Small Talk, Big Subjects

Twilight sat comfortably on her thick woven quilt. The heavy wool density protected her from all the horrors of lake side grim but still offered her a lovely view of the surrounding land.

The surrounding land was none other then the fantastic Wishbourne Lake, a tiny little stretch of water that would normally pass for a pond, but the Ponyville Tourist Agency felt that calling it a lake would attract more visitors. Never the less, it was still a fantastic place to look at the stereotypically serine moments of sunrises, sunsets, bird migrations, forest fires, and fraternity parties.

True to its name, the lake was offering a jar dropping scene of the massive orange sun slowly setting over the tree-line of the surrounding Everfree Forest. Its bright fading light illuminating the small embankments next to the “lake” and casting shadows behind the trees being drenched in its heavy beams.

Twilight had been waiting for over an hour for Alistair to arrive and he still was nowhere to be seen. “Perhaps I was too cryptic”, she thought to herself. Leaving a single note on the countertop saying: Wishbourne Lake, don’t be late really wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but it seemed noir-ish so that made her feel kinda cool.

The day had gone swimmingly to say the very least. Twilight’s conjuration spells of vegetables had finally been perfected, and now she could move onto fruits and eventually starches.

Her further examinations of the Tobar Nebula had proved that the apparent symmetry and patterns of light projecting of it had just been an error on her part. Upon inspection of her telescope, a large glob of strawberry jelly had landed on the lens piece, obstructing all credibility of her studies of the nebula.

Twilight’s ears perked up when a familiar voice was heard in the distance. The sound was echoing from behind but she could still partially hear them. They were yelling something but she couldn’t tell what it was. She listened closer.

“Twilight! It’s me, Alistair! I got your note! Where are you!?!”

Turning around, she cupped her hooves to her mouth and shouted back.

“I’M OVER HERE!!!!!!”

A loud snapping of twigs and rustling of branches was heard. A few seconds later, Alistair burst out of the forest and tumbled onto the dry grassy clearing.

“Hi Twilight!” He happily greeted, quickly hopping up from the ground. “I s-saw the note on the countertop and got over as quickly as possible! I had to drop off a few things at your tree house, b-but now I’m here!”

“Hey” she immediately remarked, “Your stutter’s getting better!”

“Th-thanks” he responded. “I’ve been noticing it too.”

“Well…that’s good to hear.” She awkwardly remarked. “What did you have to drop off?”

“Oh, j-just some brochures and maps I found around town. Different papers and flyers, anything that looked cool really.”

“Why don’t you tell me about them, and your day?” She started to walk back over to her quilt and gestured for him to follow.

The two moved back over to her small encampment and sat down, his legs sticking straight out across the quilt and partially onto the grass. She took a seat next to him and curled her legs into her body for maximum comfort.

The two didn’t speak immediately, but instead took in the environment for a bit. The sun was now half below the tree line, and with it, light was diminishing from around the lake. Soon it would be dark.

“This is very scenic.” He commented; wonder lingering on his last word. “Surprised more ponies aren’t here.”

Twilight looked out at the lake. “I think it might be a ‘see it once, seen it all’ kind of thing. The ponies that’ve lived here all their lives have probably been here thousand times before.”

“But th-that being said, how could you ever get bored of…this!” He flung his arms up in the air to further emphasize his point.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. All ponies have their opinions, I guess.”

“Yeah…”

They again took a long pause, without a single word being uttered. Between the two of them, they both couldn’t decide if it was tension or bashfulness that was doing this. It didn’t feel weird being around each other, it’s just conversation felt…weird.

For the time he had been with Twilight (maybe six, or seven days?) most of their discussions were either small talk or Alistair telling her where’d he was going and when he’d be back. And this wasn’t at all out of hostility or aggression toward each other, they just didn’t have much to talk about.

It made Twilight feel odd (minus the circumstances of inter-dimensional encounters) that she couldn’t connect with a new friend. It felt easy enough when she was around other ponies in Ponyville or with the rest of her little gang. But when she was one on one with Alistair, she didn’t feel like there was any potential between them.

It was negative way of thinking, but something nagged at her that maybe it might be true. He didn’t seem to have any dislike of her, in fact, he seemed drawn to her in a way. Not in a relationship kind of way, Celestia no, but in levels of comfortably. She was probably the only pony he saw as friend for the time being. Everypony else was part of brave new world that he didn’t quite understand.

“Twilight, what’s affectations mean?

“Hmmm?” Her bubble of thought sprinkled to mist at Alistair’s random question. He had a tendency to do that.

