Silver stared at me.

I shifted a bit uncomfortably. “…Sorry.”

She slowly shook her head. “That makes so much sense.”

“Huh?” I asked with a frown as I sat down. “What do you mean?”

“All the things you've done, everything you've accomplished...”

“I wasn’t an alicorn for a lot of that…”

“Still.”

I shrugged my wings. “Not sure it works like that, Silver. Still, I should have told you earlier. You are my friend, you deserved to know. I just… I don’t like the attention.”

She gave me a look. “So you came to my café in the middle of the day!? I could have come to the castle!”

That would have saved me a ton of looks as I flew here.

“I can’t hide either,” I answered and smiled. “I just have to get used to it.”

Silver Leaf nodded and then paused and facehoofed. “I’m sorry, Lord Page, I’m being a horrible host. Can I get you a cup of tea?”

Smiling, I nodded. “That would be rather nice, Silver. Thank you.”

Smiling, she moved around the kitchen of the café with an ease I would never be able to copy. Getting some cups of tea ready, she also took care of some muffins ready to remove from the oven and got a second set glazed.

All without the use of a horn, just using her muzzle and hooves.

It was really impressive. Wings were really nice and flying was amazing, but there was no way I would have been able to handle not having magic to manipulate things… and here Silver went and just got everything ready while multitasking with some baking and she made it look easy.

Hell, she likely got everything done smoother than I could have, even if I could bake as good as she could.

“Thank you,” I said and took the cup offered. “You know, you are amazingly good at that.”

“Thank you, Lord Page,” she answered with a small smile. “It’s kind of my Special Talent.”

Shaking my head, I poked her with my hoof. “No ‘Lording’, I told you that before. Just Page.”

“…Page then.”

I sipped my tea and found that it was as great as always. The tea in the castle was good, don’t get me wrong, but there was something about how Silver did hers that made it great.

She tasted her own cup and then moved to put a chocolate cake into the oven. “…You look good, by the way,” she then added. “The wings, I mean. Not that… you know…”

I just shifted my right wing and looked down at it. “So I have been told. Thanks,” I said before I looked over at her. “Want some help with that?”

“Hmm?”

“The cake? I feel rather silly just sitting here.”

“Oh. There is no need, really.”

I jumped off the chair and trotted over to her. “I’m not completely useless in a kitchen. Besides, I want to.”

“…Thanks. Could you glace the one on the counter? The vanilla glace?”

“Sure thing,” I agreed and moved over to it. “How are things with you, Silver? Business is good?”

“It is!” she said with a grin as she started up a new batch of… something. “It’s almost too busy, even with an employee at times. I’m starting to run out of table space,” she admitted before she shrugged her wings. “At least during lunch hour and just after ponies get out of work. We get pretty swamped.”

I nodded and carefully spread the glace across the cake with the… I forget what it’s called. The flat spoon thing.

Okay, so while I can cook, I wasn't amazing in the kitchen. Careful. Careful. Not too much or it dripped.

Silver sighed and moved up next to me to check how things were going. “Looks good,” she said before she shrugged. “…I may need to look for a new location.”

“You are moving?”

She nodded. “Maybe. Not sure I can keep up here. There is a lot of memories here, my family owned this since long before I was born. But dad wouldn’t want me to stay here just for that,” she said before she smiled slightly. “He would be pretty mad at me for it actually.”

“…You could still stay,” I said. “Have you thought of maybe franchising it instead?”

Silver paused at that. “I… no. No I hadn’t. You really think that could work?”

I shrugged. “Maybe? Don’t ask me. I hire somebody else to handle my bits for me, I’m awful at that stuff, you should talk to an expert.”

She looked thoughtful as she moved to get some of those marzipan flowers. “That’s not a bad idea actually.”

“I hope it works out,” I said and pulled back to peer at the cake. That looked like it should, I think?

“I’ll talk to my accountant tonight, I think,” she said with a nod before she grinned. “Oh! While you are here, can you do me a big favour?”

“…What’s that?”

“How’s your horn writing? Writing on cakes can be such a pain.”

“Better than it used to be, worse than it should be for someone who writes as much as I do?” I admitted and shrugged my wings. “I can give it a try.”

Silver grinned and moved to get the things needed as I looked after her for a moment,

“Silver, mind doing me a major favour?”

“Sure. What do you have in mind?” the grey Pegasus asked as she returned, with the… squeeze tube thing. So sue me, I can cook, I don’t know what everything is called.

“Would you mind looking after Fern again for a couple of weeks? I’m going to be busy for a while and I don’t feel like it would be fair to him.”

Silver grinned. “Of course not! Fern is a total sweetheart!”