As the Sun rose over Ponyville, guided by the magic of its Princess, a ray of light filtered in the room of a small purple dragon, bouncing many times on the crystal walls and finally reaching his eyelids. He tried to turn away, to cover himself with his sheets, but soon it became unbearable. There was no escaping the incoming morning, so instead of fighting an impossible battle he just surrendered and moved the sheets away from his body. “I’ll have to ask Celestia why she rises the sun earlier every day…”
Spike was still half asleep, just now rubbing his eyes. But even if didn’t realize, there was some truth in what he said. Two months had passed since winter wrap up, and soon the summer would have come. There was no stopping the cycle of the season and the progression of time.
After washing his face, and using the bathroom for a few minutes, he started moving across the wide corridors of the castle, walking toward the kitchen without making noise. He was going to eat a few gems he had hidden in a small jar inside the kitchen counter before making breakfast from himself and Twilight. Then he would have woken up her. “I should make something special… She has been a bit weird these past few days.”
He couldn’t put his hand on it, but he knew Twilight well enough to realize something was up. It’s not that she was any different while talking and joking with the girls, so they hadn’t noticed, but when interacting with Spike specifically there was something slightly different. A certain apprehension, a bit more noticeable than usual. And a certain… Melancholia? Nothing that some nice pancakes couldn’t solve, he thought.
Once in the kitchen, quietly, he went across the large room, passing in front of the table at which the purple alicorn was seated, and then reached the kitchen counter, that he opened. Calmly, he started searching for the jar.
“Hi spike.” Twilight was seated with her back straight, and a slightly tense smile.
“Hi Twilight!” Spike looked at her and nodded back, before going back to his research. But when he finally found the jar a few seconds later, he didn’t take it. He slammed the counter shut and turned around quickly “T-Twilight?!” Previously he was slightly worried, but now he was ready to panic! He could accept slightly weird behaviours, that was just Twilight being Twilight, but waking up earlier than him? In that exact moment, he knew pancakes wouldn’t have been enough. “A-are you ok?! Should I go call the girls? The princesses?”
As a matter of fact, the alicorn knew his assistant well enough to have a basic understanding of his thought process. And her voice reflected a mild offence she had taken at her reaction: “No, I’m fine!” A little glare accompanied her words, but she still looked kind of tense, which didn’t help her argument.
“Are you sure? You don’t look great…” By waking up earlier than usual, she also seemed a bit more tired. But no more than after the occasional late-night research, so that wasn’t worrying. But her tension, and he’d dare say mild embarrassment, actually was.
The princess looked away from Spike for just a moment, as she spoke. Her confidence apparently gone “We have to talk.”
“A-about what?" The gravity of her words was quite clear to Spike, and without saying one more word he got closer to the table and to Twilight herself, with all the intention of sitting on one of the chairs.
Before he even could, the princess Spoke again: “Now that you have your wings…” Spike looked for a moment behind his back, spreading them slightly. There was quite some pride seeing them: the wings he had waited so long to get, and that made him a full-fledged dragon… Almost. “I can’t deny it anymore. You are growing up.” A little smile appeared on Spike’s face. He was kind of liking where this conversation was going. “So, I think it’s time to have ‘The talk’.”
Any semblance of a smile vanished as quick as it had appeared. His eyes now wide, his mouth slightly agape. Also, despite his scaly face, a blush was quite apparent on the young dragon’s cheeks, only matching twilight’s one. He now moved a few steps towards the door, trying to get out of the room and the conversation. “Nope.”
Some raspberry-coloured magic wrapped him, a force he couldn’t counter taking him back towards the table. “I… I am embarrassed too. But I have to do it!” Twilight’s face instead of purple was almost red, but her expression conveyed all the effort she was going to put in the conversation. And in front of her puppy eyes Spike knew with certainty that it was something she really cared about, and therefore running away wouldn’t have helped him.
“T-twi, I appreciate this, really. But I don’t think it’s necessary… I already know about…” He did some ambiguous gestures with his hands, not at all comprehensible. It was as if not only he was too embarrassed to say it, but even his claws refused to spell the act clearly. “The stuff!”
“W-we will see.” She delicately put the small dragon on a chair, and then let it go of her magic, wrapping now a blackboard that was sitting in the corner of the room. He hadn’t noticed that previously, and since it usually wasn’t there probably Twilight had brought it there for the lesson, at which Spike rolled his eyes “making that face doesn’t make it any easier!” maybe it did, a small smile slipped on her lips after all, and she felt a bit more confident now. “Are you ready?” She had now wrapped some chalks in her magic, ready to write or draw on the now still blackboard.
