//------------------------------//
// All's Fair in Love 
// Story: A Volunteer at the Bureau 
// by Comma Typer 
//------------------------------//

It was Monday.
It started typical enough. To the ringing of his alarm clock, Sam got out of bed and fixed his sheets. He took a shower, got dressed, and put on a dab of cologne. He checked and double-checked everything he was bringing: wallet, phone, and pepper spray.
And then, on the way to the door, he stopped.
Suspended there in still.
Hand about to grab the door knob.
It’d dawned on him: He’d just gotten ready for the day.
It was the last time he’d do it as a human.
The weight of it fell on his shoulders, burdened his back, threatened to crack his bones. Every single thing he’d do this morning could be the last he’d do as Sam Henry the Man. When the dust settles, he would live on but as something else. Sam Henry the Man no more, but Sam Henry the Unicorn.
The Unicorn...Sam Henry?
He had left it blank. The line under Equestrian Name on one of the forms yesterday. Beside it, he’d written, N/a.
His thoughts went back to his Mom and Dad, but not just them. They went to his friends, all the people he knew who’d taken the potion early. A good number of those dear people had chosen to let both old and new names co-exist, to be called Brian and Concerti Coda in the same minute. He even wondered at how his Mom and Dad didn’t like being called Mrs. or Mr. Henry anymore, preferring to go by their pony names.
Against all this, he’d resolve to keep Sam Henry. He wouldn’t be called something like Funfair Floss, especially after hearing such names as Short Fuse. To be described as a pony having, well, a short fuse only invited bad jokes.
Time was ticking, though, as he checked his watch.
He’d wasted enough time thinking profound thoughts. It was time to go.



Arthur was unavailable.
Sam tried to search his name up on the Uber app, standing outside the Inn in that chilly morning, but found no success. Arthur Compagnon wasn’t showing up, and it wasn’t just on his phone. Maybe he’d had a bad day. Maybe he’d gone down with the flu.
Maybe it was the boulevard choked in a gridlock.
Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of cars, vans, trucks, buses—all these helpless vehicles were stuck with each other, trapped with each other. Honks and beeps ruled the streets, and signs of road rage were surfacing: windows lowering to make way for shaking fists and shouting heads. Even a unicorn, driving a Ferrari, yelled at fellow commuters and blamed them for the supreme delay of his schedule, ignorant of passers-by who found his choice of automobile rather fitting for his form.
Sam groaned and slapped his arm, now forced to walk his way there—
There was a regular taxi by the McDonald’s. The passenger seats were all empty.
He flaunted conventional wisdom in his head, fighting against the cries of, You’re better off walking than emptying your wallet! and so he ran, brushing up against a griffon and avoiding his wrath by getting inside the taxi.
“Why, hello!” a mare said, sitting on the driver’s seat. “May I take your order?”
“...order?” Sam mumbled as he landed on the back seat. He’d questioned whether he’d gotten into a taxi or a food truck. Was there such a thing as a food taxi in the middle of traffic?
“Oh, silly me!” and she operated with the meter with her hoof. “Where’re you going?”
“The bureau,” he replied. “Just the bureau.”
“No problem!” she said. “I know all the shortcuts!”
“Wait, wha—”
The taxi turned a sharp right, back to the Inn, and picked up another passenger, and sped off through a little side road onto La Cienga Boulevard, away from the horrible traffic and onto open asphalt.
Sam’s mouth was agape. So surprised was he, Sam didn’t even notice that his taxi buddy was an energy-drinking deer, loudly gulping on his third bottle of Red Bull.
He didn’t question it. In a world where everything was becoming all the stranger, having to deal with a pony driver and a caffeine-addicted deer wasn’t strange.
No, not at all.



“Bye-bye!” cried out the taxi mare as Sam left in the middle of standstill traffic. He left behind her and the deer who’d just chugged his sixth can. He could only pity that magnificent deer as he brisked on the sidewalk. The bureau was only a hundred meters away; paying for an incomplete trip now was better than taking ten more minutes to move around the roadblocks, more so after spending an hour inside.
