Where There's Smoke...
Sandbar carefully counted out the words in his essay. One by one, he marked them off. This was fairly tedious, but that was Twilight Sparkle's personal class for you. Of all of the teachers at the School for Friendship, hers was the most... Sandbar couldn't think of a better word to describe it than "school-y." Very traditional classwork, assignments, study sessions, et cetera. It wasn't that he disliked the class, though. Far from it. Actually, there was very little about the school that he actively didn't like. However, counting out the words in his essays? That would probably rank highly on his very short list.
It did give him a chance to reread his paper though, and he was incredibly proud of himself. It was worth not sleeping to get this done. It was well thought out, well written, and showed just enough of his personality to seem charming, without being overbearing. It took him all night, but as long as he had the 3,000 word cap he needed, this assignment was done, and he could move on to the wonderful relaxation that came with a free weekend. Maybe he would go see if he could catch some surf at the beach. Maybe he'd see what he could pick up at the Flea Market. On second thought, he'd do none of those things. He would simply sit in his dorm room, talk with his friends and chill. Chill to the point that ponies would be worried about his body temperature.
2,998... 2,999... 3,000. That was it. He was done! After a long, tiring night of backbreaking, grueling work, he was finally done. He was even two paragraphs ahead of where he needed to be. He fell onto his back and let the victory of the moment wash over him like the high tide. He took in all of the beauty of the world around him, now that he could appreciate it. The surprisingly comfortable floor he was sprawled on. The little patterns formed in the weird material that the ceiling was made out of. The dull hum of the lights as they flickered throughout the study hall. The strong smell of smoke that seemed to permeate the place, searing his nose and watering his eyes... Pure, unmitigated bliss all around.
Eventually he came to realize that the smell of smoke was abnormal and rather disturbing.
He shot up and looked around to find the source of the smoke, mentally charting a path through the school to check various rooms. The chemistry lab would be locked at this time of day, as would most classrooms. The library, where he found himself, was full of flammable books. The last thing he needed right now was for the building to burn down while he was celebrating his victory. Before he got to his feet, he found what was making the smoke, and he calmed down. Only a little bit, however. This could still be a problem.
In a haze of white smoke, he could barely make out his friend Smolder. The dragon was looking quite a bit worse for wear. Her color was off. Her normally orange scales seemed to have grayed. Her eyes were puffy, and her nose had turned a bright red. It was when Sandbar was looking at her nose that he found the source of the smoke. The stuff was billowing out of it like an active volcano.
Sandbar was more than a little concerned when he realized that Smolder was walking straight up to him, making a beeline to his desk. He wanted to run for his life, but they were friends, so he felt like he should probably inquire as to what in the names of the Four Alicorns was wrong.
She strode up to his desk and sniffed sharply. Some of the smoke retreating into her nose as she did. The rest of the smoke was making it difficult for Sandbar to breathe. "Hey Sandbar," she said weakly, and with the obvious speech impediment that came with a stopped nose. "What's up?"
"Your temperature, by the looks of it," Sandbar coughed through the smoke. "Yikes, Smolder, you look awful."
"Thank you," Smolder said dryly, narrowing her eyes.
"Come on, you know I didn't mean that," Sandbar scolded. "You seriously need to go see a nurse, like, immediately. You'll choke out the school if you're not careful."
"I'm fine," Smolder said, waving her claw. "I'm just a little congested, it's no big deal."
"A little congested?" Sandbar repeated, gesturing to the cloud of white smoke that billowed all around him. "Well, Celestia help us if you end up seriously ill – there might end up being a mushroom cloud over the school. Go to the nurse."
"I'm fine," Smolder insisted.
"You look like you were hit by a runaway ice-cream cart," Sandbar pointed out.
"I kind of feel like it, too. Gotta be honest," Smolder said miserably.
"Sweet Celestia, go to the nurse!" Sandbar was moving into a shout now. "I'll take you myself, if need be."