“No! But I won’t get out of this in any other way, so you can start.” his expression was difficult to read, but he clearly was not very comfortable, although the small joke certainly helped.
“Correct!” With a smile, the mare started writing something on the board. ‘Cuddling’, at which Spike smirked. To be the title of the lesson, it certainly was a bizarre euphemism. She now stopped for several seconds, apparently too embarrassed to start. Knowing her Spike was certain she had already prepared her whole speech, so it was only a matter of time before she found the courage. “P-Probably you have wondered, sometimes, how foals are born!”
“I already know that! Really!” He was as red as she was, now. He thought he was prepared, but having twilight tell him about those… ‘Things’ was simply too much.
“We will see!” She took a deep breath, before continuing. “And probably you have felt somehow… Attracted to somepony. A crush, so to speak.” The image of Rarity immediately popped up in the little dragon’s mind, but Twilight kept going on. “The two things are correlated, as you might know. Our instinct makes most of us fall in love and wish to have a lovely family, and generation after generation this ensures the survival of ponykind…”
Spike wondered for a moment about ponies like Lyra and Bonbon, and how they would fit in the model. Luckily, he knew better than questioning this small fallacy in the model Twilight was presenting, as it would have been deadly embarrassing for both to get too detailed on the topic.
“And this is applicable to every kind of creature. Sure, there might be some differences here and there, but I’m quite certain the basic concepts are the same for essentially all sapient species.” She went on with a smile. Although the intricacies of Dragon Mating were unknown to ponykind, the same rules should have applied. “So, how does it work in practice…?” She stopped for a few moments, incapable of getting into the finer details. She was doing a good job, but this was too much. The awkwardness was palpable, and only after a few more moments of silence, she finally found the strength to utter a few more words: “W-when a m-mare and a… A stallion…” She swallowed, hard. She was unable to look a spike in the eyes now, so she tried to focus on the blackboard, where she drew two small figures. The shapes of the body and the slightly larger figure of one of the two suggested they were male and a female, but the ‘features’ spike kind of expected to see weren’t there. “L-l-love each other v-very much…” And now with some of her magic she moved the chalk lines bringing the two figures closer together, having them finally embrace each other. A bit awkwardly, maybe, but he didn0t expect anything different. “They… C-cuddle. Then the magic happens and after about eleven months the mare will give birth to one or two foals, usually.” A smaller pony finally appeared on the board. It was not an excellent drawing, but it was clear enough. She finally sighed in relief “And that’s everything you need to know!” She was radiant, she did it. And now she could end that dreadful conversation.
Or at least she would have, if it wasn’t for Spike disappointed expression. He wanted as much as her to get out of the situation, but… not like that “That’s it?”, he blurted, looking straight at her “I didn’t think you would chicken out midway.” He shook his head decidedly.
“Y-yes. that’s it.” Twilight was caught off guard by the question.
“What about, you know…” And there he went again with his gestures, although failing to represent anything. “the actual ‘act’?” it took a lot of courage just to say that, and he regretted it almost immediately. The awkwardness in the room had just increased tenfold.
“Oh…” The look in Twilight eyes was easy to read. She knew exactly what he was talking about, but really hoped she wouldn’t get to this.
“So…” after a few seconds, Spike had to interject, but was quickly cut off by Twilight.
“No, you are right. I can do this!” One deep breathe, then two, then three… Then her eyes were brimming with confidence. “I’ll give you the talk my parents never gave me!” She looked like a mare on a mission, sporting the kind of confidence that comes when the task is difficult, but one is sure to be able to complete it. Somehow, spike was now worried she would go even too much into the little details.
“Wait, what about your parents?” spike raised an eyebrow.
“Celestia did. According to my parents, 16 was still too early…” That was like them, Spike thought while nodding silently to Twilight. “Anyways” she coughed, preferring to go back to the main topic “As a matter of fact, the love isn’t enough to have a foal. The stallion and the mare also need intimate physical contact. What I meant as cuddling is…” Another deep breath, while the chalk moved on the blackboard to write a few more relevant words “The two ponies get on a bed, or another comfortable surface… And then they do things… Like…” Spike regretted everything. He should have let it end when he had the chance. He only now realized how little he wanted to hear the intricacies of sex described by the Alicorn “Very intense hugs, caresses and even k-kisses!”
Spike audibly facepalmed, and after a few moments looked at Twilight. That was not exactly what he expected. “Twi, you hug me all the time, and give me lots of kisses too…”
“I don’t mean that kind of kisses, or hugs!” Her blushing intensified, and her voice trembled a bit “I mean very, very passionate hugs. And the kisses are done… Using the t-tongue!”
