighter, hug. “That’s very generous of you. Trust me, I’ll never forget this. I can see why Rainbow Dash likes you so much. You’re the best pony anypony could hope for.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I tried to reassure her. She was really starting to embarrass me now. “I just like helping other ponies, really.”

She let go of me and gave me another one of her bubbly smiles. “So how would you like muffins for dessert?”

***

Turns out I liked Derpy’s muffins quite a bit. I took another enjoyable bite out of the blueberry muffin while dinner was being finished up. Derpy was putting the dishes into the sink to be cleaned, and she was talking to her older daughter about her plans for the coming week. Dinky had taken the news that I was taking over her magical training quite well. I knew this because she hadn’t stopped hugging my right foreleg since Derpy told her. I was beginning to worry about the lack of blood flow given how hard she was hugging me.

“Um, Derpy,” I said in an attempt to try and interrupt the conversation between her and Sparkler. “Dinky’s going to let go of me eventually, right? I’m not going to need to get a crowbar to pry her off of me, am I? I can’t really feel my leg anymore.”

Derpy looked down at her daughter and patted her on the back. “That’s enough, Muffin. I think she knows how much you appreciate her help, and Miss Twilight needs to be able to walk.”

“Okay,” she said enthusiastically. She released her death grip on my leg and it was seized up with a sharp, prickly sensation as blood started to flow through it once more. “Thanks again, Miss Twilight.”

“You’re welcome.” I would have given her a friendly pat on the head, but that either would have risked me using a limb I wasn’t sure I could use right or risk falling over.

“Come and help me finish putting away the dishes.” Derpy pointed to the slowly growing pile of clean dishes by the sink.

“Alright,” Dinky said with considerably less enthusiasm.

I was busy flexing my leg to get the tingling sensation out of it when Sparkler approached me and scrapped a hoof along the floor. I hoped I hadn’t offended her by taking up Dinky’s magical training. “Hey, um, Miss Twilight, could I ask you something, privately?” She was keeping her head down and wasn’t making eye contact with me. I was curious as to what was making her seem so nervous.

“Sure, I don’t see why not.” I motioned my head towards the living room where we could talk more privately. We both put some distance between us and the kitchen and I turned to talk to Sparkler. “What did you want to ask?”

Sparkler looked back to the kitchen, probably to make sure her mother or sister hadn’t followed us. “I was wondering if you could teach me a spell?”

“I don’t see why not.” I sat down on a nearby cushion to make myself comfortable. “What spell do you want to learn?” Unicorns asking each other to learn specific spells was by no means uncommon. It was pretty common for friends, family, and acquaintances to teach each other the spells they knew, and it was always possible to simply pay another unicorn to learn a spell. My parents and brother had taught me more than a fair number of spells, and Rarity and I had exchanged a few spells when time had allowed. It was always possible to learn a spell straight from a book, but it was a significantly longer and more laborious process to do so than if you were taught directly by another unicorn.

Sparkler kept looking back to the kitchen and fidgeted where she stood. I wondered what seemed to be making her so nervous. “I was hoping to learn a silence spell of some sort.”

I rubbed my chin with a hoof. “What for? There are a lot of different versions of the silence spell, so it depends on what you need it for. I just want to make sure you learn the one that will work best for you.”

Sparkler lowered her head and spoke in nearly a whisper. “You see, Mom’s room’s next to mine, and I ... don’t want to hear ... what’s going on in there. Dinky either, considering she’s down the hall from Mom.”

I crossed my forelegs in front of me while I thought. “What’s the problem, does your mom snore loudly?”

She gritted her teeth and looked to be in pain. “Mom and Cloud Kicker ... are having sex ... right next ... to my room. Mom’s a screamer, and Cloud Kicker ... says things. I’ve heard things I can’t unhear.” She shuddered. “Help me!”

“Oh, oooohhhhh. ” I contemplated this new bit of information. That would explain why Sparkler looked so uncomfortable. “I see, that would be a problem.”

“Ya think?” she shot back with irritation.

I decided to ignore her sarcastic remark. I wouldn’t be particularly happy if I was in Sparkler’s position either. I did a mental inventory of my spells to see which one would work best in this situation. “Good news, I think I do have a spell that should help you.”