Already, traffic enforcers were on the scene, redirecting traffic away from South Sepulveda Boulevard and ensuring they’d stay on CA-1 or veer towards tiny Sepulveda Eastway on their right.
He passed by a flurry of too many cars, fast approaching the bureau on his nimble legs.
Straight ahead, he saw the protest.
“No, no, no, no—”
People holding up picket signs, people shouting through megaphones: muffled speeches and arguments and counterpoints in that mass of humanity and Equestrians—
Just kept walking. Kept walking. Kept on walking past them, sidestepping to not crash into people he didn’t know, into people whose tempers he didn’t know. The thunder of the many only grew with each step, and he didn’t want to get hit by the lightning bolt.
He saw the police there, both the humans and the Equestrians. Pistols and spears were holstered, scare dogs and riot shields in place. The row!’s and growls scared so well, they were intimidating Sam, too.
There, the door right in front of him. Placed his hand on the handle, and pushed inside.
“Hey! That man is—”
Didn’t hear the rest of it since he closed the door, shutting out the stranger’s intense accusation.
Brisking on, he nodded at the griffon receptionist who nodded back and pointed at the hallway.
“You know where to go?” she asked.
“Certainly, ma’am.”
And then, he disappeared into the hallway. No time to greet anyone else, no time to smell the coffee, no time to examine the changeling’s wares.
Sam just went.



Sam closed the door.
He locked it. Unlocked it. Opened it.
Peeked outside.
A hallway. Some staff members ran and flew around in a rush, pegasi and hippogriffs spilling papers and picking them up only to drop them again in panic. A few more security guards had been posted, maintaining their stoic faces of no fear, but Sam guessed they feared a little bit.
Still, it was the same old hallway he’d grown accustomed to. It’s only experiencing some disturbances, that’s all.
He closed the door and turned around to see the anteroom.
The chairs teemed with people waiting in some concept of a line—he’d forgotten if it zigzagged around or what. They looked at him, and he didn’t recognize a single one of them, but he saw the anxiety in their eyes darting here and there—back to the man himself, wondering if he could rescue them if the walls closed in.
Silence. A floral kind of silence, fragrances of sweet roses in this bitter time. He didn’t want to talk to them, they didn’t want to talk to him. Both sides feared one word would spark a fight.
The other door in the room opened, with a pony head poking out. “It’s officially nine! Paging Sam Hen—”
“Here!” and he raised his hand.
Some people batted their eyes at him, but the majority looked at the news, their phones, their books, their clothes, the wall behind them. He’d gotten the feeling of Just get it done and let us be free.
“Come in, Sam,” said the pony, beckoning with a hoof.
Not minding the few looks he’d garnered, Sam stepped in.
That was the last those people saw him as a human.
The pony closed the door behind him and locked it. Looking at the will-be-ex-human, he said, “What are you thinking now?”
He didn’t bother responding; he was examining the room in detail from where he stood. There was the carpet, yes, and the emergency exit by the side. On the table, he saw the vial of pony serum, labeled with a depiction of a unicorn’s horn, accompanied by back-ups in case it’d spill.
His heart pounded upon him realizing how close he was to becoming a unicorn. Here he was.
Only a few minutes away.
Sweets. It’d smelled of sweets and baked goods for some reason. Bakery-flavored air freshener, maybe?
All the ponies in attendance were unicorns, some sitting on the provided chairs, others standing on the floor. In spite of protocol, most of them whispered among themselves with the occasional glances at the door, in the direction of the protests outside.
In terms of safety: There were cameras watching everything, and a guard stood in front of each wall, wearing armor and wielding an ornate spear.
“How’re you feeling?” the pony beside him asked more.
That’s when the voice clicked. Sam pointed at him. “Ocean Canoe?”
He smiled but with a worrying brow. “You caught on a bit late.” He combed his mane with his hoof. “It’s about what’s happening out there, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Sam replied, looking at the door, too. No matter what he was looking at, it’d now seemed a flimsy barrier, a futile obstacle. “It’s that.”
