Pearl's Travels 1: Hollow Shades

by Makitk

07

Having filled another bucket, sharing sneers and insults between my Changeling brother and myself in-between spitting resin around, I quickly made it through another few... minutes, hours, days... Being in a cavern messed with my sense of time.

Soon enough we were called out as a group to make it to the next room, and I narrowly escaped getting punched in the flank by my brother as I passed by him. I spat a glob of quick-drying resin at him, which he barely managed to evade with a big grin on his face.

I was wondering if he didn't have a point with pushing me to fight back against it all. After all; I was learning how to defend myself. Every room had been about that; learning how to keep myself alive 'out there'.

I had been far too caught up in it all to allow myself time to come to terms with my apparent new life; just going through the motions of being told what to do in each room. And there was a clear looking down on us hatchlings here. We were clearly second-rate citizens, as I had remarked to my brother. Just because we were not born as Changelings but made such by the resin.

I slowed down a bit as we entered the next room, letting the other hatchlings pass me by while I stretched my neck out to look around it.

A set of circles were drawn out in the largely empty space of this new cavern; each having a Changeling stand near it. But there were only half as many circles as there were hatchlings.

"A dojo?" one of my fellow hatchlings remarked with a gasp, and I turned to them.

"What was that?" I prompted, making them inch away a bit from the realization they had spoken their thoughts out loud.

"This looks like a dojo; a place to practice martial arts. Notice the circles? They're like fighting rings? Or not... I mean, I don't know? This is just what I'm thinking?" she stammered in a timid voice.

I smiled weakly at her, giving a nod toward the room proper. "I think I'll have to agree with that notion," I told them, walking over to their side and bumping my shoulder into theirs in a friendly gesture. "Let's go see if you're right, hm?"

As we walked further into the room as a group, the Changelings closest to us had already made their picks, and pointed out a few among us. "You, here. You as well. You, there. Go over to that ring."

Paired up and spread out over the different rings, the tension in the room started to build quickly. It was clear we were going to fight among ourselves, but how exactly was the question.

The elder Changelings started explaining their methods as soon as each pairing arrived at them, and I looked sideways at the sister or brother assigned to me. Their build was similar to my own; there were some among us who were more bulky than others, but we were pretty well-matched.

"So, sparring?" I offered up to our teacher, who gave a quick nod.

"Oh, great. I have only been sitting around, standing around, and walking around since I hatched; I could use a bit of a workout," my brother exclaimed with some relief, his voice a bit lower than I had expected.

"Well, before you go chipping off your sister's chitin plating, let me explain the rules;" the Changeling teacher offered and I narrowed my eyes at them. Their voice was utterly androgynous, and I still was not comfortable judging our genders based on our looks alone. Especially not since Oval had switched genders faster than she talked.

"You're going to learn how to use your magic in the next room. You're going to have to learn how to dodge in this one," the Changeling continued.

"Oh," my brother by my side sighed.

"Do you want to be hit by a bolt of energy that could potentially kill you?" the Changeling wondered, taking a step closer to him while raising an eyebrow.

"Well, not particularly... no?" my brother coughed, taking a quick step back.

"I can see the use in dodging magical attacks; brother over in the other room dodged my resin spat quicker than I expected," I chuckled.

"We're not expecting miracles of any of you," the Changeling stated, shaking their head. "You're young, we've pushed you to learn as much as you can in as short a time as possible, and I'm sure you're starting to feel tired by now. The resin can do only so much to keep you running. It's not magical, per se."

"But it did change us from humans into Changelings. I gotta give you guys credit for that," I offered with a wink. "Really never expected that to happen, even in my wildest dreams or nightmares."

The other Changeling smiled up weakly at that. "Yeah, although you'll find few of us who are willing to see you as more than a necessary evil until you've proven yourselves."

"I'd gathered," I remarked flatly.

"I still don't get it; what are we going to do here?" brother wondered.

The Changeling in charge walked up to the circle nearest to us and pointed at it. "You both walk in here and stand on opposite sides. When I give the signal, you'll have two jobs; Push the other out, and don't get pushed out yourself. Whoever gets out of the circle first, loses."

I realized I knew this from something back on Earth; "Sumo!" I exclaimed. "This is like sumo wrestling back home, except we're not holding onto each other."

"Well, you can spit resin at each other if you want," the Changeling shrugged, "as long as you clean it up afterward."

