Royal Business
Royal Business
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Twilight’s head shot up from her book. She wasn’t expecting anyone until Spike got back, and he wouldn’t knock. She glanced over to a half shuttered window. Small slashes of orange sunlight streamed in, marking the last few hours of the day. No one she knew would ever call this late… unless it was an emergency. Twilight began to ease herself off the couch next to the hearth and started to make her way to the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Coming!” she called and hurried the rest of the way to the door. Pulling it open with a glow from her horn, she jumped when she saw who was standing outside of it. It was Rarity, and even in the dim outline from the setting sun, Twilight could tell something was wrong. Her hair, which she kept brushed religiously, were tangled and pulled out of its usual curls, making them hang limply on her face, and her carefully applied eyeliner and mascara was smearing in long tracks down her face. The mare had been crying.
“Rarity, what happened?” she exclaimed in shock at her friend’s appearance.
“Oh Twilight, I just got a letter back from Hoity Toity’s fashion company.” She sniffed and her eyes began to well up. “They… they rejected my designs.” She cried.
Twilight winced; the ivory mare had been talking about her submission to Hoity’s catalog for the past month or so, and she had been so excited at her future acceptance into the company’s line. The mare must have been crushed to learn about her rejection, and from her appearance, it looked like she still was.
Twilight paused. She was always so unsure of what to do in these situations. Give her a book any day over an emotional unicorn. The tree would empty until Spike got back, she thought, and that wouldn’t be until much later tonight. Twilight was sure it wouldn’t take that long to calm Rarity down.
“I’m so sorry to hear that Rarity,” Twilight told her, and gave the unicorn her best commiserating smile, “Why don’t you come in, I’ll make you some tea.”
“Oh thank you Twilight.” She perked up slightly as Twilight led her inside. “I hope I’m not bothering you.”
“What are friends for?” Twilight told her as she directed her towards the couch, and then trotted into the kitchen to start the kettle. Coming out a minute later, she saw the extent of Rarity’s depression in the magical candlelight. Her eyes were bloodshot, and only one had a false eyelash over it. The tracks of makeup Twilight had seen in the dim sunlight were smeared down her face, as well as stamped across her cheeks and forehead in small curves where she had been crying into her hooves.
Twilight grimaced, if the vain unicorn found out that she looked like this, it would just make her even more upset, and while Twilight could decide to not tell her, if she didn’t and Rarity saw herself in a mirror somewhere, she would get upset at Twilight for letting her walk around like that. Twilight cast around for some way to break Rarity’s appearance to her, once again cursing her lack of social skills. She finally decided on a way that would let her carefully skirt around the issue while still remaining in the mare’s good graces.
“Um, the water for the tea’s going to take a few minutes to come to a boil. Why don’t you head up to the bathroom and clean yourself up.” She smiled bashfully at Rarity, who managed to catch the subtext of Twilight’s words.
“Oh, I must look so awful! Thank you Twilight, I think I will.” She got off the couch and trotted a few steps before pausing and looking back at Twilight with a question expression of her face. “Oh I’m terribly sorry Twilight, but could you perhaps direct me?” she trailed off, smiling weakly.
“Top of the stairs, first door on the right.” She told Rarity, and the mare gave her a grateful nod before turning back to follow Twilight’s directions. She watched Rarity walk up the staircase, and once again wondered about what she was going to do about this.
Twilight started to think about what the Princess would do in situation, before deciding that she would probably give her a stern lecture on the importance of friendship, and then list off one of her “Rules” that was appropriate for the situation. She giggled to herself at the small in-joke, but was quickly broken from her thoughts by a shrill scream coming from the upstairs.
Rarity had just seen her reflection, it seemed.
A few minutes of running water and muffled swearing later, the mare came down the stairs. Twilight was always amazed at how little effort Rarity seemed to have to put into her appearance, because even by just wiping off the smeared mascara and eyeliner, and brushing her hair, the mare was back to her usual stunning self.
The sharp whistle of the teakettle rang just as Rarity reached the bottom stair, and Twilight brushed past her into the kitchen to silence its screams. She poured the water into two old, but much loved, mugs and then followed it with matching bags of tea and a couple small shots of cream. She had almost gone back into the main room when she remembered Rarity’s taste in tea, and turned back to add a couple a large scoops of sugar to the mare’s mug. For all her attempts to act like a high class socialite, Rarity’s middle class upbringing by two confectioners did show through time to time, and the mare had the biggest sweet tooth of anypony Twilight had ever met, short of Pinkie Pie.
