All the way in the Canterlot Palace, Twilight Sparkle sat at a manageably sized desk, scribbling notes on a piece of parchment on Starswirl's theorem of magic regeneration. Spike accompanied her to Canterlot but was too busy indulging himself to a tower's worth of comic books he raided from the local comic book store on the way.
They occupied a small guest room in the eastern tower, overlooking a large portion of Canterlot and the expansive terrain of Equestria. The room had a large king sized bed, which was being occupied by Spike, and was beautifully decorated with tapestries and a range of expertly crafted furniture.
Princess Celestia requested Twilight's presence at Canterlot and, being the faithful student that she was, she accepted and took the first train to Canterlot just to arrive as early as possible. Though Spike didn't need to come with her, he convinced Twilight to take him because of a new comic book series being released. Both of them were unsure of why the princess called, however, the letter reassured that it was nothing on a catastrophic level. Strangely though, the letter encouraged Twilight to bring a surplus of paper and ink, and so she bought a saddlebag's worth of supplies.
"Spike, can you get my book on Star Swirl's studies?" Twilight asked the purple dragon, still buried deep in the papers.
Spike sighed as he tossed aside the comic he was reading and went to the unopened luggage bag that was tossed carelessly on top of the bed. Luckily they packed light for the visit, instantly noticing the large book which read 'Magic of Starswirl'. He passed the book to Twilight, who quickly thanked him before going back to her studies.
Spike rolled his eyes, climbing back onto the bed and delving back into the comic he was reading before being rudely interrupted. A knock came from the door. "You can get this one Twilight," Spike said quickly.
The young alicorn huffed, annoyed that she needed to put her studies to one side to answer whoever's at the door. Twilight dragged herself to the source of annoyance, and upon opening it, revealed a small maid on the other side. She had a bright yellow coat and a ghostly red short cut mane.
"Hello your highness," said the maid as she bowed.
"Please, you don't need to bow to me, I'm no different than anyone else here." Even months after being crowned a princess, Twilight still felt uncomfortable about ponies treating her so... differently. Though she understood that it was pretty much customary for them to treat royalty, no matter how new, with the utmost respect, it felt extremely odd having done towards her.
"Princess Celestia will see you now in her chambers," the maid informed Twilight with a kind smile.
Twilight nodded and thanked her as she sent the maid on her way, telling the maid that she knew where she was going. Twilight shut the door and quickly went to levitate he saddlebag onto her back, securing the straps around he bod. Spike spared a single glance at the mare but shrugged before going to his comic.
"Spike, I'm going to Princess Celestia. You sure you don't want to come?" She asked hopefully.
"Nah, I'm good, I already got what I came here for anyway," Spike replied disinterestedly, not taking his eyes off the page.
Twilight rolled her eyes before she left and started to make her way through the halls to the princess' chambers. As Twilight paced herself, she wondered why she needed all this paper and ink.
***
Fredrick groaned loudly, thumping the back of his head against the spine of his chair. He didn't want to be there, like at all. At first, he didn't mind at all, he actually favoured the idea. But now that he was here, waiting for the purple alicorn to come, it didn't sound so great anymore.
Celestia, on the other hoof, was sipping away on a small cup of tea, sitting opposite to the impatient and annoyed Fredrick. Though she didn't show it, Celestia was smirking on the inside. She found the show mildly amusing.
"Fredrick, this isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. All she's going to do is ask you a few questions, and I trust her to not do anything too uncomfortable." The tall alicorn reassured Fredrick who only ignored her.
"No, ponies don't understand my world. I say one thing then suddenly it turns into a full blown argument about how wrong it is, with theories explaining what might be happening in the background. They just don't understand context; our worlds are a universe apart but they don't listen." Fredrick lost it after the tenth pony who decided to argue against what was classified as his reality, trying to input their theories on how his world worked using their laws of magic. Of course, they didn't listen to him when he tried to explain to them about his world, and had almost completely lost hope in pony intellect.
"Twilight isn't your average pony, I'm sure she'd understand," Celestia told him.
"I hope," he mumbled quietly to himself.