“Twilight, you are doing it again” Spike shook his head.
“W-what am I doing?” The mare asked, perplexed, “Besides panicking?”
He went straight to the point: “You chickened out.”
“I… I didn’t. That was all.” And Spike knew the mare well enough to recognize the sincerity in her words.
But… That was impossible! Twilight knew everything, always. Ok, almost always; but she couldn’t not know this, it was basic knowledge! Furthermore, Celestia herself was her teacher even on these kinds of topics. “What about…” He moved his hands erratically, which made Twilight even more confused. “you know… Es E Ex?” She tilted her head sideways, giving at him a funny look “SEX!”
The voice of the dragon echoed in the large room, multiplying his own embarrassment. The alicorn, on the contrary, just looked perplexed. “What are you talking about?”
After a few long moments of silence, in which Spike looked straight in her eyes with an unreadable expression, he finally asked “You are pulling my hoof, right?”
“I’m not. I really don't know what you mean.” She was embarrassed, but it was unclear if it was for the topic or for the perspective of not knowing something.
“Twilight, you can’t not know! You just can’t!” His face hit the table, and for a few moments he didn’t even move. He was desperate. It was his turn to give her the talk? Everything was backwards! Was it possible that in the thousands of books in the library, and in the thousands more she had read in her life, none had any information about sex? “Oh…” Slowly he raised his head, his eyes glimmering. “Twilight, don’t move from there.”
Now she was kind of worried. She could see he had an Idea of some kind, but she really didn’t like the mischievous smile on his face: “What do you-”
“I’ll be back in five minutes!” And with these few words, he stormed out of the room, leaving Twilight wondering if he would actually have come back, or if he just used this chance to run away…
Two minutes and forty-two seconds. Twilight herself had counted the time, and the margin of error was, in her opinion, of no more than three seconds. That was the time Spike was away, and the time during which Twilight mind ran wild thinking about what the young dragon could have in mind. The innumerable scenarios she considered, though, didn’t prepare her at all to what was going to happen!
“I’m back!” With a few tentative steps, the dragon moved from the doorway from which emerged to the table, near which he quickly got a seat. Under his right arms what looked like a few books. No, wait… magazines?
“Are those…?” Twilight eyes widened considerably, as she recognized them. She slowly sunk in her chair, a terrified expression on her face. Her entire body had now slid below the table, except for her eyes and forehead, which were still looking at the baby dragon. “W-where did you find them?!”
Spike calmly put the magazines on the table, giving Twilight a meaningful look: “Under your bed.” A few moments of pause, before adding, with a dry tone: “Do you realize I am the one cleaning around here, right?”
“Oh” In moments like those she didn’t really feel like ‘Celestia’s best student’ or ‘one of the most brilliant minds of her generation’… In hindsight, it was kind of obvious it would happen sooner or later. “That make sense” Another moment of pause, in which she thought about the whole situation. This implied Spike had known about her stuff for Celestia knows how long., and now he brought them there as if it was not a big deal “Still, that’s not okay”
“I respect your privacy. I have never even read them.” That made Twilight a little bit more relaxed, but Spike didn’t stop there. There was a reason he had brought them there “But inside here there should be what we need to know.”
As much as Twilight understood the dragon’s idea, there were many objections she would have liked to raise. First and foremost, probably taking anatomy books would have been a more effective and less embarrassing way to approach the matter, but it was too late for that. Spike was already going through the magazines, looking at them a bit perplexed.
The first, on top of the pile, was simply called ‘Cuddles!’, and he kind of refused to accept what the title implied, so he moved it away. He did the very same a moment later with two different issues “Hot hugs”, thinking it was just very tame content, and he would have found something more explicit, and therefore useful to prove his point. The mare and stallion on the cover of the next were in a much more suggestive position, exactly what he was looking for, but he quickly dropped it on the table as soon as he saw the title: “Siblings love”.
“T-that’s just one of Fluttershy’s weird Neighponese magazines. She gifted it to me just to tease me, I swear!” Her forehead, the only part of her that Spike could see, was somehow redder than he had ever seen her. It being a gift, he could believe it. But Fluttershy teasing anypony? Not so much. Also, the fact it was the most worn out of the bunch didn’t help her cause.
“I haven’t seen it.” There were more than enough implications in that to scar him for life, starting from the fact that the stallion on the cover was a handsome white unicorn, but he really didn’t want to think about it. “I just haven’t”
The only sound Twilight made was a muffled, barely audible “Thank you”, before sinking even lower under the table.