"I'm fine." Smolder insisted again. "This will pass in a few hours. It always did back home. Now, believe it or not, there was a reason why I came over here."
"A desperate, pleading cry for help?" Sandbar guessed.
"Very funny," Smolder said calmly. "No, Fluttershy's class. This whole Parasprite thing. I am completely lost. Could you help me out here?"
Sandbar looked right into Smolder's eyes. "If I do, will you finally take my advice and go to the nurse to get yourself checked out?"
"As far as you know," Smolder nodded.
Sandbar rolled his eyes. Stubborn as she was, he wasn't simply going to leave his friend hanging. "Alright, listen," Sandbar started. "You remember what happened with those things right? She found them near her cottage–"
"Thought they looked adorable and took them in," Smolder finished. "No, I've got that much. What I'm missing is the lesson I'm supposed to be taking away from this... Like... Is it supposed to be 'never trust adorable?' Because that means I'd have to be wary of Ocellus and Silverstream... And I don't think they're up to anything malicious. The worst you can say about Silverstream is that she's really loud."
"Kind of the opposite. You have to trust your friends to know when and how to help," Sandbar said in such a way to make the parallels between that lesson and Smolder's situation obvious.
"The whole Pinkie Pie thing, right," Smolder said, letting the hint sail completely over her head, almost making a whistling noise as it passed. "Actually, that's another thing I don't get. If Pinkie knew about the Parasprites in the first place, why didn't she say that instead of rambling on about a trombone or tambourine or whatever. I mean, sure it was obvious that she didn't like the Parasprites, but the trombone thing was just completely out of left field. How were they supposed to know there was even going to be a problem, let alone how to solve that problem, if Pinkie didn't say anything?"
Sandbar's face was now buried in his hooves. "Well, different ponies have different ways of doing things, you see," he sighed. "And different ways of responding. Some ponies respond to words, some to action. Pinkie grew up around ponies that responded to action, when her friends may have needed more information. So she learned a lesson too, I guess."
"Wha- What lesson is that?" Smolder said, her face contorting a bit.
"Know your audience," Sandbar shrugged, not noticing that Smolder's hands were simultaneously trying to pinch and plug her nose. "For example, I've told you to go to the nurse's office several times, and you don't seem to be responding. So what I apparently need to do is beat you unconscious with my saddlebag and drag you by the tail–"
And then Smolder sneezed.
Having a friend sneeze all over your schoolwork would be an unpleasant experience no matter the circumstances. However, Smolder was a dragon. This made it a thousand times worse.
A gout of flame shot from Smolder's nose, causing a blinding flash and searing heat that enveloped the entirety of Sandbar's vision. He managed to clear his eyes for long enough to wish the flash had permanently blinded him. The fire had eradicated not only his 3,000 word essay, but the desk it sat upon as well. At that sight, and realizing that the last few hours of his life were now a complete waste of time, Sandbar went quickly, silently, and, thank heavens, temporarily insane.
The silence that followed as they both looked in horror at what Smolder had inadvertently done gave Sandbar time to calm down. "Okay," he said calmly. "That could have been way worse than it was. Unfortunately, you've only killed my soul, and not my body, so next time if you could aim that sneeze toward my head, that would just be aces."
"I am so… sorry," Smolder said weakly with a note of abject horror in her voice.
"Yeah," Sandbar said calmly. "Yeah, I'm sorry too."
"I will talk to whichever teacher gave you that assignment and I will make sure that you won't get in trouble," Smolder said pleadingly, obviously regretting what she had done a little too much. "Sandbar, I am so, so sorry..."
"It's alright," Sandbar said, calming down completely now, and raising a single hoof to make it clear to Smolder that he was fine. "And I will thank you to explain to Princess Twilight what happened. There is also something else you're going to be doing. You're going to the nurse's office. Now. This isn't a suggestion or some sort of gentle prodding. If I have to drag your scaly butt down there by the tail, I will."