She made sure to remember which mug had the sugar in it, and turned back to float them into the living room. Rarity was already lounging in an overstuffed and slightly holey armchair just across from the couch, and Twilight set her mug down on the chair’s accompanying end table. She then made her way over to the couch and slumped down with her mug floating safely beside her hooves.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Twilight.” Rarity told her, and Twilight could still hear the slight strain in her voice. “I didn’t know where to turn, I would normally go to Fluttershy with things like this, but I haven’t seen her in a week, and could you imagine talking to Rainbow, or… or..” she shuttered slightly, “Applejack.”
Twilight nodded, those two weren’t known for their emotional sensitivity, and gave the other mare a cheerful smile, “I’m just glad I can help, everypony needs a shoulder to cry on now and again.”
Rarity sniffed and smiled back at her, before sitting up and looking around the library warily.
“Um, Twilight? Is Spike here? I don’t think I could stand for him to see me like this.” She asked while wiping away tears from her watering eyes. Twilight froze, before falling back onto their agreed cover story.
“No he’s… on Royal Business.” She divulged hesitantly.
“Again?” Rarity exclaimed. “That’s the third time this month. I hope the Princess find somepony else as useful as him before she runs him into the ground.”
“R-Right.” Twilight agreed and smiled weakly.
***
Spike lay tensed in the bushes, watching the boar scan the clearing wearily. He had tracked silently for most of the night and every instinct he had was screaming at him to pounce and finish it, but if he attacked now the boar would still be able to flee back into the woods. A memory, one of his oldest, stood out in his mind.
‘Now remember Spike, patience is the key to all things, but especially so with hunting. If you move on your first impulse and attack when your prey is still wary then it will flee before you can kill it; but if you wait until it is relaxed and confident that there are no threats, then you will be able to slay it with no trouble.’
Spike smiled as Princess Celestia’s words floated to the forefront of his mind. It had taken a long time for him to learn that lesson.
The boar began to lower its head to the grass and Spike tensed, but still didn’t spring. He waited until its eyes stopped casting around the clearing and it began to focus fully on rooting through the weave of roots that littered the forest floor. It shuffled around for a little while, and then turned to pull out a particularly difficult acorn that was lodged in between a fallen tree branch and an half covered stone.
Spike leapt, flying from his cover behind the tree line and onto the boars back, sinking in his claws in a desperate attempt to gain purchase.
Princess Celestia stared at the mangled rabbit corpse and then turned to face the baby dragon, whose mouth and nose were still smeared with blood. Her face was stern as she said, ‘It is important that you kill your prey quickly and painlessly. You do not play with it, and you do not torment it. It is giving its life so that yours may continue; pay it the respect it deserves and give it a painless death.’ Spike nodded bashfully as the Princess finished lecturing.
He latched himself onto the boar’s back and tried to get his teeth on its neck, a sure way for a quick kill, but the boar bucked back in a startled rage and threw Spike to the ground, leaving the dragon sprawling and the boar with deep gashes in its hide where his claws had been wrenched out. It swung around to face him almost instantly and pawed at the ground angrily, snorting from its muzzle. Spike pulled himself up and jumped to the side just as the boar charged at him; it tusks narrowly grazing his left arm.
Pain blossomed in his hand and arm and he could feel blood begin to drip from the wound. Anger begin to creep into his mind from the pain, but he threw it out. The Princess’ word’s again playing in his head.
‘Do not succumb to anger. It will make you act rashly and cause you to make mistakes. Instead maintain your calm and wait for your foe to slip because of its own rage. Remember Spike, patience is the key to all things.’
The boar was turning itself back around and beginning to charge at him once more. It held its blood flecked tusks low to the forest floor as it tried to gut him, but Spike held his ground and braced himself for the blow.
The boar rapidly closed the distance between them and brought its tusks up in a slashing motion as it neared Spike. Spike crouched and managed to catch the tusks with his claws just as the boar was about to hit him. Turning his body quickly, he shoved his shoulder under boar’s jaw and heaved it over his head, using its momentum to send it flying into a tree.
It squealed in pain and tried to get back to its feet, but Spike lunged to its throat. He grabbed the boar’s neck with his teeth and bit down as hard as he could, snapping the spine. The boar died instantly, and its head fell limp in Spike’s mouth. He rolled the boar over so he could get access to its underbelly and paused before he began.
‘You are not a monster Spike, just a predator. You do not kill for pleasure or sport, but instead because of need. When your prey dies, it gives itself to you, passing along its own life so that you may thrive. There is a harmony to this, and it is important to never undervalue your prey’s contribution to your life. Always thank them for their efforts.’
