Finding Your Family

As Rainbow Dash, Soarin, Garble and Smolder moved everything upstairs, Spike took his family down to the basement to show them what lurked below.

"It's chilly down here," mentioned Cudgel. "Is that intentional?"

"Basements are nice in the summer," answered Spike. "They hold their temperatures pretty well, and they're quite cool. In the winter, they'll hold heat, too."

The walls were made from the same stone as outside, but washed with lime and painted over for a faux brick look. The wall layout almost mirrored the first floor, except that the hallway only extended halfway back.

"So, there's not really a whole lot to the basement," Spike continued. "There are a few rooms that have a purpose, but I didn't really plan out what they'd be. For example, there's another half bath down here, and the utility room, where I had the water heater and furnace installed. I suppose one of the four can be a craft room, as I've already put a writing desk in there, and another room where I've installed a train set."

"What's a train set?" asked Barb.

Spike smiled. "Let me show you."

Spike walked into the room to their right through a stone archway. Flipping a switch, four incandescent light bulbs flickered on, illuminating a large table with a scale model of... Well, nowhere in particular. The U-shaped table had a chair sitting in the middle of it, with a few controls set up. A mountain sat in the middle, with a few noted tunnel entrances, where the model train could enter and exit. The underside was cutaway, as Barb found out when looking underneath it, so that anything that happened inside the mountain could easily be dealt with. If, for example, a grain of sand caused the model to derail inside the structure and fall over, Spike could retrieve it without taking the whole thing apart.

One side of the mountain, where the big loops and bridges were, was modeled after the dragon lands, which notably had no trains running through them. Spike having trains wrapping around dragon land foothills was not a depiction of reality, but rather, wishful thinking on his part.

The other side, which had a railyard and a bunch of track switches, was Equestrian in its topography. It was less fun to watch, but more fun to play with, as Cudgel soon found out when he was told to flip a few switches that changed the loop and sent it through different paths in the mountain.

"It's almost as if you had some spare time to waste," snorted Scootaloo.

"Well, I did," answered Spike. "If I had less than two days, I had to find something to do. So, I made a mock-up of something that would allow me to go to the dragon lands more easily if it actually existed. Maybe if I tried to bridge a smaller gap, we could work on bridging the longer one."

After half an hour or so of oohing and aahing at the train set, they went through the other rooms. One had a small table folded up on one wall, with a few folding chairs, something Spike dismissed with the words, "for playing cards," and the other with a writing desk and file cabinet full of paperwork. The final room was empty, save for a folded-up cot that Spike had presumably slept on for a bit, as there had been no mention of the bedrooms yet.

"Alright, everyone upstairs," waved Spike. "We should have everything moved into place by now."

Not stopping at the first floor, he urged them all the way to the top, where the last six rooms were. First was the first full bathroom, with a tub and shower and everything. This one was to be shared by the kids. The bathroom on the opposite side of the hall seemed to have no door, but through the door to the master bedroom, there it was, a mirror image of the first bathroom. The biggest difference was a locked cabinet, which Spike nodded to Scootaloo as being something he would show her later, something she instantly understood.

They lost Cudgel in the next room, which was understandable, because it was his. Not only had the room been painted to match his scales, not only had his name been written on the wall, not only had his bedspread been picked to match his spines, but all of his stuff was here.

Across the hall from him, Rainbow Slash's room sat, with the same style and setup. After moving from the dragon lands to Ponyville, it was the biggest load off of her mind that she could now dive onto a bed covered head to foot in all of her favourite plushies. It wasn't as good as having her friends around, but it was some degree of comfort, at any rate.

Barb was not given so joyous an entrance, as only about half of her stuff was there, and Rainbow Dash had only just started unpacking everything. "It's just about ready," she said, setting up a stuffed giraffe toy. While Slash was the one more into stuffed animals, all of them had at least a few. Cudgel had opted for models and figurines, and Barb liked board games. "You wanna help?"

"Sure," answered Barb, helping Dash to unpack while Spike and Scootaloo went back downstairs.

"So, what do you think?" asked Spike, gesturing all around. "Pretty nice, right?"

"It's great..." Scootaloo trailed off.

"But?"

"It's nothing. I'm just a little bit overwhelmed by it. It's all just too much at once." She put a claw on his shoulder. "I'll grow to love the house in time, I know. You've had all this time to bond with it; to grow used to the way it looks, to adjust it to your liking, to find things you didn't like and change them... For me, it's... I've never even seen this place. It didn't even exist last time I was here. This was a patch of daisies when I left."

"There are still daisies," smiled Spike. "I preserved a few patches in the backyard." He pulled her into a hug. "Look, I know this isn't the place you've always wanted. As you spend a bit more time here, it'll grow on you, especially as you start to make it work for you."

"I know," sniffed Scootaloo. "Reasonably, I should be happy. I guess I'm just a bit scared, instead."

"Well, you're not alone," assured Spike. "Whatever it is that's scaring you, we'll face it together." He rubbed her back. "What do you want for dinner?"