Chapter 4: Dragon, why?

“Won’t you stay longer?” Twilight asked him politely.

He’d spent longer than he intended at the Library. First it was just to talk with her about inks and what he needed to make them. Then conversation shifted into other books, historical tomes that he and few others found fascinating and found in Twilight a kindred mind. Her knowledge of history was farther reaching than his own and closer to the source. He knew it through books that had been copied and recopied at least a dozen times before he saw them.

The Canterlot library held tomes sometimes as old as the history contained within them, original manuscripts written by the hoof of the author whom originally penned them. What wouldn’t he have given to look at any one of the ones she described? A question that he didn’t have a ready answer for.

“I wish that I could, Twilight,” Lucid said with true remorse in his tone. “It has been illuminating and extremely pleasant to talk with you, but I still need to visit Sweet Apple Acres and I have a few stops that I must make in town as well before night falls. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course,” she said, looking as though she shared some of the same remorse. “I need to get back to my studies as well.”

He left without further ado, his mind already drifting towards the goods he needed to buy while he was here. Moments later, he heard the door to the library open and shut again and the little dragon’s voice called out behind him.

“Hey! Wait up!”

Lucid considered briefly pretending he hadn’t heard Spike’s voice. He actually kept on going for a few pony lengths before stopping. Sighing to himself, he turned around to watch Spike run up, an empty basket clutched in one claw and a thick scroll in the other.

“Yes?” Lucid asked as pleasantly as he could muster. Spike’s brusque manner and snide comments in the library had hardly endeared him to Lucid.

“I, uh… I need to go to the Apple farm too and get some apples, and get a few things around town.” He looked back at the library where a couple faces were practically pressed up against the window, disappearing as soon as Lucid took a look also. “Twilight said that I should go with you.”

He sounded as unhappy at the prospect as Lucid himself was. Still, he was willing to give Spike the benefit of the doubt. Everyone deserved a second chance, after all. Maybe he would be less frustratingly standoffish when out of the presence of the mare he so obviously had a crush on.

To his credit, Spike did look somewhat abashed and had a hard time looking directly at Lucid Thought. He imagined that Twilight must have given him something of a dressing down before sending him on his way on what seemed to be a rather thin excuse.

“Very well,” he said shortly and nodded his head towards town. “Let’s be on our way, then.”

He started off again at a slow walk, then a slow canter when he saw that the smaller and shorter dragon had no trouble keeping up with him. He’d made the decision early on to skirt the edges of town to avoid the worst of the noon-time traffic, and he wasn’t going to alter his route for his unwanted tag-along.

“I’m curious,” Spike said after the library disappeared around the edge of a building on their way northerly around Ponyville, away from the Everfree Forest on a well-travelled dirt path.

“About what?” Lucid replied as amicably as possible.

“How did you and Rarity know each other?”

“We don’t, really,” Lucid replied, trying not to roll his eyes. The question was as predictable as any. “I got a letter from her about a month past asking if I could do a restoration on a book that was near to ruined.” He flicked his ears back for a moment, thoughtful, “If I had to guess, I would say she got my name from the Canterlot Archive. I am registered there as a scribe and a large part of my business actually revolves around restoring old tomes.”

“Oh… So… You don’t really know her, then?”

“She’s a client, Spike. I tend to know my regulars, but not the ones who send me a tome via the post.”

“Do you think she likes me?”

Lucid stopped dead for a moment before trotting to catch up. “I’m sorry?”

“I have a crush on her.”

“No, really?” Lucid couldn’t stop the snide remark before it came out. “Ah… Sorry.”

“Yes, really.”

He stared incredulously at Spike, wondering if the dragon had not even heard the snide tone. He shook his head after a moment’s consideration and flicked his tail figuratively at the feelings of apprehension regarding Spike and really took a look at his travel companion.

He was obviously lost in thought, wringing his claws around the basket’s handles, his eyes apparently focused on the scroll tucked under the checkered red and white cloth. He hadn’t immediately recognized the symptoms of a lovesick heart, but saw them clearly now.

