Having spent a good chunk of his life helping others with their problems, Spike had, much like Twilight and his other friends, developed a pretty keen sense of when others weren't feeling especially happy. But today, his senses were going off around, of all people, Smolder. And this confused the young drake for fairly clear reasons. After all, their journey to the Dragon Lands had gone better than anycreature could have possibly hoped for. Garble had learned to be comfortable with who he is, the other dragons had learned to accept him, and on top of all that, the baby dragons had hatched perfectly healthy. All the problems they went there to fix had indeed been fixed, yet the dragoness before him looked as though she still had something on her mind. Now Spike, feeling an understandable amount of kinship with Smolder, perhaps more than any of the other students here, felt like it was his place to ask, so after walking up to her on one of the school's balconies, he cleared his throat to gain her attention. And gain it he did, as she turned to look at him, offering a small smile that Spike knew just from looking was fake.

"Hey there, squirt. How's it going?"

Spike chuckled.

"I was about to ask you the same question."

Smolder's smile faltered, prompting her to look away.

"Oh, I'm fine. Better than fine, even! Things back home are great! My brother's happy, the other dragons are happy...everything's just great."

Now, having somecreature say that "everything's great" more than once in the same sentence was a pretty clear sign that they did not, in fact, consider everything to be great. So Spike, sighing, walked right up to her. Smolder knew he was looking to her, and what he was here for in the first place, but her inherent draconic pride of course kept her from admitting what was bothering her. After a long while, however, her defences wore thin, and she grunted with slight irritation.

"Ugh! It's just..."

Slowly, she glanced down to him, her expression, to Spike's confusion, one that almost looked like shame.

"You have to promise you won't tell this to anycreature else, especially my brother!"

Spike raised one claw, using his other to make an "X" sign over where his heart was.

"I swear, whatever you say to me won't be said to another soul."

Smolder, knowing she could trust his word, looked at least a little bit more relaxed, though still sounded hesitant.

"I...I've been thinking. About dragons, like me and my brother. About all the stuff I've learned here at the school. About the stuff all of us have been learning."

Spike started to look a bit worried.

"You're not starting to think about leaving, are you?"

Smolder's head snapped down to him, and she waved her hands around a little.

"Oh no! Don't worry, Spike. I'm not going anywhere!"

Then her look of discomfort returned.

"But...have you...ever wondered..."

She grimaced, then just steeled herself and said what was on her mind.

"Did you ever worry that you were born as the wrong kind of creature?"

A silence fell between the two youths, and Spike looked to her like he had no idea what she was talking about. Smolder's blush made it clear that she very much didn't like having to say that, but she stayed quiet when the younger dragon spoke up, scratching the back of his head as he did so.

"Er...I'm not following."

Smolder sighed.

"Look! All these things me and the other dragons have been learning to do. Be yourself, make friends with others, be nice and all that stuff. That's all things we've learned from others."

She turned, looking out from the balcony to the sight of Ponyville below.

"The lessons that have been changing us...those are pony ways. Not our ways. Our ways would have just had us being all angry and fighting each other all the time."

She rolled her eyes.

"Even our holiday stories do nothing except talk about how one dragon screws over another and stuff."

Spike nodded, looking away briefly.

"Yeah, Sandbar told me about that one. Not the best Hearth's Warming Eve story I've heard, but still..."

Smolder gave him a raised eyebrow, but her face soon softened.

"All this good stuff that's happening back home and to all the dragons...it would never have happened if not for Twilight and the other ponies. Their ways, their lessons, they...they were just so much better than what we were doing."

And it was here that Spike, for the first time in this conversation, began to understand exactly what was upsetting her so much. He moved forward, raising a claw and gently placing it on her arm.

"Smolder? Are you...ashamed of being a dragon?"

Shame returned to Smolder's face, and that right there was all the answer Spike needed. He didn't know what to say, at least at first, but after spending a good minute thinking about it, he eventually perked up, offering her a genuine smile.