I was nearly knocked over when Sparkler lunged at me and wrapped her forelegs around my own. “Teach-me-teach-me-teach-me, please!” She looked up at me with big, pleading eyes.

“I will, I will, just try and not to knock me over here.” I fought to maintain my balance and try to remove my legs from Sparkler’s death grip. “It’s a silence spell that muffles sound from outside of the room you cast it on.” It was a spell I had found particularly useful for my college apartment days, considering some of my neighbors had a tendency to be particularly loud. Loud enough to be quite clear what they were doing, and to affirm that it was likely exactly the type of spell Sparkler needed.

I finally managed to work one of my legs out from Sparkler’s grasp. “I can help teach you the spell this weekend if—”

“Tomorrow, after school,” Sparkler begged me. “Please?” One look into those eyes of hers spoke volumes about her desperation. Just how often were Derpy and Cloud Kicker ... having encounters to make Sparkler want help this badly?

“Sure, tomorrow evening then,” I agreed.

“Oh thank you!” Sparkler grasp me in a tight hug. I seemed to be getting a lot of that from this family today. Maybe they were just the huggy types? At least Sparkler’s hug didn’t threaten to break anything.

“You two seem to be getting along,” said Derpy with amusement from behind me. Sparkler broke the hug with conspicuous quickness and she took a few steps away from me. I turned to see Derpy grinning at the two of us.

Sparkler gave her mother a sheepish smile. “Uh, I was just thanking Miss Twilight for saying she would teach me a spell.”

“I know dear, I heard.” She gave her daughter a friendly nuzzle. “I have a vision problem, not a hearing one.”

I stood up from the cushion and faced the two of them. “Perhaps it’s about time I go? I’ve taken up enough of your time, and it’s getting late.” No offense to the Doo’s, but at the rate I was going they were going to be asking me to start living with them. Everypony seemed to be wanting something from me these days.

Derpy gave me a friendly smile and a nod of her head. “Of course, I’ll show you out then.”

“Thanks,” I replied, and the two of us made our way to the front door. Derpy opened the door for me and I exited with an appreciative nod. I was surprised when I saw Derpy come outside with me and close the door behind her. I turned to face her and I couldn’t help but wonder why she had done so. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”

Derpy looked up and down the street from her home and then turned back to me. “I don’t want to be a busybody, but is everything okay at the library between you and Spike?”

I couldn’t help but wince at the pointed question. “What? O-of course everything’s alright, why wouldn’t it be?”

She gave me an unconvinced frown and she stared at me for a few awkward moments. “I’m a mother of two, Twilight, I have a pretty good sense for when something is up—and no offense, but you’re a terrible liar.”

I looked away from Derpy and down at the ground. I really didn’t want to get into this with a pony I had only just met. It had already been a long day for me without adding this to it. “I don’t want to bother you. I’m sure you have enough troubles without me adding to them.”

Derpy walked over to stand beside me and gave me a couple of comforting pats on the back. “You’re offering to teach my youngest daughter magic while asking for nothing in return. I think I can afford to be bothered a little.”

I continued to look away from her as I thought over what to say. It was hard for me to turn down the help, given I was at a loss over what to do with Spike. “It’s just ... Spike and I are in a bit of a rough spot right now. I don’t know, he’s just been especially grumpy with me for the past few days.”

I lifted my head to look at Derpy and she gave me an encouraging bob of her head. “Go on,” she said. “It’s okay to tell me, I just want to help you.”

I sighed and continued. Part of me just wanted to get this off my chest. “Then yesterday he broke lab safety guidelines and had my entire lab destroyed. I grounded him for a month and I told him it was his job to clean up the basement for what he did. I thought he would be at least a little bit sorry for what he did, but if anything he was even more grumpy with me today.” I stomped my hoof ground it into the dirt. “We got into a big argument when I didn’t like his tone with me, and he didn’t even seem to care when I threatened to punish him some more.” I rubbed my eyes due to my own weariness and frustration. “I just don’t know what to do with him now.”

She stared at me for a few seconds before speaking. “If I can ask, what is Spike to you?”