"Come on, Sandbar! There's no need for me to go to the nurse!" Smolder protested vehemently. "It's no big deal! I just sneezed! Why do we have to make a huge case out of it?"
"Because with that sneeze, you just eradicated my homework, my desk, and just missed my front legs and face by a few inches," Sandbar said emphatically, pointing at the ruins of his desk. "We're going to see if there is some kind of dragon antihistamine they can give you before you burn the school down."
"They won't have them," Smolder mumbled. "They don't have anything here..."
Sandbar raised an eyebrow, but decided to ignore that for the time being. "Are you coming?" Sandbar asked. "Or do I have to make an idiot of myself trying to drag you?"
Smolder looked at Sandbar's face, desperate to see if she could find any way out of this. Eventually she realized there wasn't and nodded. Lurching forward, she plodded after Sandbar, sniffling all the way.
The trip down to the nurse's office was short, but far from uneventful. Smolder had sneezed several more times since then. She had set ablaze several pieces of furniture, a few books, one set of curtains, and a member of the faculty. Luckily, Pinkie Pie was very quick, and able to dive into the school's fountain before any lasting damage could be done. A dragon sneezing fit seemed to be a much bigger problem than the school could feasibly handle.
Sandbar hoped that would change when they got to the nurse. Smolder sat on the bed, while Sandbar paced up and down the infirmary, now very worried for his friend. The memory of his lost assignment had almost faded, as he now just wanted his friend to get better before the destructiveness of her sneezing outweighed the faculty's understanding of the situation.
Nurse Redheart took Smolder's temperature first.For a pony, it would be lethal, but for a dragon it was completely normal. She did some light bloodwork, and it was normal as far as she could tell. She tested her reflexes, and Smolder responded beautifully when she kicked the hammer out of Nurse Redheart's hoof. All and all, aside from the congestion and sneezing, Smolder seemed like a perfectly healthy dragon, at least as far as Nurse Redheart could tell.
"I'm sorry," Nurse Redheart said, shaking her head. "I'm afraid I'm a little out of my depth with dragons. As far as I can tell, the only thing wrong with her is that she's congested. My guess is she's allergic to something."
"But what could she possibly be allergic to?" Sandbar asked with more than a hint of worry. "I mean, she's been living here for over a year now. She's been through a full cycle of what the flowers around here go through. All of the cleaning solutions the staff use haven't changed, at least I don't think they have. I haven't noticed any change in any pattern since Smolder got here. So what could be going wrong?"
Nurse Redheart shook her head. "I'm sorry," she sighed solemnly. "I just don't know. Any number of things may have changed during her time here. Anything from a change in the ambient magic in her environment to a change in her immune system..." The poor nurse took a moment to breathe, fighting both her own exasperation and the urge to cough from the smoke. "The point I'm trying to make is that your friend here isn't sick. As far as I can tell, she is just sneezing."
"She has this weird feeling that she told people that at the beginning of this whole runaround," Smolder said with a bit of an edge to her voice. "She also happens to be in the same room as the two of you. So if you could do her the favor of addressing her by name, like she was a living dragon with thoughts and feelings as opposed to wallpaper, she would greatly appreciate that."
Nurse Redheart nodded, then walked up to Smolder. Looking right into her eye, she spoke to her in a voice that would make anyone feel respected. "Normally, I would agree with you, Smolder," she said directly, taking care to address Smolder by name. "If you do have anything, it isn't contagious, and it most certainly isn't life threatening. If you were any other student I would be sending you back to class with a lollipop right about now. You have to understand however, that you aren't any other student. As a dragon–"
"As a dragon, all of you are afraid that I'll burn the whole place down," Smolder growled under her breath while saying that. "Because for some reason it's my fault that you ponies build everything out of wood and paper."
There was an awkward silence as the two ponies left that last sentence hanging in the air. Nurse Redheart gave Sandbar a significant look. Something about Smolder was becoming clearer and clearer as they talked.
