Windows and introductions.
Spike the dragonkin was many things. Remarkably mature for his age was one, having spent a large portion of his life taking care of someone who, if he had not intervened, would still be eating instant noodles for every meal meant that, contrary to how their age difference might indicate, it was Spike who got to say things like “If you don”t go to sleep I will not make you pancakes”. Intelligent was another, having to spend the other large portion of his life trying simply to keep up with the cognitive steamroller that was his caretaker meant that he could converse, with relative literacy, about subjects ranging from higher mathematics to ancient literature. Patience was an adjective he possessed in spades, earnest another.
One could go on for quite some time illustrating all the ways in which Spike was an upstanding young gentleman of remarkable refinement and dignity but that would get old quickly. So instead, we shall examine his flaws. Dragonkin is a remarkably self-explanatory phrase, they are the kin of dragons. Somewhere back in their lineage was a rather ambitious human and a rather accommodating dragon. Some Dragonkins’ heritage takes striking form, giving them claws, scales, fangs and a habit of eating jewelry shops. While some show no outward change of appearance besides a talent for magic and odd colored hair. Spike was of the latter form, the only real indication of his heritage was his hair, a vivid green, and his eyes, violet with slit pupils. This did not mean that the blood of dragons did not flow strongly in his veins, quite the contrary, it simply did not show outwardly. What Spike saw as his defining draconic trait was that he had the instinct to hoard. Actively seek out things of material value he did not, but hoard he did. Comics, mementos, books, were all things that he found himself being protective of. This did not disturb him as such, but he did, in fact, work in a library which meant that he did, in fact, have to let other people touch the books. (Spike was that librarian). What Spike found himself worrying over, what he mentally chastised himself for, what he worried about every day and some nights. Was that he was beginning to hoard people. Intensely protective feelings that he interpreted as overprotectiveness. And as we so often do when we are aware of something that we view as a flaw, he overcompensated. For all of Spikes virtues, he was cold as January and about as expressive. He had determined that if he could not have friends without trying to control them, then he simply could not have friends in the first place.
Had he simply talked to someone about his fears than it would have been quickly discovered that he needn't have feared. He would have found advice from other dragonkin and the dragons themselves learning that living beings had always been the purpose of having a hoard, not things to hoard themselves. He would have learned that Dragons crave treasure but treasured those that they cared about infinitely more. He would have learned that the urge to hoard material goods actually arose from a dragon's urge to protect the people they held dear, and all would have been hunky-dory But he did not.
-
Scootaloo could be described many ways, Orphan for instance. but she was not a child anymore so homeless would be more appropriate Problem child would have been apropos but she was, as has already been mentioned not a child and also homeless, so she really didn’t answer to anyone. Resourceful and sneaky came with the job as did athletic. Contrary to what you might expect she had become the voice of reason among her group of friends, having mysteriously matured faster than her compatriots. Compassionates’ a good one, she was frequently consoling her friends, dispensing advice, and providing shoulders on which to cry. Calculating, equally true though much less obvious. Years of deflecting inquiries into her home life and excuses as to why they could Not go to her house for a sleepover had made Scootaloo quite the social acrobat. Honest seems an odd one considering the previous but true nonetheless, had anyone come and just out asked her if she was homeless she would have said yes. In short Scootaloo had all the hallmarks of a talented and well-adjusted orphan but you of course already assumed all that.
Orphans or former orphans are usually different from their landed peers by nature of being much more aggressive, much more hostile, and having low self-esteem. Much of this comes about by nature of lacking any form of consistent care or parental figures to help them through life. Scootaloo did not at first glance fit this description. She was outwardly easy-going, she frequently boasted of her athletic achievements, she was often the first to present compromises between friends, she talked about things that bothered her. She was by all accounts a healthy young woman with a very supportive group of friends. She maintained this facade by a ruthless regime of social and personal triage. If she was, for instance, confronted about being preoccupied then she would sigh and probably tell them all about how she was worried that she wasn't doing well enough in school. After all, that was comparatively easy to confess as opposed to explaining how she hadn't eaten in two days and still needed to find a place to sleep during the winter. Scootaloo was, after years, of living by herself a ticking time bomb. She knew it more than anyone. She could not let anyone know of her circumstances but it was getting harder to find places that no one would find her. Ponyville was growing nothing if not more interconnected and she was simple getting bigger. Her increase in size had not come with an increase in food, she had begun to struggle to find a stable supply of food. She was afraid, deathly afraid of what would happen if she was discovered, if you had confronted her knowing what you know she would have sighed and confirmed your suspicions, and if you did not keep careful watch of her she would have disappeared ghostlike at her first opportunity, to where and to do what does not bear thinking about.
