>You pace around the gate to Sweet Apple Acres for a few minutes, not really feeling like going home to an incredibly awkward dinner.
>Even if that dinner was Breakfast for Dinner. The best dinner.
>So you wander back into town.
>The market is closing up, but you could blow a few bits on a dinner at a restaurant.
"Yeah, nothing like eating alone."
>Eventually, you find yourself standing outside of Twilight's Castle. Which wasn't that surprising. It was probably one of the best places in Equestria to get questions answered.
>You head inside and take a turn into the library. The whole bottom floor was open to the public, half library, half meeting hall, while Twilight and Spike's rooms, and the guest rooms, were upstairs. Still, he lucked out and found his purple friend laying on a pile of pillows with a thick, antique tome floating before her.
>Without pre-amble, you grab a pillow and drop down on the ground beside her.
>"Evening Anon."
"Hey Twilight."
>"Can I help you with something?"
"Yeah, I hope.
>With a sigh, she sets down her book.
>"Okay, and what, exactly do you need help with?"
"I need help with AJ."
>"Before you ask me, no, there's no spell that can turn you into a pony, or get her pregnant." Twilight replies.
"I know. I mean, I don't really want kids."
>"Baby goats?"
"No, we use the word kids, I mean foals. And she never wanted foals. I mean, we talked about it forever ago, before we got married. She said she had a farm to run, a cider business to manage, Apple Bloom to take care of, and occasionally, Equestria to save."
>"Hmmm. Well, think about it like this: You've said that you enjoy living here in Equestira more than living back on Earth, right?"
"Yeah, for lot of reasons."
>"Okay, but you'll probably never be able to go back. You didn't like it all that much, but are you honestly never sad that you can't return?"
>She was right. The pangs of homesickness were few and far between these days, and he was fairly certain that he had completely forgotten what steak tasted like. But he still missed it sometimes. Missed properly shaped doorknobs. The internet.
"I wonder what the internet is doing right now?"
>"What?" Twilight asked, confused.
"Nothing. I see your point though. But now I'm stuck with a problem I really, really can't fix. Are you sure there's no spell? I mean... how did griffons happen?"
>"Anon, there has never been any evidence that griffons are the result of pegasus/avian crossbreeding."
"Except griffons."
>"That's a logical fallacy."
"Better yet, how do I solve this without ending up with foals? I'm forty-five. I would be..."
>"You would be sixty-three when the foal turns eighteen."
"I would be sixty-three! Trying to get kids out of the house."
>"And that completely aside, you should be talking to your wife about this."
>You stare up at the vaulted ceiling of the library, thinking.
"Wow, all these years and never wondered- What about adoption, is that a thing here? Orphanages?"
>"What's an orphanage?"
"A place where a bunch of kids, uh, foals, live because they don't have parents. People can then adopt them, raise them."
>"Not really, a family would consider it unbearably shameful if some relative of theirs, no matter how distant, had to be raised by strangers. There were orphanages once, at the end of the last Pegasus War, when whole families were wiped out. But they lasted maybe one generation, we never gave them a name like that. Oh, I should make a note, it's a good word. Orphan as a root works perfectly."
>Your stomach gurgles audibly.
>"Go home, get some dinner, and talk to AJ. That's all you need."
"I talked earlier, just made her mad."
>"Well, don't say something stupid this time," Twilight suggests.
>You sigh from your pillow, knowing she's right.
>Later that night, you're standing in the darkened kitchen, chewing on a cold, but still delicious pancake. The house is quiet, a lot more quiet than it used to be. Granny Smith had passed on just two years after you and Applejack had gotten married. Apple Bloom was off running an herb farm outside Canterlot. Big Mac had moved out.
"I guess this is the empty nesting thing, huh?"
>The kitchen fails to reply. You like the quiet though. If it had been a normal day, you would be upstairs in bed, talking to your wife about the day, or reading a book as she slept beside you. Did you want a crying foal in that equation?
>Apparently AJ did. And you wanted her to be happy.
>You chew another pancake.