“Playcolt sounds good!” He quickly changed topic, showing Twilight the cover of the magazine he chose. The mare on the cover was in a very sensual pose, and he was certain to find some ‘es e ex’ in there. That would have certainly disproved Twilight’s childish claims. All the absurdity would end right there, right?
Twilight was still silent, peeking at the young dragon from her position, while page after page his eyes became wider, and his overall expression more and more unreadable. “I knew you were not ready to look at that stuff!” And now she even felt guilty, not being able to stop him before it was too late.
“that’s not it”, Spike replied with a monotone voice, throwing the magazine in the centre of the table, open on a picture of a mare and a stallion embracing each other.
“Oh” Twilight felt shame for even owning something so lewd, her face even redder than before. Such a beautiful mare and such a handsome stallion held in each other forelegs, the fur on their chest delicately touching and the expression on their faces suggesting an indomitable passion.
Spike reaction was a bit different than Twilight’s though, as he couldn’t believe what he was seeing “They are just… cuddling!?” There was no further action going on in the scene, nor there was in any other page of the issue. And he started to be convinced it was the same for every other magazine, especially for one simple detail. “And there are no… No…” the word resisted getting out of his lips, but in the end, he found the strength to say it: “Genitals?!” He was a well-behaved dragon and had never looked at anypony’s privates. But was it possible that he had never noticed that?
“Genitals?” twilight head emerged from below the table, and she started returning to a more comfortable position on the chair. Still, her expression was one of absolute perplexity, she had no idea what those were supposed to be “Do you care to explain what that was all about?”
“Ok, but first let me just say…” A deep breathe. He couldn’t believe it, a part of him still refused the fact, but there was no denying at this point “You were right. I’m sorry.”
And then he explained. He explained everything. How months earlier the Dragon lord Ember during one of her visits had handed him a few scrolls about Dragon anatomy and sex educations. How she had told him ‘You won’t learn this stuff staying with ponies’, and how he thought that was her totally not subtle way of flirting with him, or at the very least of suggesting him to stick with dragons. And finally, how he felt almost bad about feigning ignorance at her supposed advances. Yet, now her words sounded very different. Much more literal, if anything.
Twilight waited until he had explained everything before asking for more details. “How long ago did this happen?” her inquisitive look was now pointed straight on Spike.
“Six months ago?”, he guessed. He didn’t remember the exact date, but that was a reasonable approximation
“Ok, I’ll ignore the fact you have held to the most complete text on dragon mating to ever reach Equestria without telling me anything…” She said, a bit annoyed by the facts. That was a novel research field, to say the least. She didn’t necessarily want to be remembered for some research on Dragon mating... But having that in her curriculum would certainly not have looked too bad, right?
“I thought the same applied for ponies”, he said, a bit ashamed of the unwarranted association. But could he really be blamed?
“I guess I made the same mistake”, Twilight sighed. And the idea she was basically dying of embarrassment while explaining one anatomy that probably didn’t apply to Spike was certainly an unpleasant one. “Would you care to explain me what you were talking about earlier, though?”
“Well…” His fears all came true: now it was his turn to give her the talk. The idea their biology was somehow different, and therefore at any given moment they would either have spoken of only one of them, somehow helped. It kind of felt it was a more distant, more abstract concept now that it didn’t involve both: “The male puts his male parts into the female’s female parts. Then he releases his, uhm, seed…” the exact words were still out of his reach, though, but he felt like he was close enough “And fertilizes her. And after a while, a hatchling is born” It was as simple as this, and to him, it sounded like the most natural, even obvious, way of being.
“You mean…” the alicorn was going through all of her encyclopaedic knowledge, trying to find anything somehow close to what he described. And the only thing he could she could think of were pistils, stamens and gametes “Like plants?” She thought about it a little bit, trying to imagine how tht could work based on what she had heard. “Gross!” Was her first reaction, followed immediately afterwards by a sense of guilt “I… I’m sorry! I don’t mean you are gross. Or that dragons are gross…” She did barely know what to say after her perceived impasse “It’s just a bit weird.”
Spike was fine. That didn’t offend him, as he knew quite well how the mare could react to things she didn’t know. And this was a completely foreign concept, apparently “So dragons are weird?” his rebuttal was a playful one, to Twilight surprise “Ponies make no sense!“ And after a few moments, he clarified his claim “We have the seed, which is called s-s-sperm” It was easier to talk now, sure, but it still was far from easy “Which meet the female’s ovule. And The genes of the parents get mixed like that.” Twilight nodded. Although now she couldn’t get the image of dragon-like plants or plant-like dragons out of her head, at that was a very weird thought “how is the foal conceived if you have nothing of that?”
