Over in Sugarcube Corner, the Pie family was busy making preparations for a party [[REASON REQUIRED]] that would be held that night, with the store's owner Pinkie Pie delegating her assorted descendants, including our other lead character Jennie. She was about as pink as her grandmother, if not a little paler, but certainly took after her in her love of fun. As they worked to get various kinds of snacks ready, Apple Bloom came in.
"Howdy y'all", she greeted. "Ah'm jus droppin' by to say the apple fritters an' such are well on schedule, so y'all don't have ta worry none about all that."
"Oh! That's super good news, Apple Bloom!", Pinkie Pie replied, energetic as always. "It's no good having to worry about materials when you're preparing for a party yourself because that means stress and stress makes it easier to make mistakes with the party preparations and -- oh!"
She was suddenly silenced by a candy cane stuck in her mouth.
"Practice what you preach, Granny", Jennie quipped as she finished laying out some candy. "You know what the doctor told you about blabbering at your age."
"Speakin' a stress", Apple Bloom noticed, "you dun look so sprah yerself. Why's that?"
"Oh, you know. I've been working my flank off all over town this week."
"You better be cae'ful, Jennie. Mah sister Applejack got herself all overworked once and boy howdy that wasn't nice."
Pinkie made a subtle but noticable retching noise at the memory.
"Whaaat? I know when to stop!" Jennie defended, having heard that story before. "I'm actually doing -this- to unwind, y'know? Things just get so... boring sometimes."
Pinkie put away the pretzels she was bagging and and smirked. "I think little Jennie just needs somepony to spend time with."
"Ssshyeah right", Jennie deflected and found another task -- making punch.
A little later that day, Jennie lay in her room and browsed one of her books about rocks, when her grandmother's words came back to mind. She could've been on to something there. Jennie decided to go talk to her grandmother, and just as she stepped out of bed, Pinkie Pie was right in front of her.
"Sweet Celestia of Equestria, don't DO that, Granny!"
"I thought you might wanna talk, so I came here."
"We might as well", Jennie accepted. "So, when you said 'somepony to spend time with', were you talking about...?"
"Hmmmhm. You're certainly old enough."
"Prob'ly. But to be honest, I don't know how to do this."
"Would you like to know?"
Jennie felt sort of put off by her grandmother's wide grin.
"...I'm not sure you'd be the best... let's say, 'source of information' here. No offense."
"None taken, silly."
"A'ight then... incidentally, Granny, do you get that feeling sometimes that you're being watched?"
"Oooh, I think about, ah... once a week or so. But that's not the issue here -- ask away!"
The library in Ponyville was pretty much the same as it had always been. The most obvious change since the resident librarian had her last great adventure with her five friends would be that it was no longer a purple baby dragon that was reordering and dusting the books in their shelves, but an adult pony. She had a very light gray coat and her somewhat curly mane was rose and purple. This was in fact because it was Sweetie Belle, all grown up. She was there mostly because her older sister Rarity was there, visiting the librarian. The librarian, it might surprise you, was still Twilight Sparkle, although her mane had faded from age, making her look not unlike her mother in a way.
A young colt was sitting in the science section, tirelessly reading whatever book caught his interest as the mares chatted over copious amounts of tea.
"So, Twilight darling, how's that dear Spike doing these days?"
"Well, you know how it goes. Dragon enters puberty, moves out..."
"To be honest, dear, I actually don't know."
"Well, I think you'll like to hear that he apparently started hoarding recently."
"Oh dear."
The colt looked up from his book, momentarily intrigued by what the old mares were talking about. Wasn't there something in that book he had skimmed over earlier about dragons and hoarding behavior? He easily retrieved the book and flipped through it, finding the relevant passage.
Most male dragons build a hoard of precious gems to indicate to a potential mate how well they can feed their offspring. Considering how old a dragon can be, proper hoards tend to be very large indeed...
He closed the book in mid-sentence and put it to the side, then laid down to consider some of the words. As he mulled it over, Sweetie Belle replaced the books behind him. "Potential mate" in particular struck a chord in the young pony's heart as much as in his mind. After a few more minutes of consideration, he trotted up to the two chatting mares.
"Grandmother Rarity?" he said to get the white one's attention.
"So I sai-- hold on Twilight darling. What is it Victory dear?"
"How do I get a mate?"
Fortunately, Rarity was not at that moment drinking tea, so she was merely surprised - not so much at the young colt's question in general, but mostly at his poor choice of words. Unfortunately, Twilight was in the middle of a sip and sprayed her tea all over Rarity's face.
"Twilight, for sanity's sake watch where you aim!" Rarity joked as she looked around for a towel. Twilight had a much better idea of where her towel was (on account of it being her home) and levitated one down to to Rarity. "Sweetie Belle, would you please stop laughing?"
Vic, as the young colt preferred to be called, was raised to not laugh at fabulosity being tainted, no matter the age, so he restricted himself to a vague smirk and a soft chuckle as he watched his grandmother wipe the tea from her face.
"Wrong term?" he asked.
"Wrong term," Twilight replied. "You mean a fillyfriend."
"Yesss, my bad. Sorry grandmother," Vic apologized.
Rarity passed the towel back to Twilight as she turned to her awkward grandson, Sweetie Belle looking on from a short distance.
"Well dear, for starters you'll want to take care with the things you say. Ponies don't usually take it well to be called 'mates', unless they're your drinking buddies or something and I know for a fact that you don't drink."
"You and Mother raised me too well for that. Anything else?"
Twilight took her turn to answer. "Be yourself, Vic. Don't pretend to be somepony you're not. They'll fall for a lie and then what do you get?"
"Yes, that much seems sensible enough..."
"Sweetie darling," Rarity called out, "I know there's a book on all this somewhere around here, could you fetch it for us?"
"Okay sis..."
"It should be under L, over in the eastern section," Twilight threw in. "And Vic? Take it from somepony who would know, don't take everything in that book as gospel. Things like dating aren't exact a precise science you can just follow a script for."
Rarity grinned as she remembered something about that. "You wouldn't mean something like that one time when--"
"Rarity, I thought we agreed not to talk about that again. How was I supposed to know that about the guy?"
As the others bickered, Sweetie Belle handed the requested book over to Vic. "Here you go, Vicky. Just let Sis and Twilight get over it by themselves."
"Thank you, Auntie."
((A/N: "Auntie" in the same way Huey, Dewey and Louie call Scrooge "Uncle" -- he's not.))