Smolder sighed, obviously trying to regain her composure after getting more upset than she seemed on the surface. "Listen, is there anything you can give me to calm this down?" She asked sincerely, obviously realizing that Nurse Redheart was trying to help. "I've got to be honest, I'm a little worried about burning the place down myself. That shipment of meds from Dragonlands that Ember was sending should have shown up by now. There has to be an anti-histamine in there."
"I'm afraid that the meds for the non-pony creatures haven't arrived yet," Nurse Redheart said, with the weary tone of somepony who has been dealing with this particular headache for quite some time. "There seems to be some trouble up the road, like always. So I've been sitting here for three weeks, praying that either that will clear up, or my couriers will stop being incompetent twits. Neither looks likely at this time."
Smolder threw up her claws. "It never rains, but it pours," she said miserably.
"I'm sorry, Smolder," Nurse Redheart said sympathetically, putting her hoof on Smolder's shoulder. "I just can't think of anything more to do here... but I'll tell you what I can do. I can recommend you see someone else. Sandbar, do you know how to find Zecora's place in the Everfree forest?"
"Yeah," Sandbar nodded. "We passed it on our first week here. Remember, Smolder? The little hut on the way to the Castle of the Two Sisters."
"The one that you said a zebra lived in," Smolder nodded. "And I asked what in Harmony's name a zebra was."
"That zebra is a wizard with potions," Nurse Redheart explained. "Sandbar, you have my permission to take Smolder off campus and have Zecora check her out. If anypony can stop the sneezing, it's her."
Sandbar nodded and headed for the door, but eventually he was stopped by Smolder, tugging on his foreleg. "Um, before I go," she addressed the nurse meekly, a little embarrassed about what she was asking for. "Is there any chance I could get my hands on one of those lollipops you mentioned?"
Nurse Redheart smiled and pulled out a bowl filled with lollipops. She carefully picked up a green one with yellow gemstones protruding out of it. "Topaz and lime," she smiled. "Hey, at least I can get some things in on time."
Smolder smiled, and took the lollipop. They both thanked Nurse Redheart and left for Zecora's place.
The walk through the Everfree forest was twice as unnerving as the walk to the nurse's office, and this time Smolder didn't sneeze once. Sandbar had always heard legends and Old Mare's tales about the things that had gone on in the Everfree Forest. He would be far less nervous about them if they didn't nearly all turn out to be true. Nightmare Moon, the Pony of Shadows, and those were just the big serious magical threats that had shown up. The staggering number of dangerous fauna would give anypony a heart attack. Cockatrices, Manticores, Timberwolves, just to name a few, and they would not hesitate to eat Sandbar alive. He knew that it wasn't as dangerous as the ponies of Ponyville originally thought, but it was still nerve-wracking nonetheless.
One would think that having a dragon by his side would calm Sandbar down. Unfortunately, that only made things worse. Smolder was still smoking from the nose, and obviously still fuming from the frustration. Sandbar wasn't sure whether he would choke first on the smoke or the tension in the air. Something was obviously really upsetting her, and Sandbar was very slowly starting to piece together what that was. There was also the issue of her sneezing. While she hadn't sneezed yet, if she did, Sandbar was terrified of what would happen. They were surrounded by trees. Very dry trees.
Luckily, they made it to Zecora's without incident. Inside, Sandbar sat comfortably on a humble little straw mat, and Smolder paced around the room, getting antsier by the minute and radiating anger and frustration. Zecora, in the meantime, had already taken Smolder's temperature, and had asked her several questions. She was now standing over a cauldron, plopping things in it every so often, and muttering in her own language.
"Honestly, how long does it take to mix up an anti-sneezing potion?" Smolder muttered under her breath, getting more hostile with every word. "Back home, fixing this would take five minutes, if anyone would even bother trying to fix it at all. For Harmony's sake, I'm just sneezing..."