He closed his eyes and whispered a solemn vow of gratitude to the boar’s corpse, and continued with a small prayer for its speedy descent into the afterlife. The blessing finished, he opened his eyes and set them upon the corpse’s chest.
His stomach growled.
***
“… and then the pie fell on him.” Rarity laughed as she recounted one of her more recent adventures in dating. The mare had cheered up considerable in the last few hours, after Twilight had managed to steer the topic of conversation away from more volatile subjects, though to ones no less uncomfortable for the purple unicorn.
Twilight sighed. She enjoyed the stories of Rarity’s dates, but they reminded her of how much time she had spent studying magic and how little she had spent socializing with other ponies. Twilight had always envied Rarity’s ability to somehow just stumble across willing suitors. Hell, even Spike had a crush on her.
That last thought tickled at something in the back of her mind but Twilight ignored it as Rarity went into another drama filled tale. This one was about two stallions that were both trying to vie for her affections, and trying to equally hard to sabotage their competitor’s attempts as well.
Rarity, never one to leave a story underdramatized, was throwing up her hooves and acting out parts of the story. Her tale climaxed at the Hearts and Hooves Day dance in Fillydelphia, where both of the stallions tried to propose to her at the same time, and then wrecked the dance hall in the ensuing brawl.
Twilight chuckled; it was like the white mare lived a life straight out of those cheesy romance novels that Fluttershy read. Stretching back in the indent she had made from sitting in the old couch, Twilight idly glanced at the clock on top of the mantle.
And froze.
“and…” Rarity paused when she saw the look on Twilight’s face, “Twilight. Twilight, what’s wrong?”
It was late.
It was very late.
That would never be a problem, normally. But tonight wasn’t a normal night. It was a night when Spike went hunting, and that meant that when he got back, which would be any minute now if that hour hand was correct, he’d be covered in dirt and blood. Twilight paled at the thought of Rarity seeing him like that. Most ponies weren’t as accepting of Spike’s diet as she was, and Twilight could just imagine Rarity’s reaction to his carnivorism.
She turned back to the ivory mare and tried to smile, but ended up giving her a strained grimace. “Oh gee, look at the time. You should probably head back home and get your beauty sleep; you know how you are without it.” Twilight then began to usher Rarity towards the door. “It’s been so nice to talk to you; we need to do this more often. Are you free next Sa-Sunday?”
Rarity was baffled by Twilight’s sudden change in behavior. “Is something the matter dear? I’m so sorry if I’ve imposed. I hope I haven’t caused you any trouble.” She implored guiltily.
“Oh no,” Twilight explained with the strained expression still on her face and started to open the door with a glow of her horn, “It just very late and I have so many things to do tomorrow and…” Her hastily fabricated explanation ground to a halt as the door swung free of her telekinesis.
Spike stumbled through the doorway holding his left arm. “Twilight I’m back…” he called and then trailed off; seeing the two mares standing right in front of him.
Rarity screamed.
***
Twilight had managed to convince Spike to go clean himself up while she tried to calm down Rarity, who had begun to suffer a panic attack. She led the hyperventilating mare back to her seat and tried her best to calm her down.
“Rarity, it’s all right. Rarity. Rarity! RARITY!” The last scream made the white mare turn her focus back on Twilight. She was still shaking, but she got her breathing under control enough to talk.
“W-what h-happened to Spike?” she stammered, “There was so much blood. H-how did he get hurt?” She looked at Twilight with wide eyes and began to tear up again.
Once again Twilight wished she was better prepared for these situations, and considered her options. She could lie to Rarity and try and bluff her way through a poorly made explanation about the blood, or tell her the truth and deal with the fallout. Twilight frowned, neither of those choices sounded good.
'It is far better to tell the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may be, and stick to your convictions, than to weave a web of lies and lose yourself in the process.'
One of her mentor’s expressions came back to her, and made the Sun Goddess’ opinion on the matter clear; Celestia had never tolerated lying under any circumstances. Twilight made her decision, and tried to bolster up her courage for what was to come.
“Twilight! Shouldn’t we take him to the hospital! Oh Sweet Celestia! What if he’s going to die!” Rarity blurted out, verging onto another panic attack. Twilight hesitated, but then followed through with her decision, regretting every word she said.
“I don’t think that was his blood Rarity.”
Rarity looked confused, “Were else would it come from then Twilight? He looked like he was attacked by a wild animal!” She froze and then shouted, “Where is he, he needs our help!”