Had she been in a frame of mind to break down and tell someone of her situation the news would have spread like wildfire. People would have been horrified that they hadn't noticed and scores of people would volunteer to house her. There would have been a veritable tide of people sobbing (the tears thus further contributing to the aforementioned tide) and telling her how guilty they felt that they had not noticed. It would have been somewhat irrelevant as scootaloo was already legally an adult but being There would have been beds, 3 square meals daily, and all sorts of things that came with not being homeless If she had talked. But she did not.
-
Spike observed the situation as one might a train wreck. With a sense of inevitability and hoping that he was far enough away. Spike looked up. Suspended from the ceiling of the library was a chandelier adorned with the same purple crystals that formed the rest of the building. Now, however, it was also adorned with a purple haired Rarity her having apparently climbed up the shelving and jumped the remaining 8 feet to the chandelier. Her eyes were wide and she clung to the chandelier like a shell-shocked koala. Spike looked down. On the floor was a bright pink rat with three pastel balloons emblazoned on its back. It was circling the spot below the chandelier like a shark occasionally jumping towards the chandelier. It did so now and he heard the jangle of crystals from above as rarity visibly flinched. Spike looked to his right, down the aisle of bookshelves, lay twilight sprawled on the floor. She stared, without expression, at the ceiling. Her hair was blackened and stretched out from her head in a cone, a thin wisp of smoke extended from it, mirroring the skid marks extending from her feet. Spike looked to his left. Down at the end of the aisle were where the doors to the lab should have been. They appeared to have been blown off their hinges. Spike looked behind him. Fluttershy looked out at him from behind an overturned table. She was wearing a green helmet, matching face paint, and held a thesaurus above her head like a shield. Spike walked towards the lab and once inside raised his eyebrows. The center of the lab was now the blackened ring of a blast crater, the equipment having been thrown aside by whatever had caused it. Next to the door was a book. A book having apparently been sent there at high speeds, seeing as though it was embedded into the wall. Spike pulled the book out and examined it. Across its cover were the words The application of mana derived exothermic energy in spontaneous shapecha... Spike stopped examining the book.
He turned around just in time to see the bookshelf lying to the left of the former lab doors topple over, the added weight of the lab doors embed in it proving to be too much for it to handle. It thudded into the wall of the library. From the lab, he heard a shattering sound as something fell off the shared wall. Applejack appeared to have been hiding behind the now toppled bookshelf and she gazed at him with a grin that could have peeled paint. As he watched she sidled behind the next bookshelf.
Spike walked back towards twilight. From this vantage point, he could see that one of the libraries windows was broken. The purple drapes waved gently in the autumn breeze. Spike heard the distant boom of thunder. Out of place on such a nice day.
Spike reached his caretaker, still unmoving on the floor, and pinched the bridge of his nose. Twilight looked at the ceiling. Spike steepled his fingers. Twilight looked at the ceiling. Spike breathed deeply. Twilight's eyes drifted close
“Twilight?”
“Yes, Spike?”
“Do I want to know?”
“No.”
“Do you want any help?”
“No.”
“Do you need any help?”
“No.”
“If that’s the case I'm going for a walk.”
“Okay.”
“If you need help just call.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll see you later twilight.”
“Later spike.”
-
Scootaloo was having a pretty okay day all things considered. She had helped relationships, given advice, partaken in idle banter, found class interesting, and, in general, had a good time, these were the marks of a day well spent if she had ever heard any.
It was brisk, that was the word for it brisk, a sharp word matching the temperature. The leaves had turned brown with the coming of fall but turned a translucent gold in the setting sun. There were enough of them on the ground to make a rustling, caramel blanket but enough remained in the trees to keep them from looking barren. Above the canopy of the orchard was the fiery tableau of an early sunset. lances of late day sun carved aurate trails through the fading sky. A scattering of cumulus had been dyed a celestial gold and above them, blazing cirrus shone in defiance of the coming night. She reached the top of the hill.The rows of the orchard framed the sunset with gilded boughs. at the far end of the orchard, she could see the treehouse, a crimson centerpiece to a view that could have inspired a drill sergeant to paint.
Scootaloo paused. her eyes’ crossed momentarily as she made a croaking phlegmy noise in the back of her throat. She spat a greenish wad of nearly gelatinous chest excretions onto the path beside her. She coughed raggedly and cringed with her entire body. Pulling her hoodie tighter around her, she set off down the hill towards the treehouse. yep pretty good day all things considered.
