//------------------------------// // Chapter 16: I am me // Story: Life through Love // by SentientHydra //------------------------------// I lay in the dark awhile, eyes closed and head placed on the ceiling, listening to the world trotting and cantering above me, watching their echo-forms go by in stuttering images. How long? Maybe an hour, perhaps a little longer. The irregular rhythm of hooves on cobble left me little sense of passing seconds, minutes, hours. I heard the distant tremble of bells to signal a passing time, so I supposed that only a single hour drifted by, though I might have wished it was longer. In time after that I felt ready to move however, and slowly stood up from the ceiling and looked up/down at the floor above. 'I should be uncomfortable with this' I thought almost aloud, trilling in a low buzz of innate language. I raised a hoof and examined it, the broken, holed black chitin covered in places by tight bandages and a single sticky plaster. It had a smile on it, the plaster. I smiled too for reasons I cannot fathom, sniffing the plaster and nosing it, getting the scent of cotton candy and cupcakes. It served no useful purpose stuck over one of the natural holes in my hoof, but it made me smile a little. With a teeny slip of the tongue I covered the smile in resin, preserving it there, maybe It would keep the sugary scent in until I could figure out who it belonged to. Why did this body, which was mine, feel so alien? I controlled it with ease for it was mine, I was me, but I felt a sense of wrongness, of unfamiliarity while I looked around at the world upside-down. I couldn't shake the incorrigible feeling; that I should cringe when I looked up at the floor far above me, that I should feel nervous at my hold on such smooth and perfect stone. My bulk was held fast to the ceiling only by the stickiness of my hooves, my Alien and familiar hooves. Hooves, not hands that I felt like phantoms of a body I no longer owned. Why did I feel an intruder within my own body? My mind shifted. I could feel fractures and breaks, chinks in my mindspace, crumbling while I moved my mind around; it felt as if it had been shattered, blown away and regrown. Because it had been, I could remember now... The spirit, cramming a mind within another, chaos not caring for the havoc its hasty suturing left. Luna... The dream... Chrysalis... It flooded back, I flooded back, my mind burned while it splintered around the edges. The memories of me, my human self, began to grow back and root themselves. I snarled, loud and throatily until my mouth clenched it into a low, sub-audible growl of frustration. Of course if felt alien, I was an alien! This was not my mind, I am not me! I am a human from elsewhere, who became this by.... By choice. Bedamned spirit... My memories were incomplete, fuzzy, but I could remember Discord. The deal. I shook on it and made the deal, to become this thing... This changeling. Me, the changeling. That is who I am now. I drew in shuddering, half gagging breaths as I came to terms with it. I was this, this was me. I am me, and thus I am the changeling, whose name I could not recall, whose memories I barely understand. I had to accept it and make the best of my situation, which was all the harder with chrysalis in the picture, no doubt weaving lies and editing memories and minds to suit her ideals. I thought back to my his? Dream. To the rage and snarl of Luna. Poisoned by her. I supressed a snarl at the mere thought of the traitor Queen's name not my anger. His. How much of me is him? To what end? My mind scattered to memories and thoughts not mine. I lived still, thus I had use. Though a slim pillar of my shaking mind shimmered, sinking into my gut that such safe time was limited to the patience and mercy of Celestia. Lower still into introspective depression I might have sunk but for the clip-clop of hooves above, familiar voices floating down through the rock. If I could convince anyone of my plight, it would be Honesty herself. Though Loyalty might well taint my words with Chrysalis's shared venom.