A chipper greeting clawed through the stillness of the late afternoon. "Hey, Twilight! Can I—"
"Gah!" Startled by the unexpected interjection behind her, Twilight Sparkle swung out of her chair, inadvertently scattering her half-read pile of documents through the air. Instinctively, the alicorn unfurled her wings, ignited her horn, and turned around, bracing herself to confront whatever threat had approached her…
...Only to realize that the "threat" was just a small, purple, and all-too-familiar dragon.
"Woah-woah-woah! It's just me, Twilight!" an airborne Spike reassured her, defensively hovering a meter or two backwards. Noticing a drifting sheet of loose paper, he swooped down and plucked it out of mid-air. "This is from Queen Novo?" he asked, skimming its contents.
"Y-Yeah." Twilight dissipated the lavender aura around her horn and took a deep breath to steady herself. "She's been really, really interested in how Silverstream's been doing at the school. Which makes perfect sense, seeing as she's Novo's niece, and that Novo still doesn't really trust me after I messed up in Seaquestria, and that it's a miracle she even—"
"Twilight," Spike cut in, pointedly.
"Right, spiraling." She sighed. "I'm really sorry about that, Spike. You just snuck up on me there."
Spike shook his head. "No, it's my fault, really. I keep forgetting how quiet these wings are. I shouldn't have jumped in on you like that."
"It's perfectly fine, Spike. You shouldn't have to beat yourself up over me being twitchy."
On that note, an awkward silence fell over the duo. Or, at least, it would've, were it not for the subtle sound of Spike's wings slicing through the air. Inevitably, Twilight's attention soon drew towards the droning noise and its mesmeric repetitions.
Had it really only been a month since Spike's molt? Since those wings sprouted out of his back? In some senses, the change still wasn't quite real to her. And yet here he was, using his newly grown appendages to unintentionally sneak up on her.
In the past, Twilight could always tell if Spike was coming just by listening for the distinctive sound of his movements. After all, he didn't have hooves. The heel of his scale-covered foot would hit the ground with a quiet "pit", then the three little claws at the opposite end would make an equally little "click" as they tapped against the floor. "Pit-click pat-clack pit-click pat-clack," Spike would scamper across the castle's winding hallways.
Over the years, Twilight had grown to find the sound almost comforting, in its own unique way. Ah, yes, here comes my little baby dragon, she would often think to herself. I wonder what news he's bringing me now? Has he finished his chores early? Has a letter from Princess Celestia arrived? Has Rarity given him a platonic peck on the cheek?
Of course, as Spike had just accidentally demonstrated, that wouldn't be the case from now on. Twilight would have to learn to pick out the sound of his flapping wings, and to distinguish them from Owlowicious's. It would be quite the change, but then again, she'd find a way to get used to it, just like she always did whenever the status quo went and threw itself out the window. The wings upon the once-unicorn's back were a testament to that in and of themselves.
"Sooo," she began, pulling herself back to the present moment, "was there something you wanted to tell me, Spike?"
"Oh, yeah, right!" Spike replied, the memory of his motives returning. "I, uh, wanted to ask you something, actually."
Twilight gave him an encouraging nod. "Ask away."
"Well..." Spike wrung his claws together, his eyes trailing upwards as he tried to articulate his question. Eventually, he looked back at Twilight and gave her a sheepish grin. "Could you teach me how to give a wing-hug?"
Twilight raised an eyebrow. "'Wing-hug'?"
"You know, that thing you do where you wrap your wing around my back?"
"Ohhhh, that."
"Yeah, 'that'." Spike sank to the ground, touching down with a soft pat, then pointed a thumb at one of his folding wings. "Now that I've got wings too, I figured I might as well, um…"
"Learn to do it yourself?" Twilight finished, to which Spike gave an agreeing nod. Regardless of the affirmation, the edges of her mouth curled into a slight but apologetic frown. "I think your wings might still be a bit too small for that, Spike."
"Oh," Spike sighed. His gaze drifted downwards in disappointment, and the spiny scales atop his head drooped a little. "Makes sense, I guess."
Seeing Spike so literally crestfallen, Twilight's growing grimace worsened. Her little dragon seemed genuinely committed to learning the wing-hug, and denying anyone access to knowledge was in direct defiance of her own principles (with two or three villainy-based exceptions, of course). She couldn't stand for it, and thus began wracking her brain for an immediate alternative.
"Don't worry, Spike," Twilight reassured him, her conviction to assist her Number One Assistant bubbling to the surface. "I think I've got a solution."
She trotted across the room, stopping at a small chest in the corner. She flicked it open with a spark of magic, then scanned its contents, searching for the one object in particular that could help her. Soon enough, she spotted it.
"Aha! There you are!" Sinking to her haunches, she reached into the chest and pulled it out.