“Well, I told you before” She shrugged her shoulders, while with a flat expression pronounced a single word as if it was the most obvious and logical answer. “Magic”
Judging Spike’s expression, that wasn’t obvious at all. And it wasn’t even that convincing “seriously?”
And serious she was. “If you talk about ponies, ‘magic’ is almost always the answer.”
Spike scratched his head. As underwhelming an answer it was, he couldn’t deny that in his experience that was perfectly true “I guess it makes sense. But that’s just it? Magic?”
It was still a bit vague to completely make sense, so the pony finally decided to get a bit more in detail “basically, stallions and mares have slightly different magical fields. In everyday life the difference is barely noticeable, but when two get intimate they interact with each other and get synchronized. This allows to ponies to reach a greater understanding. My field is friendship though, maybe Cadence would be more fit to talk about that…” She was trailing off, so she stopped a moment, to focus only on the relevant parts: “If the two ponies reach simultaneously an 'emotional peak' while they are intimate, then their magic fields for a brief moment become one, and genetic information can flow from the stallion to the mare, and so the foal is conceived." In the meantime she was quickly summarizing everything she said on the blackboard, thanks to two different chalks moved by her magic. "By the way, if two ponies have trouble synchronizing their fields, it is not necessarily because they are not meant for each other, that’s just an old superstition. A trained unicorn can use its own magic to help the synchronization and-“
“Too much information!” Caught as she was by the interesting trivia, she was talking freely and barely blushing. Spike, on the contrary, didn’t really want to imagine the whole scene, nor think about some unicorn doctor just standing there during the act and helping.
“O-ok.” Twilight stopped, mildly embarrassed. Then she looked at Spike, calmly “Do you have any other question?”
“Uhm…” He thought about it for a moment. There was one last thing he was curious about. A pretty relevant point, too. “These differences mean that Dragons and ponies are not ‘compatible’?”
She understood perfectly what he meant, and her expression softened. “Good question!” As a matter of fact, it was a question to which her didn’t have a certain answer. But she could make some inferences “It mostly depends on the number of chromosomes. Ponies, zebras, griffons, yaks, hippogriffs, centaurs…” She thought a little bit about it “And even changelings…" Sure, changeling queens worked quite differently, but reformed changelings were basically shape-shifting ponies "All Sapient species I can think of have actually the same number, so I kind of assumed it would be the same for dragons too, although we have no information in this regard.” As much as many researchers asked her, she always refused to conduct (or let anypony conduct) any kind of experimentation on Spike. It just would have felt wrong. “we could try to check if you want to…”
“What about the… Magic part?” All that talking about magic, and now it was all about chromosomes? Spike was legitimately perplexed.
“Well I had reasons to assume dragons mating would work like that of ponies…” She answered, with a confident tone, before being cut off by spike.
The way she stressed the word I didn’t really sit well with him “Ehi, I thought the male and female parts were simply hidden, like those of dragons! It wasn’t such a stretch of the imagination…” After all, he was a well-behaved pony, and had never thought about peeking under anypony's tail. In hindsight, though, it was true that a dragon's scaly body would have done a much better job at hiding certain features compared to a pony's furry one.
“Okay, okay. The thing is, your relevant magic field is a bit weak compared to that of a pony, but it is there." Spike eyes widened "If you were a female dragon, I would have to check if the organs you described me could sustain the magical process. but as the stallion only has to provide the magic…” She had a hard time to complete that last sentence, as suddenly the blushing was coming back to her.
The same applied to him, but he still managed to complete the phrase for her: “Then… It might work!” he was even kind of excited at the idea.
“Y-yes. You couldn't do that 'sex' thing with a pony, but every step of cuddling should actually work just as it would with a regular stallion.”
“I see…” I thought about it for a few moments. According to the scrolls Ember gave him, sex was supposed to be extremely pleasant... But would he really miss it? Who said that just cuddling with a pony he loved and having a happy family wouldn’t work just as well? The image of Rarity in his mind managed to reassure him quite a bit in this regard “Can I ask you a few more questions? I still have a lot to learn!”
Author's Note
I had been having this idea for a while. A dragon, with a normal reproductive system, confronted by pastel ponies that can only conceive foals thanks to the magic in them.
Thing is, I have basically no idea about how to write a comedy, so it feels more like a random slice of life scene than anything. Let's say I just wanted to try something different, and let's leave it at that. 
With love,
The Marshmallow