“He’s like a little brother to me,” I answered without thinking. “Or at least that’s how I like to think of him.”

“It’s just you two in the library, right?” she asked.

I nodded my head slowly. “Yeah, it’s just the two of us. We moved to Ponyville together after the Summer Sun Celebration the other year. We’ve been living together for years, so I just brought him with me.”

“How about we go back to my garden to talk? This might take a bit.” She pointed to a gate that led to the backyard of her home.

“Um, that sounds alright.” I followed her as she unlatched the gate and led me to the side yard of her home.

Derpy closed the gate behind her before turning to walk by me to the backyard. “So you’ve been raising Spike all by yourself then?”

“The Princess and her staff took care of him when he was born, but yeah, I’ve pretty much been taking care of him since then.” We rounded out into the backyard of Derpy’s home. I was awashed in the fragrancy of the gardens that adorned the place. Patches of flowers dotted the backyard, and were arranged in precise patterns to decorate the area. A vegetable garden with a variety of fruits and vegetables sat next to a small swing set at the rear end of the backyard. “He’s my responsibility in any case. The Princess and my parents have helped a bit, but out here in Ponyville I’m all he really has.”

Derpy stepped onto the porch attached to the back of her home. “So you’re pretty much his parent then?”

I stepped onto the porch along with Derpy. “I, um, never really thought of it that way,” I admitted reluctantly. “Like I said, I’ve always thought of him as my little brother.”

“Twilight, you need to start thinking of yourself as a parent if you're the only pony in his life, even if that isn’t what you call yourself.” She sat down on a swinging bench that hung above the porch. “He’s depending on you to raise him right.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I walked around to examine the patches of flowers that surrounded the porch as I thought over my relationship to Spike. “I know I have to take care of him. I mean, I make sure he is educated, gets to bed on time, gets the gems he needs to eat, cleans himself, and I get on his case for trying to eat food that other ponies would consider trash--especially when it's in the trash--I seriously wonder if there's anything dragons can't eat.”

Derpy kicked off and got the bench to start swinging slightly. “It’s that and more, children have more than just physical needs. Children are more than just pets.”

That last comment caused my head to snap Derpy’s direction. “I know that!” I exclaimed much more forcefully than I intended. She directed a concerned frown at me and I went back to looking at the flowers. “It’s just ... I don’t know.”

Derpy continued to follow me with her gaze as I paced around her garden. “Has anything changed recently between you and Spike?”

I stopped in my tracks as I tried to think if anything significant had changed recently. “Um, not that I can think of.”

“You sure about that?” she asked without sounding convinced. “What do you do with Spike everyday?”

I massaged the side of my head as I tried to think what Derpy was going for here. “Uh, just the usual stuff. We usually have breakfast together, I make sure he does his home-school work, then he usually helps me with my studies, we might go out together into town or whatever, and then we have dinner before going to bed.”

Derpy rubbed her bottom lip as she seemed to be considering what I had said. “And has any of that changed recently?”

I sat down and leaned against one of the porches’ support posts and I considered her question. “I ... suppose Spike hasn’t been as involved with this recent study. He’s usually helping me more with my projects.” I turned to look directly at Derpy as something clicked in my head. “Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve been spending much time at all with Spike recently.”

Derpy tapped her nose a couple time in an purposeful manner. “Do you ever do anything with Spike just for the sake of doing it with him?”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean?” Derpy now held my attention as I tried to figure out her point.

Derpy shook her head and tisked at me. “Spike is a child, and children need regular attention. They have certain needs that have to be taken care of. I have to make sure I spend time with my daughters every day. Given how busy I usually am at work, that isn’t always easy.”

“Well, I, um ...” I found myself pausing. What did I have to say about that? When was the last time I had taken the effort to just spend time with Spike?

“Does he have anyone else to spend time with?” Derpy asked seriously. “He doesn’t go to school and play with children his own age, he doesn’t have any friends that I have seen, no other family, and you just uprooted him and moved him to a new town.”

That was pretty much all true. Dragons’ social interaction was a bit different than that of ponies ... I think so anyways. Strangely enough, there wasn’t all that much information about dragons in the books I had read. Spike seemed social enough with the ponies he met, he got along with all my friends and with the ponies who came into the library, but ... he never really seemed to go out and do things with other ponies, except for Rarity, now that I really thought about it.

