When Spike was a young whelp, he had a previous master who was more friend than slaver. She was like a mother to him, and he the son she couldn’t have. One of the things that this master did was the most vile thing any pony could ever do to their slave.

Teach them to read.

The idea of a learned dragon was sickening to the eyes of the masters. They couldn’t fathom a being like them. A being that was smart. A being that could think for themselves instead of always having a master to guide them, less they would give in to their predator urges and raze the village.

They couldn’t fathom a being that could understand what it was going through, and understand it shouldn’t be. For many ponies, deep in their hearts they still knew that controlling other beings wasn’t right; at least, if it was at all wrong.

The dragons were vicious beasts unless trained, so they all believed the practice to be for the greater good.

Not this master.

“Ay… bee… see…” the young whelp recited.

“Good, keep going,” the master encouraged.

“Dee… eee… eff… aiche?” the dragon spoke up in a questioning tone.

“No, dearie, that’s the next one. What comes before F and H?”

“F… H… eee, eff, gee, aiche?”

“That’s it, G! Now, try and see if you can keep going.”

And so it was. The teacher and master, laying down on a red velvet couch, a fireplace raging inside to keep the house warm against the bitter winter outside. The master knew young dragon whelps like her current student would be fragile and quite possibly die in the cold outside.

And yet she knew ponies that would wonder why their whelps would die out in one random night during the winter.

The whelp still slightly shivered, the baby dragon hypersensitive to even the slightest cold. Its own fire was still not controlled, and he couldn’t use the tricks older dragons could do to keep themselves warm.

“Scoot closer, Spike. You’ll feel better,” the teacher said. The young dragon obeyed, settling further into the stomach of the teacher, as a baby colt would do.

Soon, he stopped shivering, and recited the rest of the alphabet, though not without some mistakes along the way. The teacher, quite proud of the young whelp, let him stay there in his place on the couch and rest his mind for a bit, relishing in the stable evening against the chaos outside.

Soon, however, a small frown appeared, and the teacher turned towards her student.

“Dear?” she called. The whelp looked up, eager to pay attention despite his rising urge to sleep.

“Dearie? You must understand something about yourself. I’ve done all I could to keep you away from the truth about your kind and mine, and the truth is that your kind… isn’t as cared for in other places as you are, here. I may have bought you on a whim because I thought you were the cutest thing, but being with you and helping you grow as if you were my son has made realize some things about our world. You... you are not learning this just because you have to, like other fillies and colts have to. You shouldn’t even be learning how to read, but I’m giving you a chance because I can feel it. You are going to be a special dragon. You are going to help your own kind and ours become equals, if not here then maybe in other places. Become more than a slave, my dear student. Become an Equal.”

Spike looked up in wonder at his teacher, trying to decipher everything she said into some things he could understand now, and some things he could understand later.

No matter how many times he had this dream, Spike could never remember what Madame Bellaloo looked like.

For one of the only times in his life, Spike didn’t wake up with a jolt, fearing for his life. Partially because memories of yesterday played in his mind soon after the dream, and partially because his entire body still felt sore.

He casually looked around the cottage again. He could still see some eyes on him from some of the wary animals who were brave enough to at least stay in the same room as he did.

One thing that immediately caught his eye was the soup on a stand, right near his head. There was a note folded underneath the bowl, and Spike slowly but surely bit through the pain in his arm and pulled the paper slip out. He raised it up to read the words.

“Have to go out shopping today to refill my stocks of food for the animals. The soup has some special ingredients that my friend Zecora told me to use to help with the pain. Try it and tell me if it works when I come back. Fluttershy.”

Spike looked back over to the soup, slightly straining his head. Clearly, this Fluttershy underestimated the pain, as she didn’t realize it was going to be a pain to get the soup away from the table and onto his lap.

After what felt like hours, Spike wobbled the bowl from the stand onto his legs as he shifted positions to a better stance to eat on the couch. Once he tasted the first spoonful, it was like he couldn’t have enough.

Fluttershy’s cooking was absolute heaven.

Spike loved the soup so much he tried to lick the bowl to gather up what remained. He immediately felt the effects of the “special ingredients”, as his arms and legs weren’t as sore anymore when he tried to move them.

With the soreness gone, Spike laid his head back as he tried to go back to sleep with a more relaxed body. One last thought left his mind before he went to sleep.

“Why is that pony so insistent on taking care of me? Is she trying to keep me like my teacher did? Or is she going to be… one of those masters?... I can’t stay here. One of these days, I’ve got to escape.”

Author's Notes:

I know it's short, I made this in the early morning when I decided this needed to be updated before it gets lost as a fleeting idea, amidst My Dragon Brother and Tiny Little Horses.

Thanks for reading, and get ready. There is a princess that wants to see Spike soon.