“I told him to go upstairs and clean himself off.” Twilight explained wearily; she was not looking forward to the rest of this conversation. “He’s fine. He always comes back like this.”
“Comes back from what?” Rarity asked hesitantly; her panic being replaced by confusion mixed with fear.
Twilight took a deep breath, and told her.
“From hunting.”
***
“WHAT!”
Spike winced at Rarity’s scream, but tried to ignore the rest of the conversation. He didn’t want to know what she was saying about him.
He sighed; he had known that any shot he had with Rarity would be a long one indeed, but now his chances with her had been completely and utterly destroyed. He sank down into the tub to block out the sounds coming from downstairs and tried to clear his mind by cleaning his scales. As he scrubbed off the coating of congealed blood and dirt that always managed to cake his skin after a successful hunt, Princess Celestia’s words sounded into his mind.
‘You must always wash yourself as quickly as possible after completing a hunt. It is very likely that you will be covered in blood; be it your prey’s or your own, and washing it away will allow you to both properly see the extent of any injuries you may have acquired and prevent infection from setting in...’ Celestia smiled as the blood soaked baby dragon splashed around in the tub. ‘Besides,’ she added with a chuckle, ‘I have heard that cleanliness is next to godliness.’
It took time to scrape off the coating of grime, and when he was finally finished the water in the bathtub was rose colored from the blood. He examined his arm and grimaced at the long jagged slash that ran from his wrist to his elbow. It had stopped bleeding, but still ached whenever he moved his arm, so he reached under the sink for bandages order to ‘properly assess and manage his wounds’.
Spike smiled as he applied some antibacterial lotion, followed with a little numbing cream, before finally wrapping himself with gauze. The Princess’ lessons may have been a little mechanical and repetitive, but the rules she had drilled into his head had saved him more than once, not to mention kept him from starving to death.
The conversation downstairs was growing in volume, and Spike glanced at the small clock that hung over the bathroom mirror. Twenty minutes had passed, give or take, since he had stumbled up here. And it didn’t sound like the mares’ discussion was going to stop any time soon. Or get any quieter.
Spike steadied himself and opened the bathroom door.
“He kills things Twilight. How is that safe? What’s to say that he won’t suddenly decide that ponies are ‘appropriate prey’ as you so eloquently put it!” Rarity was yelling and Twilight’s voice was raised to match.
“How dare you say that! Do you know what he’s been through? What the Princess put him through?! He has more self control than any pony I know!” Twilight furiously rebuked.
“Self Control? Self Control!? Have you forgotten what happened on his birthday?! He turned into a rampaging monster because of his self control!” Rarity pushed.
“That was an accident. Neither of us were prepared. The influx of gifts set off an emotion he’d never experienced before and it happened to cause a magically induced growth spurt.” Twilight’s voice lowered a bit from embarrassment.
“I just can’t believe you would hide something like this! Here I was thinking we were friends, when you’re harboring a flesh eating monster in our town!” Rarity had no intention of being quite, and her voice rang out throughout the house. She stomped angrily over to the door and flung it open hard enough to rattle the hinges, not even bothering to use magic.
“I’m leaving, and I’ll have you know that I will tell the rest of our friends about Spike’s habit.” Rarity proclaimed.
“Don’t you dare...” Twilight growled, and Rarity turned from the open doorway to look into Twilight’s eyes.
“They deserve to know.” Rarity stated flatly, her voice sharp enough to slice diamonds.
Twilight’s face hardened, but then she seemed to wilt. “Rarity… Rarity please, don’t tell them. Please, I’m asking you as a friend, don’t tell them.”
Rarity continued to glare at her, her mouth still set in a thin frown, so Twilight tried again, even softer. “Please Rarity, please don’t.” The mare implored, her eyes pleading.
The ivory unicorn held her gaze a moment longer; then looked down with a sigh. “Fine. I won’t tell them, as your friend. But they should know all the same.” She left the library as she finished; slamming the door behind her on the last word.
Twilight sagged in relief. That had gone horribly, but at least the news of Spike dietary habits wouldn’t be broadcast all across Ponyville. She went over and locked the door, but stiffened when she heard a sharp sound in the now silent house. The noise happened again, and Twilight followed it to the base of the stairs, where she could now here it more clearly. The mare drew closer, and then finally recognized it. Something she only heard perhaps three or four times before.
A crying dragon.
Twilight took the remaining stairs two at a time, and pushed passed the open bathroom door. Spike was sitting with his back against the tub, crying into his claws. He must have overheard, she realized, and then cursed Rarity as hard as she could under her breath, before rushing over to pull him into a big hug.