Spike pit-click pat-clacked over to Twilight's side. He recognized the gray stuffed doll clutched in her hooves almost instantly. "Smarty Pants?"
The old doll had still been in Big Macintosh's possession during Tirek's rampage through Ponyville, inadvertently sparing it from annihilation alongside the rest of the Golden Oaks Library's contents. Once the dust had settled, Applejack had convinced her brother to return it to Twilight to, as she'd put it, "help her cope." Twilight appreciated the gesture beyond words, and, though she'd never admit it, on those first lonely nights in her newly grown castle, she'd fallen asleep with her childhood imaginary friend clutched between her front hooves.
Regretfully, the doll returned to collecting dust after Twilight's disenchantment passed, but now, the time had once again come for Smarty to help her adjust to a change.
"I know it might not be exactly what you expected," Twilight began, preparing to dive into an elaborate justification, "but—"
"No no," Spike interrupted, unexpectedly insistent, "it's perfect. More than perfect, at this point."
Twilight blinked. "Okay, if you say so!"
Though Twilight was happy Spike was so willing to adapt, his abrupt acceptance left her somewhat puzzled. Given how disappointed he'd been, his sudden insistence that Smarty Pants was "more than perfect" had gone completely against her expectations. She tried to think of a few explanations, but ultimately shook her head and set her confusion aside. It wasn't the most important thing right now.
Maybe I'll ask him about it afterwards, she thought to herself, content to leave the matter there for the time being.
She shook some dust off of Smarty Pants, then put the doll down, keeping a slight magical grip on it so it wouldn't plop over. Spike, sensing his cue, walked over to Smarty and sat down.
"So, what do I do?" he asked, looking back up at Twilight.
"Well," she began, "I know you might think I have some big, elaborate, step-by-step guide to it—"
Spike smirked. "I mean, knowing you..."
Twilight rolled her eyes, but smiled all the while. "Okay, fair enough, but really, there isn't all that much to it. It's two steps at most. First, open your wing." To demonstrate, she unfurled her right wing, extending it all the way out so Spike could scrutinize its shape. Spike followed her lead, his left wing hovering over Smarty Pants.
"And then just put it around the main point of contact!" Twilight finished.
"Huh." Spike made a few half-hearted attempts to heed her instructions, but his efforts bore an almost palpable air of uncertainty. "And where would that, uh, 'main point' be, exactly?"
"The exact spot varies from creature to creature, but it's usually the thinnest part of the body your wing can comfortably reach. For instance—" She trotted over to Spike's side, plopped onto her haunches, and, with an expertise she'd never previously dwelled upon, wrapped a wing around him. Spike let out a short yip of surprise, but quickly accepted the demonstrative wing-hug.
"Notice how whenever I 'wing-hug' you," Twilight continued, "I try to keep my wing bones between the back of your head and the base of your neck. But for most ponies, you're probably better off going somewhere between their withers and their back.
"Now you try it!" She gestured to the corresponding areas on Smarty Pants. "Uh, Spike?"
The little dragon's eyes were closed, and his body had fully sunk into the sea of lavender feathers.
"Spike?" Twilight repeated.
Spike jolted out of Twilight's wing-hug. "Oh, sorry!"
"There's nothing to be sorry for, Spike."
"I know. It's just... I don't know if you've noticed this, Twilight, but, well, your wings are soft. Like, really soft. Maybe it's an alicorn thing or something."
"Huh." Twilight removed her wing from Spike's back and studied its shape. She had noticed its differences from a normal pegasus wing before, but, somewhat surprisingly for her, she'd never offered them more than the occasional cursory glance. "Maybe I'll ask Celestia about it later."
"Anyway," Spike continued, unsurely, "I heard what you said. About the withers and the back, I mean."
Twilight gestured to Smarty Pants. "Ready to try it, then?"
"Sure." Spike tried to put Twilight's earlier advice to use. His leathery wing wrapped around Smarty Pants' back and the upper half of the doll's front left arm, its tip coming to a rest in the small gap between the arm and the belly. He fidgeted in place for a few moments, trying in vain to fine-tune the positioning.
Noticing his struggle, Twilight spoke again. "It might be different for your dragon wings, but personally, I find it's best to put my secondaries—" She pointed at the middle third of her wing— "on the area your wing touches the most."
Spike nodded, then continued to adjust his posture. It took a few more tries, but soon enough...
"I think Iiiiiii've... got it!" he proclaimed, certainty and pride rising in his voice as he looked back up at Twilight. "I, uh, I do, right?"
Just to be sure, Twilight loosened her magical grip on Smarty Pants and examined Spike's form. "Yup, looks like it," she said with a smile. "Well done, Spike!"
Spike beamed, then turned back to Smarty Pants. He paused for a moment, lost in thought.
"It's kinda funny when you think about it," he began, somewhat wistfully, a second or two later. "Someday, you're going to be Smarty Pants."