I glanced over at my brother, who shook his head. "No thanks; I've spat enough today to have gotten a dry throat."

"I agree with him here," I stated, walking over to the right side of the Changeling tutor. "We'll just shove each other, right brother?"

"Er... yes sister. I'm not really feeling this family thing, to be honest," he muttered, walking over to the ring as well. "I get that we all look the same and such, but I just don't feel a connection."

"I dunno; I like the spunk of some of our teachers so far," I threw back. "Would love to be able to call you all family for a while. I have no clue how long we're going to be here anyway."

The Changeling looked between us a moment, then looked up at the ceiling. "Mother willing, a short enough time not to get in trouble, but a long enough time to make some friends."

"Amen," I responded to that.

"Okay, so take place in the ring on opposite sides," the Changeling instructed, and we each pranced on over to stand roughly on opposite sides of the ring.

I looked over at my brother, who tensed his muscles a bit in preparation for a spurt forward. I then looked over to the Changeling outside the ring and raised my left hoof; "Er, excuse me?"

"Yes?" she returned, lifting an eyebrow.

"Is flying allowed?" I wondered, buzzing my wings a little on my back.

A grin spread across our tutor's face, and she gave a quick nod. "If you think that will help you stay inside the ring, go for it. I'd love to see if you can hold your balance."

My brother looked back at his own wings and wriggled them awkwardly, and I realized I had the upper hand, or hoof, here. I had some rudimentary knowledge of how my wings worked, had already felt the lift they could provide, and was pretty confident I could at least launch myself up in the air if needed, while he looked far less comfortable with the idea of them.

"Do you have any other questions?" the Changeling wondered, but we each shook our heads to that. "Then go!"

My brother spurted forward, as I had expected, much like a bull trying to ram something straight ahead from them. With the ring being large enough to give me a second before they would impact with me, I decided to roll sideways from them and heard his hooves skid on the stone as he tried to stop his momentum before he would launch himself out of the ring.

I got back up on my hooves, caught him standing with his flank exposed to me, and pushed forward to bump my head into it, my hooves scraping over the stone as I tried to get him to roll over and out of the ring.

I did not have the strength to push him over, but I did make him slide a fair bit before he pushed off to get out of my way. In order to keep myself from falling over, I fluttered my wings to pull me back, landed awkwardly on my rear hooves, and then had to immediately dodge him again as he came at me from an angle!

I realized I did not have the control of my wings which I thought I had, and instead just used them to either help me go faster or slow me down while I dodged my brother's pushes and shoves.

Soon enough we were both panting and taking some distance from each other, all under the watchful gaze of the Changeling off to the side.

"It's a good idea to use your wings in that fashion, sister. Keep it up," she offered during our short break in the fight. "You're doing great trying to come at her from her blind spots, brother."

"I don't have the control I want, or I would have flown higher," I panted back in her direction.

"Flying lessons come after your magic lesson. We can't do it inside the cave system for obvious reasons," the Changeling chuckled. "But if you keep this up, you'll have a leg up from the rest in rudimentary control."

A buzzing from my brother drew my attention, and I realized he was testing his own wings out. Noting he was a little preoccupied by it, I quickly set in motion, my own wings starting to buzz as I picked up speed, and almost had him! He realized what I was up to just before I could catch him off guard and leapt off to the side!

My wings, which had powered my speedy assault on him, quickly had to switch to breaking my momentum, and I dug my back hooves in against the hard floor of the cavern while skidding to a stop.

"That was a foul! She came at me while I wasn't ready for it!" my brother decried, but our tutor shook her head.

"No, it wasn't; I did say everything goes," she corrected him. "The world out there is not fair either. If you don't learn how to evade attacks in a sparring match, you won't stand a chance out there."

I grinned and spat a blob of quick-drying resin at my brother's back, quickly coating his wings in it as he was not expecting it. "Stick to the ground, brother; leave the flying to me."

He stood in utter bewilderment for a split-second, but then his anger got to his face and, a heartbeat later, his actions. While he came roaring at me in his anger of having his wings coated in resin, I launched myself up into the air with a hearty laughter, trying my utter best to keep from tumbling over in mid-air.

Our tutor was visibly amused by my antics; a grin plastered on her face while her eyes flitted between my brother and I to see whether we would skip over the drawn line or not.

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[tsaukpaetra]

She's getting comfortable...