When Scootaloo had first heard about Applebloom fixing up the treehouse she had been disappointed, she had spent many a night holed up there. It had been the ideal place. It had it all, shelter, an out of the way location, and virtually no one seemed to know it existed. So after it was fixed up she feared that she would have to find a new place to spend her winters. Contrary to her expectations her situation actually improved. With the renovations came handy things like insulation, and windows. And when it snowed it was too out of the way for people to go to anyway.
Opening the door, she examined the interior of the treehouse, when she moved out in the spring she would recreate its appearance. Panning her eyes around the glorified shed on all organic stilts, she made sure to note the place and orientation of all its assorted furniture and decorations.
Scootaloo set down her bag, sighed, and dissolved into the treehouses senile couch. Couches, she thought, were remarkably like people, they gained more personality as they grew older. This was perhaps not a good thing, had this couch been sentient it probably would have been an elderly alcoholic. she loved it all the same, its decrepit countenance had been a comforting constant the past couple winters. “Good to be back.” Scootaloo thought as she closed her eyes and leaned further into the embrace of the venerable cushions. Then she thought “Oh shit someone's walking up the ramp.”
-
Spike sat down on the treehouses, rather beat up, couch. He put his palms up to his eyes and breathed deeply. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu” having started out as a swear the prolonged expletive morphed into a sigh, then a groan, then the sound of something small, furry, and adorable being trodden on. Spike had been having a perfectly okay day, not particularly exciting, but he was no longer convinced that unexciting was a bad thing. Long ago he would have been bored to tears by an entire day spent reshelving. Twilight was always off doing some very exciting thing off somewhere and he would most often be left behind to look after the library. And he would have loudly bemoaned being left out of such amazing adventures. Then in rapid succession, he began to enjoy working in the library, and he began to be dragged into twilight and her friends shenanigans. Now he could hardly find a moment to actually keep the library functioning. The very week, it seemed, that he discovered that sweater vests were a practical and comfortable thing to wear, he became thrust headlong into the (occasionally literal) ballistic flightpath of the Elements of harmonies various escapades.
Spike leaned back into the couch. A breeze passed through the treehouse ruffling his hair. he removed his hands from his eyes. Why the hell was the window open? Spike's head, resting on the back of the couch and faced toward the window which was despite the chill permeating the autumn air, wide open.
Spike stared at the window, the window did not stare back, it was an inanimate object. But the small absurdity of the open window in the brisk fall air had been the final shove spike needed. He started to laugh, it was the heaving, unstoppable, slightly manic guffaws of one whose long restrained frustrations have been suddenly released. Spikes’ pent up stress was finally, rapidly, unpenting itself.
-
Scootaloo had a problem, she was currently laying on the ground underneath the window on a pile of leaves, dry leaves, leaves that went crunch when one so much as brushed up against them. Leaves that were crumbling, dry, and prone to irritate one's sinuses, causing one to sneeze. Scootaloo did not want to sneeze. She heard something small furry and adorable being trodden on… no, wait that was someone's voice… whose voice? It sounded male, baritonish, bedraggled was a word that came to mind, but most of all it was a familiar voice. She lay there thoughts of sneezing forgotten trying to fit the voice to a name. Rumble? no, it wasn't high enough. Pipsqueak was right out, he was a bass. Diamond Tia... no that was mean. Big Mac?... that could be it. Scootaloo tilted her head a fraction to get a better angle of the bottom of the treehouse. Not Big Mac then, the floorboards would have been bending. Then she heard laughter. It was a slightly unhinged laugh but laughter nonetheless. Now she could get a better idea of who it was. Now she was, even more, confused, she was still drawing a blank but it sounded so familiar! Who in Tartarus was this?
Spike leaned out the window. Scootaloo froze. or, she would have, but by now she was practically freeze dried. From this angle she could see his nostrils better than his eyes but who else would wear a purple sweater vest with a green dress shirt. who else could get away with it? “Spike?!” She mouthed to herself. It was obvious now, but why hadn't she recognized his voice? As Spike leaned back and closed the window Scootaloo remained thinking beneath the window though thoughts of stealth were no longer the occupation of her thoughts. She was much too busy trying to puzzle out why it had taken her so long to identify the voice of one of her oldest friends.
Then Spike did something dumb. It was perhaps understandably dumb, it was the type of dumb one is prone to when one has a bit of pent of aggression or anger, it was the dumb that, if nothing goes wrong won't do much besides hurt your hand a bit and teach you not do dumb things again in the future. And learn from it Spike would but, due to circumstances outside of Spikes knowledge, it would have consequences. Glass shattered as spike punched the window.
Author's Note
Been sitting on this story for a while worrying about how it's full of flaws and such. But I know myself well enough to know that if I don't just post the damn thing it will never do anything but collect dust. So here it is hope you like it.