Twilight put two and two together. Suddenly, Smarty Pants being "more than perfect" for the job made a bit more sense. And sensing that Spike was probing for an excuse to express his thoughts, she gladly took the bait.
"How so?" she asked.
"I mean, dragons do get pretty big," Spike explained, before chuckling at the inherent understatement. "It's not gonna be for a while, but years from now, when I'm bigger and stronger and... everything-er, really, I'm going to look at you, and you'll look as small as Smarty Pants does right now."
"It'll be quite the change, huh?"
"You're telling me. Then again, I guess we're both used to things changing by now. Just look at everything we've gone through lately: the Pillars, Tempest, the hippogriffs, the School, and now my wings. And given the way things have gone since we moved to Ponyville, they're probably gonna keep changing, y'know?"
Twilight looked at Spike's wings, then at her own, and, finally, at the surrounding walls of the crystal castle they'd called home for such an unassumingly long time. "As Fiery Flux one said," she recalled aloud, "'The only constant in life is change.'"
"Well, the guy wasn't wrong," Spike said. Though he had to stifle another chuckle, his face fell somewhat. "Thing is, even if you understand that changes are going to happen no matter what, it doesn't make them not scary. You saw how I got during my molt, even if you didn't know what was going on."
"Because you were afraid to tell me," Twilight pointed out.
"That's my point, Twilight. I was so scared that, if I told you about it, it'd change the way you saw me. Change it into something different, something worse."
"But it didn't, did it?"
"No, it didn't. That didn't make it any less scary in the heat of the moment, though. You know how that feels, don't you?"
There was a short pause. "Yeah, I do."
"And as much as we wish we wouldn't, we're probably going to feel that way again. Maybe it'll be a tough Friendship Problem, or some royal duty that's being a pain, or maybe even another Evil-In-a-Can everypony'll have to go and fight. Whatever it winds up being, maybe it'll get to us. Really get to us, I mean."
"And is that why you wanted to learn this?"
Spike mulled it over for a moment. "That's part of it, at least. I know this probably goes without saying, but I hate, hate, hate seeing you upset like that, Twilight. And between the school shutting down, and that argument with our friends in Seaquestria…"
"It's happened one too many times for comfort?"
"Yeah, that. I just wished I could do more to help you, you know? At some point, I think I just asked myself 'Whenever I get worked up, how does she calm me down?'"
Spike looked up at Twilight. "And, well, one of the answers was 'She wraps me in a comforting wing-hug.' My wings might not feel the same, and I might not even be able to do it right now, but I couldn't help but wonder if I could wrap my wing around you. And then maybe you'd feel a bit better about it all. The same way your hug always makes me feel a bit better."
"Aww, Spike," Twilight cooed. The urge to shed a tear or two reared its beautiful head. "That's so sweet of you."
Spike chuckled. "I do have my moments."
"Well, I truly appreciate it. But my anxiety shouldn't be your burden to carry; you and I both know that's something I still need to improve of my own accord." Recalling some of her earlier reactions, Twilight shuddered.
"Hey, if there's anything I've learned from being with you, it's that it can't hurt to be prepared," Spike offered, inducing a welcome chuckle from Twilight in the process. "Beats doing nothing if it does happen, y'know?"
"I guess it can't hurt."
"Even if I'm still too small to do it?"
"Even if you're still too small to do it."
"Hey, at the very least, it was a good excuse to spend some more time with you. Nice distraction from all that heavy Novo stuff, huh?"
"I guess it was." Twilight flexed her wing, pulling Spike even further into its feathery embrace. "I love you, Spike."
"I love you too, Twi," Spike replied, extending his other wing towards her. Though it was too small to do much except brush against her side, the love behind it was more than enough to surround the both of them. In that regard, they both supposed, the little dragon was well ahead of schedule.
And just like that, the afternoon fell still once more.
END.
Author's Note
Like a surprisingly large amount of my works-in-progress, I began writing this story sometime in 2019. I'd gone to a local restaurant and, being at the bottom of a long waiting list, challenged myself to write an entire oneshot before I reached my seat. Inspired by this piece of fanart by Heir-of-Rick, I wrote only about a third of the planned story before I ran out of time... and proceeded to forget all about it.
Earlier this year, I spontaneously remembered the rough draft's existence and incrementally completed its latter two-thirds. Days later, I finished applying my proofreaders' suggestions while standing in a completely different line, inadvertently bringing the story's three-year saga full circle. Funny how that sort of thing works out sometimes, isn't it?
Speaking of those proofreaders, Special Thanks to Falkenlied and Rego for agreeing to proofread this story on such short notice! It's a mishmash of two-and-a-half very different times, places, and methodologies, so their assistance in smoothing out its rough edges was invaluable.
Take care!
–AP