“No worries,” Ocean reassured with a cluck of his tongue. “We’ll bring you to a safe place in case of an emergency—that’s standard procedure, as you should know by now.” Then, he clapped his forehooves and said, “Let’s do this quickly and smoothly, Mr. Henry.”
Thus, Sam followed his pony therapist to the one and only chair by the vial’s table. He was told to sit down and to be as comfortable as possible, told to do stretching exercises if he has to—anything to get the excess energy out of his system.
As he relaxed so, Sam saw Canoe talking with his colleagues, discussing this and that on the clipboard. The schedule had to be fast-tracked, they said. They weren’t sure how long the bureau would stay safe, but Canoe told them that everything would be fine, that everything would go “according to plan, fellas’.”
Sam inched his head back. That sounded out of place from a professional-looking therapist. Then again, these were ponies. Even the most serious of jobs would have that whimsical taste if done by a pastel-colored magic pony.
Then, Canoe nodded a final time to his co-workers and turned to Sam, trotting his way.
“I’ll go to the washroom,” one colleague said with a raised hoof before galloping out the room through the other door.
Another colleague rolled his eyes, though he was unable to hide a devious smirk. “Always at the most inconvenient times.” Then, even though his friend was out of sight, he hollered, “Hurry up, will ‘ya?”
Ocean winced, grumbling something incoherent under his breath. He rubbed his neck, clanged his teeth, and then looked at Sam with a calmer, more normal expression. “Shall we get started?”
And the pony’s eyes flashed a brief blue light.
Sam raised a brow, then looked behind him for anything out of the ordinary. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Ocean asked, tilting his head as he floated the vial already, an interesting green-into-blue for this one. “Must be the lighting.”
Sam bent his head up and, sure enough, the lights flickered for a moment, darkness eclipsing for a second.
Ocean breathed a sigh of relief, now rubbing his chest, eyes dilating in more relief. He rubbed his hooves and then said, with levitated vial, “So, let’s get this really started?”
And there it floated, dangling before Sam’s eyes: The vial of unicorn serum, the vial to survival, the vial of his destiny. Inside sloshed the goopy purple liquid, happily marked as Tasty Grape Flavor! The species label laid there, that unicorn horn which was a symbol of what’s to come, of the life he’d live.
He saw his reflection on the vial so clearly, he didn’t need a mirror. He took stock of his facial features: curved nose, ruddy cheeks, and almost non-existent forehead. Clean-shaven, too: never too late to have a no-beard when the need arose.
But he thought he’d saw another reflection flash before his eyes: That of a unicorn staring back at him. It melted as fast as it materialized, but it sent shivers down his spine.
“Now,” he’d heard Ocean say in a quiet voice, “I want you to breathe slowly. Don’t get tense. Just relax. Don’t be afraid. You’ve thought about this before, haven’t you?”
Yet those words didn’t register. What did was what lay ahead.
That life ahead, that new direction he’d take—it all came crashing down from the imaginations of his mind, coming apart at the seams of the unreal to the real:
The first hour of his unicorn life, of learning how to work with four hooves and a magic horn for levitating stuff and doing magic spells. Many trips and stumblings to the floor, a face strengthened by being hit by the surface one time too many.
The happy smiles and hugs from Crowhop, no longer needing to look down at her to hold a proper conversation. The snuggles he’d get from her—she’d be over the moon seeing him eye-to-eye, and there was that bonus of being a unicorn just like her.
The messages and texts he’d get from his family and friends when he’d tell the news. He imagined all sorts of reactions, from the cheers of his parents to the long and open mouth of Mike—who he’d forgotten to text, apparently, but it’s too late.
The Happy Unicorn Day party he’d receive expense-free from the bureau and some willing third-party celebrators, all done in a small room and some drinks he’d probably sleep to if last Friday was of any indication. Crowhop, too, would reek of alcohol somehow.
The remainder of his Los Angeles stay as he’d get used to his form, finally a lot closer to the Equestrian culture booming there (though he’d still not be a Denver Broncos fan, that’s for sure).