He wondered idly how many stallions Spike had had a chance to really talk with. He’d heard of the six friends from Ponyville who’d saved Equestria from first Nightmare Moon, then Discord and most recently from King Sombra and how they were all female.

He hadn’t realized that the dragon companion with them must have been Spike until recently. No wonder Spike seemed almost eager to talk to him; he must be one of the few stallions Spike’d had a chance to have a long conversation with whom he wouldn’t feel overly embarrassed talking to. That is, not a friend he’d known for a long time who wasn’t also a mutual friend of Rarity’s.

“Why are you asking me? What I know about Rarity could fit on a single page. And not a very large one, at that.” He snorted and glanced askance at Spike, “You barely know me! For all I can tell, you don’t even like me.”

“Well…” Spike fidgeted for a moment with the basket, looking a bit ashamed. “I didn’t know you were married at first. You are married, right? I mean, you’ve got the band and all.”

“Yes, Spike. I am married. I have no interest in courting Rarity. Or Twilight for that matter.”

They walked on in silence for a while, passing several other ponies out for a gallop or a trot; some on errands and others with their special somepony. A few pegasi wheeled about in play or at work overhead, he could not tell. Some broke up the clouds attempting to form here and there, dark and ominous clouds that looked like none others that Lucid had seen to the north, others chased each other around in obvious play.

“How did you know she was the one?” Spike spoke up suddenly out of nowhere after several minutes of silence.

“My wife?” Lucid considered the question seriously for a long while. Spike, surprisingly, waited patiently and looked up at him from time to time. “It’s… Not something that’s easy to put into words. Ponies have been trying to put it to word for millennia, and I have yet to find a poem or turn of phrase that adequately describes how I felt about Cerulean Dream the first time I really saw her for who she was.”

“Was she beautiful?”

“Oh, undoubtedly. She still is.” He smiled as he pictured his wife in his mind against the backdrop of the schoolyard. She smiled at him brilliantly, her golden eyes shining like the sun against her coat of deep blue, the same shade as the clearest summer sky , her mane white and streaked with grey floated about her like the most perfect of –

“Hey!” Spike poked him in the flank, breaking him out of his reverie. He dodged aside from a cart moving too swiftly in the opposite direction. “She must really be something,” he said after the cart had gone past, smiling impishly.

“Yeah.” He shook his head to clear the cobwebs out of his head, “But that’s not the reason I fell in love with her. I had a crush on her, sure. Everypony must have had a crush on her.”

“You didn’t love her first?” Spike sounded honestly surprised.

Lucid laughed at Spike’s naiveté, “How could I? I didn’t know anything about her. But after I did, puppy love went out with the straw and I was lost to her forever.”

Spike blushed deeply at first, then nodded thoughtfully and clutched the basket closer to himself.  He remained silent for a good part of the rest of the trip to Sweet Apple Acres. Lucid well understood the youngster’s dilemma.

His parents had acted the same way when he first professed his love for Cerulean Dream as a tender-hearted foal of barely 8 years, and he had reacted with less tact and insight than Spike was. Fourteen years on, Lucid had the benefit of experience and life behind him to say that his crush wasn’t near so strong as his love for his wife.

“Do… Do you think Rarity could love me?” He asked when Sweet Apple Acres was coming into view around the northern edge of town. The heartbreak in the young dragon’s voice pulled at Lucid’s heart.

“As a friend, undoubtedly,” he said as tactfully as he could.

“But not anything more?”

“That’s not my place to say, Spike.” Spike hung his head, appearing crushed. “Do you want to hear my advice?” When Spike nodded glumly, Lucid continued, “Be the best friend you can.”

“Is that all?” Spike sounded incredulous.

“Do you know who my absolute best friend is?” He countered in a serious tone.

To his surprise, Spike didn’t immediately blurt out an answer, but seemed to consider it carefully. He was less surprised, then, when Spike came back with a genuinely insightful answer for one so young.

“Your wife?”

“Right in one,” Lucid said with a grin.

Spike remained silent for the rest of the walk down the path to Sweet Apple Acres, apparently lost in thought.