"Smolder?" Sandbar decided now was the time to ask, just to see if she would admit what was really going on. "What's eating you? I mean... This has to go beyond you sneezing a lot. Something has been bothering you."
"Of course, this entire hut is made of wood and straw..." Smolder muttered angrily, now pacing faster and faster around the hut. "If I sneeze in the wrong direction, the entire place will burn to the ground. Because they were willing to have me as a student, but Harmony forbid I sneeze. I mean, ponies do it all the time, but when they do only magic fairy dust comes out, obviously. And of course they went ahead and made this school, and the minute anyone does anything a little bit out of the ordinary to ponies, they lose it... "
"Smolder?" Sandbar decided to interrupt the diatribe once again. "Are you listening to me? Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, alright, I just..." Smolder said more harshly than she meant to. She paced around the hut one more time to compose herself. "I'm fine. I'm just getting a little impatient. I'm sorry if I'm coming off as angry. I just want to get back to class."
"Is that really all?" Sandbar asked sincerely. "Smolder, seriously, something has been upsetting you. Whatever it is, just let me help. I'm your friend, we can talk about it. That's what we've been talking about in class this whole time. Friends are there to help each other. So please, talk to me about it. "
"It's nothing you can fix," Smolder said quietly. Sandbar was amazed that he had managed to get her to admit that she had a problem at all. "There is no point in burdening you with it. It's something I have to deal with myself. And I will, I just need a little time. And to fix this sneezing issue. By the way, stripey-pony? Miss Zecora? How long exactly until this elixir is done? I would like to get back to class as soon as possible."
"You should learn more patience, young one," Zecora said calmly, stirring the pot and then looking on her shelves. "With one more ingredient, I shall be done..."
Smolder sighed with a kind of resigned relief. She seemed incredibly uncomfortable in the hut and couldn't wait to leave. Then she noticed that Zecora was looking around at all of the shelves,searching for something she obviously couldn't find. "Oh, don't tell me," Smolder said, her puffy eyes widening with more than a hint of dread within them. "Don't... Don't tell me you're missing the last ingredient. Don't tell me that's what is happening right now..."
Zecora shook her head. "I am afraid I am out of powdered Lotus flower," Zecora sighed with irritation. "Without it, fixing your problem is beyond my power."
"Oh please...," Smolder said, rolling her eyes as her frustrations reached critical mass.
Sandbar noticed that something was about to break down, and he quickly stepped in to diffuse the situation. "Where can we find the flower," he said quickly, trying to find a solution before Smolder lost it. "Maybe we can get it back to you before--"
"No. Okay? No," Smolder said firmly, at this point steaming with more than frustration. "We absolutely are not looking for anything else. I'm done."
"Smolder," Sandbar started.
"No, I'm done," Smolder continued, now in full tilt rant mode. "I'm over this. I refuse to take part in it any further. I am congested, for the love of the Gauntlet. That's all. You ponies get congested all the time, and you don't have to go on an epic quest for the magic flower to fix it. If you did, you know what you would do? Live with it! Because it's no big deal! But no, it is a big deal for me, it is a big deal here because you ponies decided to make everything in your lives flammable!!"
The room stood silent as Smolder weather in the middle of it. Eventually she looked embarrassed, and somehow even angrier than she was while she was ranting. Before long, she stormed out of the room.
Sandbar quickly turned to Zecora. "Where do we need to go to get this flower?" he said quietly. "Then I'll go talk to her. "
When Smolder got outside, it was hard for her to see through the tears, and some weren't coming from the congestion or the smoke. She had been getting more and more fed up over the past few weeks and had only now realized how serious it had gotten. She had just made an utter fool of herself in front of two ponies who were only trying to help, and now she just wanted... She just wanted...