The journey back home, to Utah and St. George, to yet another party only to have it short-lived because the bakery was still running, and people still wanted tarts and pies and what not. It wouldn’t be an easy adjustment period; some of his neighbors would have to adjust to him, too, but he’d leave it better off as one satisfied pony.
The eventual end of home as he knew it, the one he’d grown up in. The Veil would pass through and sprinkle in heaps of magical surprises to it: gem deposits, solid clouds, magic plants, mysterious artifacts, enigmatic forces. An occasion, an excuse, would be brought up to have everyone in his circle, no longer human now, to see this magic sea fill and sweep St. George whole. All of them would be helpless to stop it.
The trip to Equestria, of seeing his parents and his more ambitious friends where they were, and spending a good time with them. He’d maybe make some more friends over there, even some native ponies. Twilight Sparkle’s mantra of “friendship is magic” would ring in his head on an irregular basis, and he’d be OK shelling out some dollars—no, bits...he’d be OK shelling out some bits for a Friendship Journal copy out of courtesy.
The end of Earth, as everyone would be tuned to their TV sets—or phones now; he couldn’t care less—to see the Veil converge in Namibia, to watch a rather somber event that wouldn’t a celebration but a bittersweet memorial service for a world doomed to the history books and nothing more.
The continuation of life, as Earth and Equus would move on, as he would move on. He’d help expand the bakery into two branches and then three, perhaps go out of state with a fourth. He’d join a singing club and maybe form a local band; he’d have his singing skills improve after the transformation, so it wouldn’t hurt to give it a go.
The search for that special somepony, too, for falling in love with the best mare in the world, whoever that’d be. There’d be awkward hello!’s, several dates of note, an engagement with him kneeling on his hindlegs as a ring rested on a hoof, a wedding with tons of applause and that viral first kiss, and then a family complete with foals in some new house in Equestria, him most likely a baker mage.
And then, the—
“Please pay attention,” Ocean broke in, moving the floating vial an inch.
Sam snapped out of his lengthy daydream. All those steps would be accomplished, but it’d all start with this first step: actually drinking the potion.
He took the cue to hold the vial.
“Let me open it gently,” said the pony.
The cap glowed blue, though a flicker of green managed its way. It spun, and it popped, releasing a whiff of artificial grape throughout the entire room.
“Now...drink.”
Sam nodded, willing to obey. His hands trembled a bit, Ocean Canoe watching with bated breath along with everypony else behind him.
He lifted the vial, gripping it tightly with his fingers. Tipped it ever so slowly—
“I’m back!”
“Agh!” and he dropped the vial, letting it spill on the carpet.
Everyone looked at the source of trouble: that same colleague who’d went to the bathroom.
“You’re supposed to be quiet!” shouted a friend of his, rearing his hoof to slap him greatly.
“N-No! It’s me!”, holding up his forehooves to show he was innocent.
Sam’s eyes widened at this anomaly. That pony was the same one who’d went out. Panic must’ve blinded this coward of sorts.
“I-I mean...you wouldn’t hit a friend, would you?” continued said pony, putting on a chafing smile. “Besides—heh-heh—it’d make you look very unprofessional.”
His opponent and friend grumbled, then noticed that Sam was audience to this ordeal. He snorted, and pointed at the disturbance. “OK, it’s you, but you better be more discreet next time, eh?”
Meanwhile, Ocean shook his head and levitated another vial. He multi-tasked with his magic by floating a mop to clean up the carpet. “Sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Henry. Let’s get this over with.”
So, after putting aside the mop, he popped this new vial open. Another tiny batch of pony potion coming up.
Sam took it in his hands once more, trying to control the trembling in his hands.
“Take two: drink,” said Ocean, betraying a low growl towards the bathroom’s interloper.
Now wasn’t the time to think about any animosity between these ponies. Sam took in a deep breath, and then another deep breath. Heart pacing, heart pounding. Felt his pulse on his own.
Took one more look at his reflection. His face.
Took one more look at his hands, his fingers.
Inched the potion ever closer to his open mouth.