The two waited silently, Princess Celestia still sluggishly drinking her tea while Fredrick just looked bored. He quickly came to the tragic realisation that this universe still hadn't discovered electricity, and that fact had started to wear down on him. Oh, how he missed his computer and the WiFi that came with it, but he could do nothing to fix or replace the void. Maybe if he knew a thing or two about creating computers, then maybe he'd be able to build some sort of prototype while a more sophisticated device was being developed. But of course, he knew nothing of the sort.
A knock emanated for the large twin doors, which then opened to make room for Twilight's head to poke into the room. She gave a smile as soon as she saw Fredrick and Celestia in the room waiting patiently, however, felt confused as to why the human was present.
"Twilight, come in, I'm happy to see that you've made it. Hopefully, I didn't cause to much trouble, but I required somepony of your intuition and expertise." Celestia greeted as she pulled out a chair for Twilight to sit on.
Twilight accepted it, undoing the straps of her saddlebag and placing it down on the floor. "It was no problem at all, you know you can count on me to be here early," she grinned proudly to her teacher which earnt a small chuckle from her. "Also, what do you mean that you need somepony of my 'intuition'," she asked confusedly.
"Ever since Fredrick came to Equestria, we've been trying to help him and integrate into our society and make some friends. It worked, and now he's a fully fledged citizen of Equestria. However, we know next to nothing about his species or of his planet as a whole except for minor details. That is why I want you to interview him. Are you able to do it? It is fine if you can't." Celestia explained to Twilight.
"I'd love to do it! Think about all the things I can learn from this experience! I would've done it earlier but I never had the time, this is a perfect opportunity," she excitedly bounced on her seat, grinning madly with the possibility to learn of unheard knowledge.
As endearing the sight was to see, Fredrick couldn't stop himself from feeling unsure about having Twilight interview him. It wasn't because it would surface any unwanted memories, or them eventually delving into topics too personal for him to answer, but it began to worry him about what type of world he lived in. Though where he lived was relatively peaceful, Fredrick dreaded in telling about the things people did to others and what they're doing now. Because of how peaceful the pony race is, he doubted that telling them about the ongoing wars in the world was going to put the human race in a positive light.
"I still don't like this," he mumbled silently to himself.
His comment was just loud enough for it to be picked up by Twilight's ears. "Come on, it won't be that bad. What could possibly go wrong? At least it is me and not some stranger right?" she said hopefully.
Fredrick stared into her wide and pleading eyes, her lips puffed out in mock sadness. He looked at her for only a few moments before he sighed in defeat. "Fine, you can have your interview. Just make it quick," Fredrick replied sharply.
Twilight squealed with delight, almost launching herself from the chair in excitement. The princess chuckled at her student's joyful behaviour. She looked behind her at the tall clock at the back of her chambers, and after noticing the time, she placed he tea down onto the table and stood up, causing the other two to turn to her.
"I must make my leave. Both of you may use my chambers for as long as you need, and don't worry, the staff and guards are already aware of this arrangement so they won't bother you," she told them.
Fredrick and Twilight said goodbye to the princess before she left the room, leaving the two in silence. The human sighed, leaning back in his chair for Twilight to break the silence. With Princess Celestia no longer within the room, there was no talking himself out from Twilight's questioning.
"Let's get started! Sorry, I don't have any questions ready, due to such short notice, so I'll just have to improvise."
"Yay," Fredrick commented nonchalantly. Today was going to be a long day for him.
Frederick watched patiently as Twilight organised her endless supply of quills, placing each item into a neat section in a particular order Frederick couldn't recognise. He leaned back in his chair, tapping lightly on the hard backrest while imagining a tune in his head.
Twilight tried desperately to keep her excitement in check as she prepared her questions. She didn't know what to ask, and with so much to explore, Twilight couldn't come to a simple conclusion. An entire day wasn't long enough to detail every little piece of information, and she wanted to make the session short of Fredrick's sake and to allow herself to plan for future interviews with the human.
"Sorry for the wait, I would've been more organised, but I was called on such short notice." Twilight apologized.
"It's fine, I can wait," he replied to his interviewer calmly.
While he waited for Twilight to finish her unpacking, Frederick lost himself in his thoughts. Honestly, the long wait started to make the boy anxious. He trusted Twilight, but Frederick knew that, when the time came, she would dig too deep and he only hoped that she would understand given her intellectual status. But even then, he had doubts.