“Shh. Don’t worry. Everything will be alright.” She whispered too him, and felt his chest hitch against her arms.
“Sh-She hates me.” Spike choked, and buried his face into Twilight’s shoulder. Twilight rubbed his back and tried, for the third time that night, to find the right words.
“No she doesn’t. She’s your friend; she just needs time to… adjust.” Twilight tried to reassure him, but Spike just cried harder.
“Oh, Spike.” Twilight cursed Rarity again as she clutched the dragon to her chest, feeling him sob in her arms.
***
She held him for a while as he cried, doing her best to comfort him. After a long time of rocking him back and forth, Spike finally managed to wear himself out, and fell into an unsteady sleep against her chest. She wrapped his sleeping form in a light layer of magic, and then lifted him out of her lap and into the air next to her. Making sure he was still asleep, Twilight carried him across the hallway to their shared bedroom as quietly as she could; wincing at each squeak of protest the aging wood floor gave.
Twilight floated him into his basket, and pulled his blanket over him. He curled up instinctively in the tight confines of the wicker basket, and wrapped himself around until the tip of his tail rested just underneath his nose. As he shifted, his left arm pushed back the blanket, and revealed a tightly wound bandage. He must have been injured out in the forest, she realized.
Twilight grimaced, and cursed Rarity for what must have been the hundredth time that night; this time for distracting her from Spike’s injury. She scooted closer to his basket, and while moving ever so carefully so as not to wake him, she examined the bandage. It was wound carefully; each roll of the cloth covering the one before it enough to insure a tight binding, but still lose enough allowing mobility and unhampered circulation. Twilight smiled, it was done perfectly, just like the Princess had showed them.
She had always found those first aid exercises useless back then; just meaningless distractions from her lessons about magic. But then Spike had gotten too big to keep hunting rabbits in the Royal Gardens, and had needed to go elsewhere to find prey. At first in the Princess’ private reservation, just across the valley from the castle, where the largest thing around was a bear, but now he was hunting in the Everfree Forrest, which was home to things much more dangerous than a baby dragon. Twilight shivered at memories of the manticore and hydra, as well as the vague recollection of spending a night as a statue after meeting a cockatrice’s gaze.
Now it seemed like he couldn’t come back from a hunt without her having to break out the first aid kit and rusty medical knowledge. She just hoped he never got too injured, because she didn’t know what she would say if they had to take him to a hospital.
The chances for that were slim though, and Spike was careful. He had staked out his own territory in the forest, using some strange method predators used to determine ownership. She was fuzzy on the details, and Spike always seemed to hastily change the subject when she asked, but the Princess had known enough to tell him how. And regardless of how it happened, his claim to ownership of that thin strip of forest was enough to deter the nastiest of the creatures that lived inside the dark wood.
Movement from the basket broke her from her reverie and Twilight looked down to see Spike’s claws twitch and move sporadically, and the tip of his tale flitter back and forth under his nose. Suddenly his claws clenched on an unseen opponent, and Spike’s lips parted into a small snarl.
He was hunting in his sleep, she realized, and frowned as she watched him struggle with his claws against his assailant, followed by a slight twitch of his mouth that prompted a thin trail of smoke to rise from his nose. He was moving quite a lot, and Twilight started to worry that he would wake himself up. Thinking back to barely half an hour ago when he had been sobbing against her shoulder, Twilight decided that it would be far better for him to stay asleep and not think about Rarity or her declarations about him for a little while, so she tried a trick she had learned when he still small enough to sleep curled up in her lap.
Just as he began to start another fight with his invisible opponent, Twilight reached down and began to gently stroke the area behind his earfins, being sure not to press hard enough to wake him up. He tensed at her touch, claws freezing mid strike, but soon relaxed back into the basket as she gently rubbed him on the back of the head. After a few more minutes of careful scratching, she was rewarded with a deep rumbling in his chest, and he shifted his head to the side to provide better access. Twilight kept going a little longer, then carefully extracted her hoof and stood back from the basket. His body was still now, and the only sign of life was the rhythmic motion of his chest, followed by the remnants of his low purrs.
She smiled at him, and made her way to the small bed under the window. Twilight paused before slipping into her bed and looked out onto the moonlit streets of Ponyville. They were empty and almost desolate compared to their regular boisterous traffic, but her imagination filled them with rioters and angry citizens, here to drive out the “evil dragon”. Twilight shook her head and looked away, pulling the blinds shut with a burst of magic. Rarity would keep her promise, she thought, there was no reason to worry.
She hoped.