Really. It doesn't. Why'd you think it did?
The concept of storing knowledge via runes wasn't something new to Ember. Most dragons with armor scratched a few secret spells into them during the forging process. And, she supposed, for a species as physically frail as ponies, knowledge could truly be powerful, so she would not have been surprised to find some personalized tablets in Twilight Sparkle's palace, or even a monument of great magic at the center of town.
She had not, however, factored in the pony obsession with paper.
Ember knew scrolls existed, but she assumed they'd be too fragile for long-term knowledge and would only be used to communicate to far off ponies relatively quickly. Instead, there was an entire facility for delivering paper messages from distances as long as the breadth of the country to as small as right next door--which didn't make sense, if the pony was next door why not just talk to them? And another building that Twilight had called Town Hall apparently served as the Great Dragonstone, with a dizzying array of laws and associated information on sheets of paper filed inside protective canisters. And in her claws, right now, she held what was called a 'book'--a large stack of paper, bound together and shielded by some sort of shell.
The ponies, she had slowly come to realize, had sacrificed the resilience of their knowledge in order to enable a sheer level of quantity and propagation that simply was not possible with tablets. They'd even found other ways to protect the paper--casing it in armor, instead of putting it on the armor itself.
That didn't mean the knowledge itself was any good, mind.
"Is this... is this really what ponies think of dragons?"
Twilight blushed a little. "Well, yes and no. That particular text is about seven hundred years old, so most ponies think it's outdated, but it happens to be the most cohesive bit of knowledge about dragons we have. Everything after that is scattered observations." She held up her own notepad in a magical grasp. "I'm hoping to take my own observations and your contributions to write an updated and more accurate version, perhaps with a broader scope as well."
"Yeah, that's probably a good idea. 'Old dragons become mountains, and the very earth itself.' What were they thinking?" Ember flipped through the pages a bit more. "I'm beginning to wonder if the pony who made this was half-blind, half-insane, half-drunk, or all three."
"That's three halves," Twilight pointed out.
Ember rolled her eyes, snapping the book shut and putting it on the 'table'--a piece of crafted wood that ponies apparently put things on while they were using them. It didn't make sense to her at first--why not just carry whatever you were using?--until she realized that ponies didn't have claws. "Do you have anything more recent than this?"
"Well, a few scraps here and there," the pony admitted, her horn lighting up as she pulled various other books off the shelves. "After Spike joined the last dragon migration, I really started to scour all the libraries I could. Some of it was blatant fiction, of course, but I was able to find more gems than I thought."
"I'm just going to assume gems is a metaphor here, since I don't see any reason to stick real gems into books."
"Actually, although it isn't common--"
"What's fiction?" Ember asked.
Twilight blinked, looking at her as though she'd just asked what rocks were. "Fiction. You know. Stories?"
"...Like if I told somebody about the time I took the Bloodstone Scepter?"
"No, that actually happened," Twilight clarified. "I mean stories that somebody made up."
"Oh. Lies."
"No!" Twilight took a breath. "No, they're not... okay. When somepony lies, they want you to believe it's true, right? But fiction doesn't hide the fact it's false--in fact, the disconnect from reality is one of the core aspects of fiction. Whole worlds that couldn't exist in reality can be found in the stories of authors, amazing impossible things littering texts across kingdoms, adventures that you can have from the safety of your own bedroom!"
Ember tilted her head. "So... stories for... fun?"
"Well, for entertainment. And some philosophical questioning. But fun is a big part of it, yes."
The Dragon Lord tapped her cheek thoughtfully. "Do you have any of these stories?"
"Oh, plenty. After me and Spike came back from the whole Bloodstone scepter competition, I had to do a press release on why I was away for so long--ponies thought Celestia had sent me to fight off another ancient evil that had awakened to terrorize ponies, you see. After I set that record right, a lot of authors decided to speculate about our epic adventures in the dragon lands--"
"Epic adventures? You spent the whole time disguised as scenery!"
"Actually they like to set it after the Bloodstone Scepter thing," Twilight explained. "For some reason, we get called back and have to deal with... dragon politics, a lot of the time."
Ember stared at her for a moment. "Am... I in these stories?"
"Well, yes." Twilight shrugged, pulling a few thin books that didn't even have shells from a specific shelf. "You are the new dragon lord, after all. That's kind of a big thing." She flicked through a few of the pages. "And plenty with Spike, he's got his own share of heroics with the Crystal Empire, and... Oh. Oh, I---"
With a blush, she pulled out one of the thin books and put it aside. "I didn't realize--well, that's not important, you don't need to see that."
"See what?"
"Um, it's..." Twilight bit her lip. "It's erotic fiction, starring you and Spike..."
Ember frowned. "Erotic."
"Yes. I didn't realize that I'd recieved--"
"What's that mean?"
For the second time, Ember was treated to the sight of a pony reprogramming her face. "Uh--well--it, it, it depicts, uh, characters in, you know, situations."
A blue eyecrest rose.
"...specific situations," Twilight clarified. "Sensual situations."
"Sensual..." Ember prompted.
"Oh Celestia.... Uh, you know, like... kissing?"
Ember tilted her head.
"Or, well, kissing is just the start, but, you know, uh, couples, love, intimate, stuff...."
Ember stared, uncomprehending.
"...mmnnnngh." Twilight rubbed her forehead. "It's... it's stories about you having sex, alright?"
"Is... that some sort of food?"
