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Make friends. Just gotta make friends. He had gone to Riot for advice, she was friendly and forward and honest and apparently awful at giving advice. Not even so much as a 'just be yourself' slipped from her lips. Instead she spent nearly a half hour speaking non-stop, and subsequently saying nothing of value.

"You've just gotta like, put yourself out there, look real hot, and bam people will like you. Maybe like start a rivalry. Rivalries are pretty much friendships where you can kick each other's a**, so pretty dope in my book. All you have to do is just punch a guy, but be cool and charming, and BAM, rivalry."

He decided to not take any of Riot's advice since it boiled down to 'be hot' and 'fight people'.

He was no closer to knowing how to not scare the living crap out of other ponies and had run out of time. As self-sustaining as he could be out in the woods there were some things he simply couldn't supply on his own. Books, milk, eggs, the herbs that wouldn't grow in his garden, all things he had to rely on the outside world for. Often he traded, a shadowy figure, covered in a cloak, lurching into shops right before closing and offering up wild honey or fresh tea blends in exchange for goods. Often children ran from him when he showed up in the growing twilight.

The reality was much more mundane. He lived in a dark wood, and did much of his work by moonlight. The sun always felt too harsh and so the cloak provided some sort of relief. The bulky figure beneath were his saddlebags and of course his wings, making the body beneath look misshapen and creepy. Not great for his image.

Cryptic walked with his head down, unaware of his surroundings. Unaware that in his rush to get home he collided head on with a pony far bigger than himself. Which meant Cryptic was the one going down, hitting the ground with a loud, uncomfortable sounding crack.

It wasn't him who broke, but some of the jars within his bag, those with more liquid contents pouring out through the fabric. There went his milk.

If Cryptic had to describe his experience in a word, he would have to use 'disorienting'. It felt a lot like flying into a hurricane, hard to really know where he was or what was happening, just that he could feel something seeping over the scales of his wings and someone had called him "darlin'" which seemed like it shouldn't be directed at him so maybe that was wrong. All in all he didn't know jack about s**t and his butt kind of hurt, a fact that would stop mattering the moment his pack lifted off his back.

He would protest, little halted complaints of "Wha-" and "Hey-" as he was nosed back to his feet without so much as a hint of strain out of the other pony.

Who was big. Very big. One of his legs was likely thicker than all of Cryptic's combined, and suddenly he felt very self conscious of his toothpick legs. Not like Flutters really could get big like that, but lack of biological ability never stopped him from being sullen about something before.

On his feet, his dripping saddlebags contained through the power of magic, and the world was starting to right itself in his mind, only for it all to careen wildly off the tracks and into a ditch the moment a single word rolled off of Rocky's tongue.

Cute.

Been called a good many things, "cute" had never been a descriptor. He had flown right through a hurricane and into a bright sunny day without a cloud in the sky, which is confusing in it's own, new, exciting way. What the hell was he even supposed to say to that? It was a complement but how do you respond to a complement? Agree? Deny? Thank? Complement him back? Curse him and run away? All sort of came out of his mouth at once, a jumble of words that didn't make sense in any context. Which was fine.

It's fine.

The world is coming down around him but totally fine.

Deep breaths.

"I- you- look. I'm sorry? You're being... very nice. Almost intimidatingly so. And I appreciate it, but I should probably get out of your fur." Still so stiff. He was supposed to be himself but himself lived in the woods and talked to himself for company which probably wasn't going to be all that impressive to the type of person who can just call a stranger cute and actually look charming and sociable.