Hot Dragon Inaction

by SilverNotes

Fan the Flames

It was easy enough to spot Carousel Boutique from the air. Ponies may have been hard to tell apart, but she could at least be thankful for how distinct they made their architecture. Her people could take notes on making their caves look different so that homes and budding businesses were easier to find and they stopped having tourists blunder into the wrong place. That one kelpie she'd met had been about to waltz right into a private residence.

Ember's wings were burning by time she landed in front of the building, and she wondered how long she'd been up there. She looked at the position of the sun, and came to the conclusion that it amounted to too long, and that squashed down her hesitation. She'd already wasted too much time figuring out who to get advice from. She couldn't waste any of it dallying.

She did, however, indulge in a single, steadying breath, and she raised her fist to give the door a knock. She was the Dragon Lord. She was allowed the occasional indulgence.

She heard hoofsteps inside, then the door opened, and Ember was about eighty-five percent certain that the pony who opened the door wasn't Rarity. She couldn't see hindquarters from this angle, but she was reasonably certain she remembered the backdrop of the gemstones being something other than green. She was also relatively sure that Rarity was the kind of pony with a horn.

"Oh! Hello, Dragon Lord Ember. What brings you here?"

And she was very sure that Rarity didn't have such a masculine voice.

The pony certainly seemed to know who she was, though, between the name-and-title thing and the respectful nod that came with it, and Ember opened her mouth to respond when a booming voice rang out from inside the boutique.

"WHO AT DOOR?"

Ember fought to keep her poker face. She was one hundred percent certain that that was the voice of a yak.

"It's the Dragon Lord!" The pony stepped back from the door as he said that, gesturing with one foreleg for her to come in, and, now apparently stuck on whatever kind of ride this was, Ember obliged, stepping into the boutique. Was she in the wrong place? Had she mixed up Rarity's profession with someone else's?

It was possible, but she could have sworn the gem-butt pony and dress-making pony were the one and the same. Ember cast a quick glance at his flank. Nope, not gems.

With that confirmed, she looked around. The inside looked about like what she'd expected: very pink, and very frilly. Facsimiles of various different species were around, bipedal and quadrupedal alike--she had to pause and lean to one side to get a better look at one that seemed to have been made based on a centaur's body plan--and each had some kind of flashy, sparkly attire on it. Mostly dresses, but there were a few suits too, most notably one that reminded Ember a lot of a suit that Spike had worn to a recent diplomatic function.

She supposed it'd make sense that Rarity would have designed Spike's clothes. If this was the right place, which she doubted all the more when a yak was indeed what stepped out from among the various clothing displays, each placement of a hoof making the floor tremble slightly. "Dragon Lord Ember! Yona so pleasantly surprised!"

She managed a smile in response. "Just Ember. I've been hearing 'Dragon Lord' all the time for ages, and I'm on vacation today."

"Of course." The well-dressed yak bobbed her head. "Welcome to Carousel Boutique, Ember. How can Yona be of service?

That was one thing to appreciate about yaks. They repeated their names so much that it was much harder to forget them. Why couldn't all mammals be so considerate? "Well, I was hoping to see Rarity..."

Both of them glanced at each other, and something clicked in Ember's mind. Wait, Yona was one of the Smolder's friends, wasn't she? That meant that the pony was probably... Sand Dune? Sand Dollar? Whatever his name was, he's the one who spoke up. "Well, you see, Dra--Ember, Rarity doesn't run the boutique in Ponyville anymore."

Yona nodded. "Sandbar right." Sandbar, that was the name. "Rarity have lots of boutiques. Rarity always travelling all over to check on them. She leave Ponyville in Yona's hooves." Ember realized that her frown must shown through when she hastily added, "But Ember in luck! Rarity coming to visit today."

"Yeah, she should be here in a couple of hours," Sandbar added. Ember considered the time she'd been spending in flying alone with her thoughts, measured out a couple of more hours, and weighed it against dinnertime. There wouldn't be a lot of time to talk, just a short conversation. Not ideal, but then again, she'd worked with shorter deadlines. As she was thinking, he continued, "Would you like to come back later? Or you could join us for tea while you wait?"

Yona nodded excitedly. "Yona have good blend for dragon guests. Smolder love it!"

"Tea would be great." It wasn't like she had anything better to do; she'd just end up stewing in her own feelings again if she went back to flying.

Yak and pony both hurried off to prepare the tea, and Ember managed a real smile. Maybe these two would have some embarrassing stories about Smolder to torment the younger dragon with when next they met up. That'd definitely be worth the trip.

---

"...And then she had to spend all day with her scales like that."

"Yona know who did it. Gallus have bad poker face."

"But it took us a while to figure out how. Turned out he'd made a deal with this unicorn we'd shared classes with to rig her scale-wax with a colour-change spell. We found her shaking the filly and demanding the counter-spell."