I looked down at the smooth wood of the porch. It looked like a fairly recent addition to the fairly old home. “No, I guess he doesn’t have anypony else,” I said remorsefully.

She stood up from the bench and walked over to me. “So do you think he might have a reason to be a bit upset when you stop spending time with him?”

I looked up at Derpy and frowned. “That didn’t give him an excuse to ignore lab safety guidelines and cause my lab's destruction,” I said defensively.

Derpy let out an amused chuckled and sat down opposite of me. “I never said he didn’t deserve to be grounded. What I’m saying is that there might be a reason why you two aren’t getting along right now, and I think at least now you know why.”

My heart felt heavy as I thought about Spike and the preceeding week. Had I really been that neglectful towards my number one assistant? Did the time he spent with me during my research and studies mean that much to him? I thought back and remembered when Owlowiscious had first come to join us in the library. Spike had gotten more than a little jealous of my new owl familiar when he thought he’d been replaced. I shouldn’t have been surprised when Spike had a similarly negative reaction to being cut out of my latest study on Cloud Kicker.

I quickly stood up from my sitting position and nearly stumbled in the process before Derpy raised a pair of hooves to steady me. “I need to go home--I think ... there are a few things I need to do.”

Derpy stood up and gave me a couple comforting pats on the shoulder. “I’m sure there are,” she said with a bubbly smile. “How about you head on home and take care of Spike?”

“Yeah, I think I’ll do that.” I hopped off the porch before I stopped to turn around and faced Derpy. “Oh, and thanks for the talk. I probably needed it.”

Derpy stepped off of the porch to stand next to me. “For the help you're giving Dinky, anything.” She wrapped a leg around my shoulders to give me a friendly hug.

I took one of my own legs and returned the hug. “Sure thing, I just know from personal experience how important it is to have a good tutor at that age, and I’m happy to help.”

She slowly broke the hug and gave me a friendly grin. “You’re a good pony, Twilight. I’m sure you and Spike will do just fine.”

We started to walk towards the front of her home. “Thanks, if I do half as well as you do with Sparkler and Dinky, I think I’ll be alright.”

“I try the best I can,” she stated simply. “It’s what they deserve.”

“See you soon then?” I asked when we reached the path outside of Derpy’s home. “I ... didn’t get to all the interview questions I had earlier. I suppose we can finish this up at a later date? Once I get a few other things straightened out?”

I turned around to face Derpy as she stopped to close the gate to her side yard and gave me a nod. “Sounds good. See you later.”

“Bye.” With a final friendly wave I turned to go back to the library and make some amends.

***

“Spike, I’m home,” I called out tentatively as I slowly topped the stairs leading to the second story of the library. I looked up to see Spike in his basket, curled up with a comic book by the looks of it. His eyes glanced my way and he turned his body to have his back face me. Yeah, he was still pretty unhappy with me. To be fair, he had good reasons to be. In addition to all the other things that had been going on, I had missed eating dinner with him--again. To be honest, I was still unhappy about the lab and how he had treated me, but my own temper had cooled off a bit thanks to my talk with Derpy. That was probably something I was going to need to work on in the future.

I walked to the upstairs closet and opened the door. A dozen or so dusty board games stared out at me. “Hey Spike, would you like to play Battle Clouds?” I pulled the board game out of the closet and showed the face of the box to Spike. I gave the board game a slight shake and I smiled hopefully at him. Spike had always liked playing Battle Clouds.

Spike shifted his body and glowered down at me. “No, you always complain about how easy that game is, and I don’t wanna deal with it tonight.”

Oh, yeah, I had said that on a few occasions when Spike had asked me if we could play. Just how much damage had I done to our relationship over the years without even realizing it? How many times had I hurt him or neglected him? These weren’t particularly comforting thoughts. Spike had always just kind of been there for me, but how often had I been there for him on a day-to-day basis?

I shoved the Battle Clouds box back into the closet. I really needed to organize these board games; they were a mess. I fought down the urge to figure out if I wanted to organize the board games by either size or alphabetically, and concentrated on finding something the two of us could sit down and enjoy.