Didn’t notice Ocean tapping his hoof impatiently, sneaking a glance behind his friends.
Tipped it to his mouth.
Saw the liquid seeping closer, closer to his lips, closer to his throat, closer to his veins.
Stopped.
Sam sighed. Closed his eyes real tight.
“Let’s go.”
Downed the whole thing and put it down with a clank! like a shot glass.
Tasted like fake grapes.
Ocean smiled, clasping his forehooves. “Goodie! Now, we get to the fun part!”
“The fun part?” Sam asked, looking down at his stomach to see if he’d start glowing anytime now.
That’s when the sirens blared.
Lights snapped red.
Sam whirled his head around, spun it around, seeing everything and everyone in red. “What’s going on?! Did they get in the—”
Gripped in the neck.
Being choked in the neck.
Pain. Excruciating pain, light-headed quickly as that grip tightened, as breathing weakened and his lungs struggled.
Saw Ocean’s face up close, that foreleg strangling his neck. “You had no idea, did ya’?!”
He tried to kick the pony in the shins.
Such a shame Ocean had quick reflexes, since he dodged that and threw him to the floor.
Head throbbing, ribs throbbing, arms throbbing, neck throbbing.
Scrambled back up.
Only for green glows to cuff his legs and his arms, bounding him and making him fall with another thud!, another hit to his head in agony.
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with, do you?” came that voice, morphing into something sinister, something more than a growling gutter.
His eyes flashed blue again.
Before he was covered in a green glow.
Before he turned into a changeling.
Not just any changeling. The old one, the deceitful one, the one coated in black chitin, in holey hooves, in dark carapace, in complex bug eyes and sharp fangs.
He hissed at him, as the sounds of glows surrounded Sam. A turn of his head later, and all he saw were changelings closing in.
All hissing at him, forked tongues lapping in the air, aiming for whatever love he had.
“You’re not the first here!” yelled what used to be Ocean Canoe, baring his teeth in an evil cackle. “And you won’t be the last!”
“How?!” Sam blurted out, unable to move but able to wriggle around, at least wear out the magic—if he could. “How did you—”
The changeling chuckled, balling up his broken hoof into a broken fist. His face glinted red, glittered red. “I’ll make this quick: We broke your air conning as that prankster pony. Then, we came in as repair service. Got a feel for the place—Perky here encountered you as that sugar-rush unicorn!”
“Cr-Crow—”
“Whatever!” and kicked Sam’s head, making him moan and wince. “We tampered with your potion supply, and now…” smiling, grinning evilly, “you’ll be one of us now.”
Shuddering. Sam was shuddering, mouth shivering and yawning to say something sapien—
Light blinded his eyes. Closed his eyes.
“Wh-Whitaker?!” cried Laura. “Whitaker, no!”
“Whitaker, yes!” yelled “Ocean”. “Get out of the way! You’re not supposed to be here!”
“Not if I can help it!”
“Oh, I’ll help—i-is that a gun?! You put that down! Put it down right—”
Bang!
Nothing. He could hear nothing. Sam could hear nothing but ringing, insensible ringing.
Felt something warm, coming over his whole body.
Opened his eyes.
Saw nothing but white.	



“Wugh…?”
As he blinked, blurry-eyed. Seeing nothing but fuzzy lights, or at least they looked like it. Felt something soft on his back. Must be a bed; his brain told him he was lying down. Bright walls; too bright, belonging to a clinic. That sharp punch of medical alcohol filling his nose, and then that face. That pink face.
“You...alright....?”, her voice weaving in and out.
“Ugh.”
Tried to get up.
Couldn’t feel his fingers. Nor his toes, either.
Everything felt weird, out of place.
He groaned. “This is it, huh? I-I’m a unicorn, now.” Breathed a sigh, barely focusing on Crowhop’s face hovering over his. “Good thing sh-she saved me. G-Good thing….”
Crowhop wasn’t pleased to celebrate with him. Biting her lip proved that.
Then, he felt a great rumbling in his stomach. It was hunger, feeling like a hole in his stomach. “Why...wh-why am I so hungry? H-How long have I been out?”