Eventually she heard the door of the hut creek open behind her. She quickly realized who was behind her, and spoke. "You know, back home, sneezing up fire is a good sign?" Smolder sniffed, unsuccessfully trying to hide the fact that she was crying. "Your Fire Bladder is working. It means you're not nearly as sick as you could be."
Sandbar remained silent.
"Well?" Smolder said, turning around to look at Sandbar. "What dangerous cave are we plundering to get the magic allergy medicine?"
"Ponyville town square," Sandbar sighed. "Daisy sells them. Not exactly an Ursa lair, but it can be life threatening in its own right. I've seen some things."
It was Smolder's turn to stay silent now. Simply looking down at the ground out of sheer embarrassment.
"You're homesick," Sandbar finally said out loud. "That's what's been eating you."
"You have no idea," Smolder finally admitted. "Do you know what it's like for me here sometimes? Before I showed up, dragons were looked at in one of two ways. Pets or threats. They were either trying to destroy the town, or they were Spike. "
"Except for that one time when it was both," Sandbar pointed out.
"Maybe it's just my imagination but everyone here seems extra cautious around me," Smolder sniffed, still crying a little bit. "To the point where... to the point where I can't even sneeze without somepony jumping for cover. I just... I want to be no big deal again... just for a while. I want to see Ember... I want to go home."
Sandbar shrugged, seemingly reluctant to get out the next sentence. "You always could," he sighed. "I mean, there's no reason you couldn't just go to Headmare Twilight and drop out. No one would blame you if the problem has gotten this bad."
"Except I don't actually want to leave," Smolder sighed, her voice still shaking. "I know that when I go home I'll miss this place just as badly... There's a lot of stuff I really love about this place, and if I left it behind... I don't know if I'm making any sense."
"No, you are," Sandbar said reassuringly. "Trust me, I've been homesick before, I know how it feels."
Smolder sniffed sharply again, now almost past the tears. "And then I started sneezing and it freaked everypony out," she said, a little less shakily this time. "It just put into perspective how alone I am here, that's all..."
"Hey, listen to me," Sandbar said. "You aren't alone."
Smolder snickered. "Sandbar, the only other dragon within a one hundred mile radius is Spike," Smolder said dismissively. "I like the little guy, and no offense meant to him but... He hardly counts."
"That's not what I mean," Sandbar said, putting his hoof on Smolder's shoulder. "You know we're here for you. Me, Yona, Silverstream, Ocellus, heck, even Gallus. We all care about you, and we all can relate. The side effect of every creature being unique is that every one of them ends up feeling like an outsider. Yona can get embarrassed about her accent, Silverstream keeps "discovering" inventions that us land-dwellers take for granted, Ocellus is almost terminally shy... and even I have my issues. I feel like an outsider in class a lot.
"Why's that?" Smolder asked, genuinely curious. "Isn't like... most of the student body ponies?"
"Yeah," Sanbar nodded. "Most of the student body are also girls. Four out of my five best friends are girls. The entire faculty are girls... So tell me something, Smolder, surrounded by all this femininity, why do I still have trouble talking to mares?"
That got Smolder to laugh out loud, which felt good after such a miserable day.
"Gallus tells me it's because I have no game," Sandbar continued, obviously hoping that it would make Smolder laugh even harder. It did. "Which is true, but you'd think one of the billions of girls I'm surrounded by daily might find that charming... But no..."
Smolder kept laughing, hearing herself snorting audibly before finally calming down.
"We're all outsiders," Sandbar smiled. "That's how you know we're not alone."
Smolder closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "You almost sounded like Twilight there," she said calmly.
Sandbar smiled at the thought. "Feeling better?"
Smolder took another deep breath, this time through her nose. "In more ways than one," she said with a note of pleasant surprise. "We should still pick up that Lotus though, just in case."
"Agreed," Sandbar said. "And when we're done, we'll find the others and talk about our homes. Just to remind each other that we're never alone."
The two walked off to the Town Square, Smolder's head felt now, in many ways, completely clear.