I pulled out a couple other board games and levitated them up where Spike could see them. “How about Settlers of Equestria or Chaos and Harmony then?” They were each quite a bit more complex than Battle Clouds and wouldn’t bore me to tears a few minutes into the game. Which was good considering Spike would probably be able to pick up pretty quickly if I wasn’t enjoying myself.

Spike laid his head on the rim of his basket and continued to give me a disapproving look. “Nugh, those games take forever to set up, and I don’t want to be up all night playing them. They’re boring with just the two of us anyways.” He turned his body to lie on his back and went back to reading his comic. Alright, now I was losing him completely. Why was it so hard just to pick a stupid board game the two of us could sit down and play? This seemed like a much easier idea to pull off on the way back to the library. I decided to go with a change in tactics.

I proceeded to pull out all of the board games I had in the closet with my telekinesis. I put them into a revolving circle to give Spike the chance to see what was available. “What would you like to play then?”

Spike sat up to look back down at me with narrowed eyes. “And why do you suddenly care what I think?”

I started walking up the stairs to get to the platform where all of our beds rested. “Spike, I realize things haven’t been ... going that well between us for the past couple days.”

Spike got up onto his knees to face me. He snorted with derision. “You could say that again,” he said with annoyance. I chose to ignore Spike’s tone with me. I wasn’t exactly going to mend fences by setting them on fire.

I reached Spike’s basket and sat down next to it. “Right, so I was hoping we could spend some time doing something fun together.” I levitated a couple of board games up and gave each of them a couple playful shakes. I started pleading with him, I really wanted to start to make things right with him. “Please, we could get some cookies and something to drink also while we play.”

Spike crossed his arms over his chest and huffed. “Fine.”

Finally, I was making some progress. “So what would you like to play?” I asked hopefully.

“Um.” Spike looked at my slowly revolving circle of board games and the barest crack of a smile began to show. He pointed a talon at one of the games. “How about Guess the Pony?”

“That sounds good to me.” I levitated Guess the Pony out of the circle and put the rest of the games back into the closet. I decided that just stacking them based on size would have to do for now, nothing fancy quite yet. I set the game Spike had chosen down on the table. “So how about I go downstairs and get something for the two of us to snack on while you set the game up?”

Spike stepped out of his basket, where his comic lay forgotten. “Yeah, sounds good,” he said with joyful excitement.

“Good, I’ll be right back.” I quickly trotted down to the kitchen and collected some chocolate chip cookies and two glasses of milk. I returned upstairs to see that Spike was finishing setting the game up. I laid the plate of cookies and milk by where he had set everything up.

“You ready to get started?” I asked hopefully. I grabbed the rulebook that Spike had discarded along with the box, and I quickly started to review the rules for the game. I pulled a card out of the game’s deck, and looked at the male unicorn that adorned the face of the card. That would be the pony Spike would have to guess in order to win.

Spike grabbed a cookie and quickly devoured it. “Sure, can I go first?” He drew his own card to examine.

“Go ahead.” I looked over the two board pieces of the game. Just a pair of plastic pieces you could fold for easy packaging. The top piece had a bunch of pictures of different, cartoonishly drawn ponies. The bottom half had three dozen titles that could be flipped up and down with the same ponies on the top piece of plastic on them.

Spike looked at his tiles with intensity as he rubbed his chin. “Is it ... a male unicorn wearing glasses?”

My eyes widened. “What?! Spike—you—no ... you can’t ask that as your first question! That’s not how you’re supposed to play the game. You’re supposed to methodically narrow down the options until you —”

Spike smirked at me. “It is, isn’t it?” He giggled and bounced up and down in his seat.

I let out an exasperated groan and watched as he knocked down all but two of his own tiles. The game had not started out well for me. Unless I made a radically good guess of my own, this round was going to go to Spike. Curse his ridiculously good luck.

True, I could have spent my time on something more worthwhile like research, cleaning the basement, or ... no, this is the most important thing for me to be doing at the time. Spending time with Spike should be my highest priority. I’m basically his bigger sister after all, and a big sister needs to look out for her little brother.