She sniffed, now biting her hoof while levitating a mirror. Glanced away as her horn glowed that familiar lime. “C-C-Can you see? C-Can you see your...self?”
He blinked his eyes, vision now crisp. The room looked exactly like a hospital room, and he was doubly sure that he’d been talking to Canter Crowhop, though she had wet cheeks and eyes somewhat red. He could see the mirror, but not himself yet; it was a bit far. “Uh, n-now—”
“Just…” and closed her eyes. Added a foreleg to them for good measure. “Just d-don’t kill me for this. Y-You don’t deserve th-this….”
That left him aghast. Mouth wide open. In a sense, the nightmare had come true, but it was his choice to become a pony. What went wrong this time? “What is it?”
Crowhop turned her face away, horn still glowing as the mirror floated to his eyes.
So, Sam saw his reflection.
Blinked.
Blinked at the unreformed changeling lying on the bed.
“Agh!” and grabbed his chitin face with his holey hooves, rubbing his rough cheeks. “A changeling?!”
“And it’s the ugly one!” she screamed, face tense as sweat and tears mingled already. “Y-You—”
“How do I change back?!” he roared, grabbing Crowhop by the neck, pushing and pulling her back and forth. Each move, each swing—
Irises bouncing in her eyes, she screamed and shoved him away, leaving him on the bed as she backed to the wall at this new horror. “I-I—”
“This has to be a dream,” he mumbled, looking down at his unfamiliar self, at his horsefly body: his hole-infested legs of four, his cracked and fragile wings, his fin-like tail on his back, his fangs that he could never hide—“This has to be a dream! Throw cold water, pinch me...anything!”
“This isn’t a dream!” she yelled back, galloping back to him and holding him by the shoulder, feeling his rough chitin. “This is reality!”
Sam kept breathing, breathing. Faster, faster, faster breathing. Crowhop’s terrified face to comfort him, that smallest of comforts. Then: “Prove it!”
“Eep!” and she hobbled up a glass of water chilling in the fridge and threw it at him.
One problem: She threw the water and the glass at him.
Thunk!
“Ow!”
“Ah! Sorry! I’m so sorry!” She levitated the empty glass out of the way, seeing Sam the Changeling soaking wet. Crowhop automatically grabbed a towel with her magic, hovering it over to him. “Here…?”
Sam grabbed the towel.
Or, he tried to. He merely poked it. Then, he tried it again, but just poked it again. He tried again a few more times, but only added three or four pokes to the poke counter.
He gave up and grabbed the towel with both his hooves, feeling like he was keeping it together with two huge sticks. Slowly dried himself with it, unused to the strange sandpaper quality of his “skin”. Then, holding them together with his two holey hooves, he gave it back to Crowhop who levitated it out of the way.
He’d felt it. The freezing cold of water all over his body. He was now a tad rejuvenated just as any old dump of icy water would do. However, he wasn’t human. Nor a unicorn.
He saw his holey hooves.
“OK, I believe you,” Sam said, pointing at her and unwilling to get out of bed. He sounded particularly hopeful, though. “I-Is there any way out? Maybe it’s just a spell—”
“No,” she replied, voice wavering. “Canoe scanned you earlier. This isn’t a temporary morph spell. You’re not a human stuck in a changeling’s body. You are a changeling.”
Sam sighed, glancing to the side and biting his tongue, controlling the urge to scream. “OK, give me the unicorn—”
“That’s out the window. Remember one of those sentences or sayings in the guide? In big, bold letters? ‘Never ever double-drink potions. It will either kill you or, if it somehow doesn’t, turn you into a zombie hybrid.’”
Adrenaline, wasn’t it? Or was it liquid terror, coursing through his arteries and his veins? Another notch of hope struck down. This wasn’t a trick, this wasn’t a prank, those changelings weren’t amateurs. Sam was, no doubt about it, a changeling.
The hunger, too, rising up from within his stomach.