"Wha--no! It's sex! It's--it's the--you know, with--how do you not--"
The alicorn's hooves gestured vigorously and vaguely in patterns that meant nothing to the dragon. From what Ember could glean, this sex thing was so common as to be practiced regularly, and yet so taboo as to not be appropriate for conversation. That was... actually, what that meant was kind of confusing. How could something so common be so taboo? Was it the sharing of a secret name? Or perhaps, there was some act that ponies found so perverse they couldn't help but enjoy it. Maybe sex was something impossible in reality and yet popular in fiction...
Well, there was one way to find out.
Without warning, Ember vaulted over the table and, before Twilight could react, snatched up the thin book and flapped to a high perch in her library. Despite the princess's protests, she flipped the thin book open, pouring through runes as quickly as she could while dodging the surprisingly versatile spells sent to wrench the thing from her claws. The pony could be a formidable opponent, Ember had to admit, if she ever managed to give up on her innate reluctance to deal real damage. Still, it didn't take too long for her to get through the apparently sordid tale of her and Spike...
...doing...
...something.
"I... have absolutely no idea what I just read," she admitted.
Twilight sighed. "Yeah, those kinds of stories can get kind of--"
"Why would Spike stick a warm rod in me? And why would I enjoy it?" Ember tilted her head. "And what's this 'juice' I keep leaking? Is sex a special form of bloodletting you ponies have?"
"Wha--no! It--I--" The alicorn flushed. "I... okay. Okay. What... no... um. How do I..." Twilight took a moment to gather her thoughts. "Okay, so, do dragons... couple? Like, romantically?"
"...I don't understand the question."
"I mean, do dragons of opposite genders, uh, you know, pair off?"
Ember peered at Twilight. "...are you talking about Quickening?"
"Am I?" The pony shrugged. "I don't know! What's Quickening?"
"Quickening is when an egg is Warmed," Ember explained. She noticed Twilight's confusion and rolled her eyes. "When an egg stops being a rock and becomes a dragon."
"...OOOOOOoooh." The alicorn's eyes widened in understanding. "So, just to be... entirely clear on this, dragons lay eggs without... any outside influence?"
"Mmm, yeah, when we get old enough we start popping them out about once every three months." She held her claws to the side of her face. "Mine are only about this big, but some of the bigger dragons have eggs as big as a house."
"External fertilization, variable egg size..." Twilight had pulled out her notepad, writing something down. "Of course you wouldn't know about sex, if your species didn't need it to reproduce."
"Wait." Ember looked at the pages again. "Is... is this supposed to be a pony version of quickening?"
"Um. Sort of?" Twilight shrugged awkwardly. "Sex is... I mean, I haven't had sex myself, but... well, that's supposed to be an idealized version of sex, as I understand it. It's physically pleasurable for ponies."
"So this rod is a unicorn horn?"
"No, it's a... hang on, what?"
"I mean, to transfer their magic dragons usually breathe fire on the eggs--"
"Transfer magic, what?"
Ember looked down at Twilight. "Yeah, transfer magic. Like I said, before the Quickening, dragon eggs are basically rocks. Another dragon has to pour their magic into the pores to induce the Quickening."
The alicorn opened her mouth for a moment, then shut it. "Oh. Magically-generated life forms... OH! That would explain all the variation between dragon individuals! If you weren't reliant on genetic material for--"
"Genetic material?"
Twilight sighed. "Okay, so basically ponies don't use magic to breed. Not entirely. The male, uh, he... puts something into the female, and the female has a chamber inside her with her own genetic material, and the two mix and grow to become a baby pony which is later pushed out."
Ember stared at her. "...so wait. You're, like, a walking egg?"
"N...uh... kind of. Except I don't have any babies, because I haven't had sex."
"So... this rod is a male unicorn horn," the dragon lord mused.
"No, it--all males have them," Twilight explained. "Females have the, uh, slot."
Ember looked from the book to Twilight, then to the book.
"...I guess if you're an egg yourself, you can't self-quicken," she mused, gliding to the ground. "Not that flexible."
"Self-quicken?"
"Hmm? Oh, yes." She pressed a claw to her chest. "Dragons like me are able to quicken our own eggs. We're a minority though."
"Dragons like you?" Twilight tilted her head. "How are you different from dragons not like you?"
"I'm a girl," Ember explained.
"...I thought being a girl meant you laid eggs."
"No," corrected the dragon lord, "all dragons lay eggs. Girls are just capable of quickening their own eggs, in addition to other dragons. Boys can't quicken eggs that they laid. It's really simple."
Twilight winced. "So... should I expect Spike to be laying eggs sometime soon?"
"Maybe.... do you know when he was Quickened?"
The alicorn rubbed the back of her head. "Actually... I, uh, hatched him myself."
Ember blinked. "Hold on, what?"
"Yeah, when I was young, I had a very powerful magic surge and, well, I hatched him."
"....tar and asphalt," Ember breathed. "Are you saying Spike is half-pony?"
"I don't know! I didn't know about any of this before today! This is why we need to know about dragons, because, because, because I don't know what to expect when Spike grows up, and I'm the one who hatched him, and--"
Ember blinked as Twilight collapsed, water running from her eyes for no apparent reason. She couldn't understand what was happening. Was this... was she scared? There wasn't anything threatening here, except Ember herself, and... no, Twilight seemed to be walking toward her, now. Still leaking eye water, and---okay. This was a hug. She could handle a hug.
Ember patted the pony, glancing at the thin book in her claws. Obviously, these ponies needed to know a lot about dragons.
A lot.