Ember couldn't help but chuckle as she held her teacup in her claws, imagining an alarmingly blue Smolder shuffling from class to class snorting irritated smoke from her nostrils. She took a sip of the steaming liquid, letting the unique blend of spices roll over her tongue, and she couldn't help but admit that they'd been right. This tea was good.

She'd been led into a little side-room of the boutique, and was currently seated on a very plush, purple cushion around a small table. Yona and Sandbar were across from her, seated close together, and had yet to touch their own cups, since less heat-proof creatures tended to prefer their own tea at a temperature below boiling.

It was strange to consider how much things had changed. Being the Dragon Lord had meant embracing unconventional dragonhood, and putting in the work to remove unconventional from the name at all. That had been anything from embracing Spike's ideas of friendship, to Garble's love of poetry, to even her own belief that intelligence, creativity, and adaptability were better leadership qualities than raw power and a dominating personality.

Before, tea parties had been the go-to thing to mock ponies and their society with, yet, here she was, sitting with a pony and a yak and drinking tea. And enjoying it.

"Yona get more tea." She paused and nuzzled lightly at Sandbar's cheek, who nuzzled right back. "Sandbar tell next story."

Huh.

Ember wasn't any better with mammal body language than she was with their names, but she was fairly certain that hadn't been a purely friendly nuzzle. Had Smolder ever said something like that, about her friends? A vague memory was stirring of two of them having dated, or at least gone on a date. It was a shame that Smolder's letters to her from those years were sitting in her cave so she couldn't look them over.

"Something wrong with the tea?" Sandbar asked, and Ember forced on the small, vaguely-polite smile she'd gotten used to doing around other creatures for the sake of diplomacy.

"No, no, it's great." She took another sip, mentally picking out a few more spices and comparing them to the gems they made her think of. "I can see why Smolder likes it."

Yona soon came back, the teapot dangling from one horn, and she carefully tilted her head to refill her own, Sandbar's, and Ember's cups. Then the pair shared another nuzzle, miraculously not resulting in scalding hot liquid scorching any green pony fur. They both noticed the look Ember was giving them, then, and yak bluntness and compactness of sentences had the words out the fastest, "Ember not know Yona and Sandbar couple?"

It took three blinks. "Well, I--Smolder mentioned that, but, you know, it was years ago, when you guys were still kids. So... congrats on still being together."

Ember nearly cringed herself a foot shorter. Smooth as broken obsidian.

Both of them seemed to take it completely at face value, however, smiling broadly as Yona set the teapot down and settled back onto her cushion. Sandbar, chuckling, then launched into his storyteller voice again. "So, after the scales incident, Smolder wanted to get back at Gallus, and she wanted to make it big. We found out later she'd roped in Ocelus, but at the time--"

Ember tried to keep her face schooled, even as she nodded at what she hoped were the right times to feign paying attention. A pony and a yak as a couple. They were about as different as two mammalian sapients could get--she wasn't counting hybrids in that, like griffons; she could only imagine what a griffon and pony couple would've looked like--and yet they seemed to really be making it work. Even now, the casual affection between the two was very open, with Sandbar leaning against Yona as he spoke, comfortably using her great, fluffy bulk as a pillow.

In a lot of ways, Spike was essentially a pony. There were some dragon things built-in that none of them could avoid, but he'd been hatched by and raised by ponies.

(She'd tried to uncover his past, once, but the trail was cold. A smuggler had acquired the egg for a client who wanted it for alchemical purposes, but how remained a mystery. The supplier had covered their tracks too well, and no parents had come forward claiming to have lost an egg to a thief. It had taken Ember years to accept defeat, and it'd never stopped bothering her.

She'd never told him what she was trying. Not after she heard what had happened with a dragon who had pretended to be his father.

She had, however, eventually summoned Sludge for a little one-on-one chat about what was no longer acceptable behaviour toward benefactors.)

It pretty much was an interspecies relationship. Or would be, if this went anywhere.

If these two could make it work, maybe they'd be able to help her out. They just couldn't know what she was after, else it was sure to get to Smolder and she would laugh her tail off.

Ember just needed to be tactful and subtle. Piece of cake.

Comments

[Yoshifan30]

"Yona get more tea." She paused and nuzzled lightly at Sandbar's cheek, who nuzzled right back. "Sandbar tell next story."

Aww they are so cute together

[Yoshifan30]

Both of them seemed to take it completely at face value, however, smiling broadly as Yona set the teapot down and settled back onto her cushion. Sandbar, chuckling, then launched into his storyteller voice again. "So, after the scales incident, Smolder wanted to get back at Gallus, and she wanted to make it big. We found out later she'd roped in Ocelus, but at the time--"

Ocellus

[Yoshifan30]

Okay so it looks like her plan did not work as according to her idea which probably did not see that coming so instead of asking Rarity she saw one of smolders friends Sandbar and Yona which turns out that they are working for Rarity while she is out to check out the other Boutique but it looks like she's coming back to visit Ponyville so she can wait and they were talking about their younger years and ember found out there is two are a couple so maybe she can get some advice from them without being blunt let's see how that works