“Alright...hoo, I’m a changeling. I-I’m a changeling. I-I-I a-am a...ch-changeling.” Staring at his hooves, poles apart from hands.
Then, Crowhop hopped, her frowning turning upside-down. “I got it!” Shuffled her hooves to face Sam, “You can turn into the other changeling! The happy guys!” and her tail lifted up, its owner delighted to strike upon that idea. “This is our shot, Sammie!” Then, sucking in breath to break the news to him, gripping his shoulders: “You have to share love!”
“Then, let’s do that!” Sam yelled.
This proclamation of hope was followed by silence.
“OK, how do I share love?”
“I...I don’t know,” she said, her triumphant smile phasing out. “Never tried it myself...” then ears perking again. “Can you feel something...uh, fuzzy inside yourself?”
His stomach rumbled, hunger asserting itself. “I’m uh...I’m...yes? I a-am?” since he, indeed, felt something fuzzy inside himself. He waved a hoof about, feeling something he couldn’t see but knew was there, like a trace of holdable smoke. He waved it around some more, letting it get closer to where it got stronger, stronger—
Touched Crowhop’s snout.
Felt something warm wash over his hoof. Didn’t see anything that’d done the deed.
Crowhop gasped. “Now you’re feeling love? As in, literally feeling it, not metaphorically?”
Sam slowly nodded, eyes dilating at the information he was receiving about that dose of love. “I...I don’t know how I know, but there’s love for your old friends back at home, your new friends in this place...even a strong one for your...boyfriend?”
Her cheeks flushed into a blush. “Not the time to talk about that.” Snapping back to her serious face, as her task to turn Sam into the more standard changeling became clear: ”OK...h-how am I supposed to do this?” Pressed her head, getting her creative juices flowing while she paced around in the room. “OK, OK, OK, OK! We need...uh, you to, uh, share the love to anyone.”
Glanced at the whole room and saw no one but Sam on the bed.
She placed a shaky hoof to her worn out mane.“I..I’m OK with being loved at!”
Sam got his head up from the snugly pillow. “You w-won’t get hurt?”
“Just go!” Crowhop shouted, looking at the door with a flailing foreleg. “I don’t know how much we can—”
“Alright!” was his shout back at her. “I’ll just...find a way or….”
Just closed his eyes so he could concentrate on sharing love. However that worked.
Grunted. Winced. Rolled in bed. Tried to force out the love inside of him for sharing. Tried to get that fuzzy emotion out of his system, then thought how ridiculous of a situation he’d gotten himself in: He had to share love in simplest sense of the term, as if love was a tangible thing. Because, of course, when it came to magic creatures, love just had to be a tangible thing—
He started glowing.
A big gasp. “It’s working, Sam! It’s working! You’re doing it!”
But he didn’t hear it. The glow was consuming all of him, as he unknowingly flapped his wings and stretched out his legs, hovering over the bed.
A glowing light hovering over the bed.
Zap!
And he fell down to its soft and safe mattress, the glow having disappeared.
His eyes were closed. His eyes stayed closed. His eyes remained closed.
He wanted them closed.
Could still feel the air going through his hooves. He wanted to deny it. It’s his mind playing tricks on him, it’s phantom pain after experiencing two transformations in a row, it’s his senses not getting updated to the other changeling species, it must be something else, and Crowhop just had to say—
“It didn’t work!”
Wanted his eyes to stay and remain closed, but he could feel it. The broken hooves, the broken wings, the broken hunger.
That hunger.
It wasn’t an ordinary hunger. He knew that much. He’d read up on them: how, under the reign of Chrysalis, the changelings used to feed on love.
That was it, wasn’t it? He wasn’t starving for apples or anything like that.
He was starving for love.
Sam rattled in place, on his bed. He grabbed the pillow with his hooves and hugged it, clung on to it. Everything was collapsing, and he didn’t need to open his eyes. No more thoughts of attending that unicorn party, then; what took their place was a bleak future, one of thieving and stealing and lying to survive. Not because he couldn’t work his way up the corporate ladder or because he was poor and lacking in funds.
He was a scarred, love-hungry changeling.