"Hey, you don't need to feel bad about it. I mean, think of all the great things dragons get to do! We breathe fire, we get to live for, like, ages, plus we have scales, which everycreature knows is way cooler than fur!"

Smolder slapped her own forehead.

"Spike, I appreciate you trying to get me to feel better, but let's face it. Those ponies down there, they're all so good at all this friendship stuff, and have been long before people like dragons and Changelings ever even thought about taking it on!"

She slumped her shoulders.

"Pony ways are just...just...better ways."

She folded her arms and looked away, leaving a very concerned-looking Spike. He knew she was upset, and not just with herself right now, and even though this particular line of thought wasn't something he'd ever really considered before, he could at least understand her feelings on the matter. After all, given all the troubled times he'd had when interacting with other dragons, he couldn't exactly say that they'd been presented in the best of light over the years. But, as he thought more and more on that, a new idea soon came to him, and he smiled.

"You know...dragons aren't all that different from ponies, when you get right down to it."

Smolder looked to him with incredulity.

"Beg pardon?"

Spike smiled to her confidently.

"It's true! I mean, sure, they may look like they eat, sleep and breathe friendship, but trust me, they had to go through a lot before they got to this point."

He looked down to his claws, counting them off.

"They had to go through a long time of being divided between unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies, which nearly caused them to all be frozen to death. They've had a whole bunch of ponies go bad over the years, like Sombra or Cozy Glow or Starlight..."

Smolder seemed taken aback by that last one.

"Wait, goody-two-shoes Counsellor Starlight? I mean, I know she has a temper every once in a while, but what bad stuff has she done?"

Realising what he'd said, Spike blushed slightly, coughing in an obviously deliberate manner.

"Er...moving on! And then there's the fact that we spent almost our entire history being afraid of other creatures."

He looked to her.

"And I don't just mean dragons, but a whole load of other people too! I mean, you should've seen how ponies around here treated Zecora when she first turned up! They took one look and just hid away, like she was a monster!"

Spike paused for a moment, and when she spoke, it was with a tone of uncertainty.

"...Really?"

Spike nodded.

"Yeah! I know that, from the outside, it looks like we've always had friendship down to a science, but trust me, it took a lot of learning and struggle to get to where we are today. And dragons aren't any different."

Smolder, in spite of her earlier mood, chuckled, placing one claw on her hip.

"Oh yeah?"

Another nod from Spike.

"I mean it! Yeah, they look like they struggle with all these lessons, but so did ponies at the start. Give them time, and they'll come to accept it just as ponies did. And yeah, there'll be one or two bad apples from time to time, but if it's anything like the ones we've had to deal with, it'll just give way to even more good after a while!"

Smolder stood in silence, thinking hard on everything the young dragon before her had said. Spike, for his part, seemed more than sure in his own words, and after almost a full minute, Smolder smiled back to him, reaching forward and giving him a friendly pat on the head.

"You know, for such a young kid, you're sound pretty wise sometimes."

Spike blushed from the pat, then swelled his chest out with a little pride.

"Hey, when you spend as much time with a wise Princess as I do, you pick up a few things."

They shared a laugh together, which thankfully did away with a lot of the negative feeling that had permeated the conversation. But, when it died down, Smolder looked to her smaller companion with interest.

"So...we?"

Spike titled his head, prompting Smolder to continue.

"Back there, when you were talking about all the stuff the ponies had been through, you said 'we' a few times, like...like you counted yourself as one of them."

Spike, perhaps not realising that he'd said that, chuckled nervously, his blush returning.

"Oh, yeah, that. Um...I guess spending my whole life with them will do that. I mean, when ponies are pretty much all you've known...it's kinda hard not to think of yourself that way too."

Smolder thought silently on that, but kept her smile all the same, giving Spike another quick pat.

"Well, either way, the Dragon Lands were all the poorer for not having you, Spike."

Author's Note

However you feel about this episode, can we all just agree that Fluttershy fawning over those baby dragons at the end was just the cutest thing we've all seen for a while?