What excess of thought has been devoted to dragons. Our earlier foray into their inner workings (regarding our friend spike) revealed their rather selective hoarding habits, as well as their larger application to spike's woes. The instinctual reflex to stockpile is rooted deep into the draconic mind. In their ancestral home the dragons waged a war in perpetuity for uncounted generations before they were unified. Each dragon devoted body and mind to his clan exclusive of all others. An excess of loyalty they had. And it was only great cataclysm that forced them to unify at all. Not even the flame drakes could withstand their homeland tearing itself apart. In a molten tide they were expelled from their home and in a molten tide the first draconian empire swept through the lowlands like a knife through parchment. No written history of precontact Equestria survives. Boiling across the continent, the expanding dominion enslaved or annihilated every other civilization in a matter of decades. The draconian golden age lasted 1000 years. The wonders of that age have not been surpassed. They have not been equaled. They are not, it is often found, even known.
For the fall of the dragons was yet more spectacular than their rise. The dragon-mount fell in minutes. Fell to earth, its artifice and mechanica helpless to stop it. Its great rings of mithril rang as they struck the ground. Rang out the baleful chorus of an empire in its throes. No dragons remain. No true dragons. They were all killed.
A sequence of events. One event leading to another in a logical fashion. Spike was good at those. For instance punching the window had lead quite logically to getting several very nasty cuts on his knuckles and hands. The elegant
“Fuck…”FUCK.” A long deep cut on the back of his hand was being stymied only by his other hand squeezing violently. Which came with pain of its own. Spike thought for a moment. “….fuuckkkk”
The door banged open. Spike flinched, squeezing his hand, flinched out of the pain this brought, turned towards the door to see who it was and flinched again for good measure. “Twitchy today arent you” scootaloo muttered as she took spikes hand (flinch) and began examining it. “Dumbass” Spike blushed. First aid kit retrieved from its place, (placed there by a forward thinking Applejack some time ago) scootaloo began patching up spikes hand.
Think of the scene if you will. Spike sitting on a small table facing the couch. The couch containing a focused scootaloo. Behind the couch framing the ripening sky and the unruly hair of one scootaloo, a broken window. Looking at all of this and feeling increasingly bad about himself young spike. Spike sighs… it is involuntary. Scootaloo glances upward, as if to check on her charge. This gives spike a view of Scootaloo's face in full. He notices the way the light shines through her hair, he notices that when she's focusing she bites her lower lip just a fraction, he does not notice that he has been staring for quite some time. Scootaloo having apparently repaired spike to her satisfaction leans back stretches and smiles. Spike notices a thin cut on scootaloos neck, blood still trickling. Spike notices that Scootaloo's bag was already inside the treehouse. Spike remembers the open window.
A sequence of events. One thing after another. Spike reaches forward with such unthinking fluidity that scootaloo does not have time, or perhaps the inclination to stop him. Spikes hand cups her neck gently. It is scootaloos turn to stare/blush. Spike looks intent. He often did she thought. The single minded focus now directed at her was… the blush intensified by a fraction.
Spike looks out the window. Sequence, a chain of events. Spike looks back to scootaloo. Scootaloos eyes widen as they meet Spikes. He was good at asking questions with silence. Twilight could inevitably talk her way out of any question given such nebulous form as language. Whereas a properly stern silence would force her to come up with her own.
Scootaloo looked away. Spike could see her body tense as he watched. Coiled like a spring he thought. Or a rope about to snap. The light is gone now. The sun deep enough behind the horizon to have quenched the last drops of sun. A fading haze on the horizon remains but will soon be gone. The treehouse is dark. To dark to discern expression. Scootaloo breathes raggedly, one arm held across her stomach, the other gripping the couch. Spike is still, his maintained vitality proven only by the exhalations of breath in a cold environment. “...not now.” The voice is small. “just… not now...”
Spike turns on the small lamp. His face is, placid, calm as if suddenly settled. He stands and the gaze he turns to the window is one of problems being solved. Scootaloo smiles, just a bit, it was funny how much spike and twilight could resemble each other. “Well I first things first, I owe you a window.”
As spike walks home he thinks little, remarkably little. His hand hurts, in a distant way. He flexes it, maybe subconsciously. He remembers how warm Scootaloo's hands were. He finds he remembers quite well. Reaching the top of the hill he looks back. The window now covered in cardboard lets slip a glimmering of the lamp within. The light reminds spike, in some small way, of gold.
The castle/library gives spike the distinct impression of looking guilty. Perhaps this was because it's purple haired proprietor stood at its door wearing a grin that could only be described as innocent. Which never boded well. Or perhaps it was the second broken window. Or maybe the ambulance. Spike couldn't quite decide.
Author's Note
Would you look at that. Still not any good at editing.