Twilight sat up and beamed excitedly, finally completed with her preparations to begin the interview. She had created a mental checklist of all different topics and assigned questions, designed to last for the duration of her stay here at Canterlot. Personally, she was proud of herself of being able to complete a task with a span of only a few minutes.
The alicorn took a piece of parchment and a quill from the stack and quickly wrote the time and day in the corner, as well as the first set of questions, leaving a generous space in between each one. Ever since she became friends with Frederick, she always wanted to learn about his home and culture, but whenever she asked he would always shrug her request away and say that it wasn't that important. This, obviously, disappointed her, but now she finally has the chance to learn about what his life at home and his home itself.
"You seem awfully happy for something so minimal," Fredrick commented after noticing Twilight's face of accomplishment.
Flustered, the purple alicorn sat back with a noticeable blush appearing across her cheeks, "sorry, I'm just so excited!" At this point, she was no longer trying to retain squeals of exciting from leaking into her words. "You've never talked about Earth ever since I met you, and you know how much I've been trying to get you to speak. This is like a one in a lifetime opportunity for me!" she looked up with the cutest smile which could make kittens keel over. "I may be a princess, but I'm still a student and teacher at heart."
Fredrick smiled and rolled his eyes. "Rainbow Dash did mention something about you smuggling books from the nearby library here," he replied jokingly, remembering a small catch-up chat he had with her the previous week.
"And when was this?" Twilight groaned into her hoof. "Do you know how many times she has tricked ponies into thinking that I either own all of the libraries on the planet or have robbed every library on the planet?" Frederick couldn't tell if she was actually being serious, but considering the fact that it was Rainbow Dash that they were referring to, it didn't surprise him in the slightest. He even found it humorous.
"It isn't funny," she whined after noticing the boy's amused chuckles.
"I don't know, it kind of is," Frederick almost broke down after hearing Twilight's whines, seeing her curled, puffed up, lower lip in an attempt to make herself appear upset.
"Fine, I guess I'll start my questions now," Twilight stated sternly.
If he didn't know any better, he definitely would've mistaken her for a teacher from his secondary. Unfortunately, this meant that there was no way he was going to be able to apologise his way from answering his questions. "Alright," Frederick groaned quietly like a child being told off.
"So before I begin, I want to give you a quick rundown of what you will expect. I six short questions that I will ask you about yourself, you have all the time you need in order to answer each question. Please answer truthfully, and remember you don't need to answer if you're uncomfortable. My first question, where did you live before you appeared in Equestria?"
Frederick looked up surprised, all of a sudden she was a completely different mare. No longer could he hear the fun and joking mare behind the calm and cheerful voice. Her voice was stern and serious, yet it was calm, not overdoing and tensing her syllables. He didn't even know the mare was capable of such change
"I lived in London which is the capital city of England," Fredrick replied to Twilight. Both Frederick and Twilight hoped for a longer answer, but the question was so simple that it
"Can you describe the place you live in? The people or the buildings you lived nearby?"
"London is very old, and extremely busy most of the day. A lot of tourists visit the capital." The more he went on, the more he realised that he barely knew his own home. Well, maybe it was because he hadn't lived there his entire life, but it's no excuse as to why he could only picture a vague image of what he thought the structure of London was.
Twilight hummed in thought to herself. "Who are your family?"
His family... he almost forgot about them. It isn't often that he thinks about his parents, not even for a second. His emotional ties with his parents are strained thinned because of the fact that he doesn't know them, though it didn't mean to suggest that he hasn't seen them. Now that he thought about it, he often wondered what they were like if they were to come home or even contact him to say hello.
"I- I don't know," he whispered underneath his breath.
Twilight paused midway in translating his words onto paper, confused after reviewing his response in her head. Did she just hear him write, or was her ears deceiving her? She looked into Frederick's now downcast eyes and realised something was wrong, the way he was fidgeting on the spot, the way he shifted in his sheet, and his eyes reminded Twilight of herself when she was young. It looked like she was going to have to end this session prematurely.
Author's Note
Sorry for the late upload of this chapter, haven't really been feeling the motivation to write, as well as the fact that I've been focusing more on a difference fiction. Please, if you notice any mistakes be sure to tell me because I haven't fully proofread this chapter. The next chapter will be done sometime in the undefined future.
Anyways, enjoy your evening.