“Affectations, what does it mean?”

“It means: an effort to appear to have a quality not really or fully possessed. Why do you ask?”

He turned to her, half of his face becoming shadowy with the dwindling light. “I read it in that Vigilantes b-book of yours. The character Horsechach says it at one point.”

“Oh…yeah he does.” She paused. “Did you know they made a movie out Vigilantes?”

He tilted his head in confusion. “Movie?”

“Moving pictures.”

“Ohhhhhhh, cool. Sounds like something I’d like to see sometime.”

He looked back towards the lake with the sun now 99% down, when he noticed that lightening bugs where now glowing along the shoreline. This wasn’t anything new to him (his cabin in the Realm of Solitude was by a forest) but he still was impressed.

Twilight laid her head back onto the edge of the quilt’s fabric, almost touching the overgrown grass surrounding them. Alistair continued to sit up, watching the sun finally peak down below the forest. Small sprinkles of gray light still shimmered in the absence of the sun, but for the most part, night was upon them.

More lightening bugs appeared as all natural light disappeared from the sky. They wizzed and weaved around the trees, blue and green light trails following their invisible bodies in the open air.

Twilight was still laid back on the quilt when she decided to talk to him.

“Alistair, you remember that conversation we had, a week ago.”

“Yeah” he responded. “When w-we first met, what about it?”

“You remember how I asked you some questions about why you came here and how you came here and you where a bit uncomfortable about answering them?”

“Mmm-hhhmmm”

“Well…” She moved back into her sitting position. “I’d like to ask you those questions again. The Princess, scholars, I, we need to know these things. They’re important to archive, not just for the fun of it, but for a higher purpose. All the information on your kind…it needs to be recorded.”

“Is that what this is all about?” He asked with a sense of disapproval. “You didn’t want me to come out here and chat like friends, but just to finish this interview?”

“Alistair, it’s not completely-”

“Oh I know! I know w-what you’re all about, at least with this.” He got to his feet and began to rub his hands together. “You want to know how I got here, Twilight? I’ll give you a little example.”

He continued to rub his hands together, then began to stretch out his arms and crack his knuckles. He looked at Twilight, now a dark silhouette, then looked back at his hands.

“Here goes.”

Alistair raised his right hand into the air and began to breathe in deeply. He focused on his hand as he breathed, sending all available energy in his body to that exact point on his hand. In just the center of his palm, a blue dot appeared.

The dot stuck there for a moment and then began to grow. Within seconds the blue dot had encircled his entire hand with a bright blue fizzing of light and electricity. It was like firework had gone of in his hand, it was like his fingers were a capacitor, it was like…magic.

He threw his glowing hand farther into the air, illuminating the small clearing in his minor action of triumph. He then moved his hand back down and pointed it at a nearby tree. With a slight movement of his fingers, a single leaf was plucked off the tree, a light blue aura surrounding it.

It hovered slowly towards his hand until he held it in place, inches from his index finger. He had it hover there for a second, carefully floating the small green strand up and down over his palm. He seemed to be having fun.

Then, as soon as he had started his light show, he ended it with a single snap of his fingers. The aura switched off from both his hand and the leaf, and the shoreline was once again black.

He sat back down next to Twilight, a grin of satisfaction across his face. It was too dark to make out her expression, but he predicted her jaw had fully dropped.

“Alistair!” she gaped, not incredibly flabbergasted, but still moderately surprised. “You can perform magic! That’s amazing!”

He grinned even more. “Thank you.”

“No really, that’s wonderful! There’ve been other humans who’ve had magic before but still, this is a very nice surprise! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

His mouth was twisted in a smile as he responded. “I didn’t really know how to say it, I guess. Me getting angry (sorry about that by the way) just kind of…instigated me.”

“Well don’t feel bad about it! For the first time ever, I’m happy someone I know got angry…no offense.” Her giddy expression fell dark for a moment. “But if you can perform magic and you said that’s how you…oh my gosh.”

“What, what, what!?!” He frantically shouted, mortified over Twilight’s sudden mortification.

Twilight quickly began to roll up the quilt and tossed it onto her back. “I’m sorry for ending this abruptly Alistair, but we need to get back to the tree house as soon as possible. I have a letter to send the Princess.”

He nodded his head in agreement and was about to say something when Twilight took off into the forest. He followed after her; shadowy tree branches and bushes swatting him on all sides.

They continued to sprint through the pitch black woods until they jumped onto the dirt trail and ran back towards Ponyville. Alistair had no idea what was going on, but he felt like he’d get some answers when he reached Twilight’s place. For now, he had to run.