26. Afterlives
“Pesco!” my partner wailed. “Do something!”
The fog of the future dispersed, shrieking as it went; I snapped out of my dark dreaming and returned to the reality of the present day.
Bon and my partner sat weeping over Scolus's body, which was not yet a corpse. All the color had drained from his locks, and his body was gray and feeble. It was as dire as ever—but it was not hopeless.
I strode from the sadder part of the foyer to the angrier part, where Grid and Zorn together still struggled to restrain their squirming, vindictive former friend. Something of hers must have rubbed off on them, as their shouting was by now at least as loud and guttural as hers.
There was no time to indulge. “Step aside,” I told them, swiping a hoof between them and Gloria. “Let me take care of her. You two go tend to the bug.”
Their commotion stopped, and for a moment, all three of them glared at me with an eye of suspicion. Reluctantly, Grid and Zorn obliged, and left me to my lonesome with Gloria. She picked herself up off the ground and stared at me, her robe in disarray, her chest and shoulders heaving, out of breath from her wrestling.
“So… then… Detective,” she puffed, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”
If only she were as out of breath as her cousin. “You had better cut it out with this crab-bucket tantrum of yours, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Aw, are you not having any fun? Personally, I see this all as some much, much needed catharsis for all of us,” she said. “Besides, I’m already busted. What do I have to lose?”
I forced myself to say it: “Your freedom, for one.”
She smiled like a scythe. “Oh? Do elaborate.”
“If Scolus dies here, there is a zero percent chance you walk away from this. If Scolus survives, then your fate is a little more complicated.”
She laughed herself to the point of wheezing. “Really now, is that what’s going to save me? Could it have been that simple all along? I overestimated you, Detective!”
“Don’t make me change my mind.”
“Just to be clear,” she added, “my fate will not be complicated—I will need to get away scot-free. If I am arrested for any reason, no matter when or by whom, they’re going to find out that I wasn’t the only one involved in my hijinks over the years. I couldn’t protect Scolus from that even if I wanted to, and I couldn’t protect you or your partner, either, now that you’re involved.”
“Trust me, I’m not staking our lives on your good nature.”
“I’m glad we understand each other, then.” She clasped her claws together. “Shall we discuss the finer details of my escape?”
I glanced back over my shoulder at the emergency therapy session in progress. “No time. Right now, you need to be taking care of your bargaining chip.”
“You mean, apologize to him? Encourage him? Tell him all the sweetest things?”
“Yes, lie to him. I’m confident you’re up to the task.”
She smoothed out the creases in her robe, and flattened her ruffled feathers with a claw. “Oh, I’ll try my best.”
Gloria proceeded to walk over to the others, softening her features as she went. By the time she reached them, her changeling-like transformation into a sensitive, apologetic cousin was complete. The beginnings of her saccharine script soon followed.
Scolus's support circle had more than doubled, now, from two to five—even Zorn was finding his words. It had even quintupled, if Gloria was counted as a negative asset before her conversion. The effect this had on Scolus's complexion was immediate as his former color rejuvenated his body and his golden locks. The faintest glow returned to his eyes.
But the fight was not over. His breathing could still best be described as agonal, and it was anybody’s guess whether his body and brain could last for hours in this state, or whether his friends could keep up. It certainly was not my guess that the Royal Guard would help out in this sentimental ritual.
No, I needed to recruit one more very important person to the circle, and I wasn’t talking about myself. I was talking about the cause of—and solution to—all of Scolus's tragedy these past two days.
Gloria had earlier indicated that Blanche was sequestered in her room, busy with her writing despite Scolus's confession. I trusted my instincts that this was a lie, or at least an editing of the truth. Her bedroom was close enough to the foyer that she surely would have heard the commotion with the Ursa Minor and come searching, no matter her emotions.
Instead, I found her far deeper within the villa. She sat in the sunroom, her back to the doorway, engrossed in the expansive vista of the surrounding mountains. It was perhaps the first time I had seen her without any quills or parchment at hoof’s reach.
“Blanche,” I said, “there’s been a development. I need you to come along.”
“If it’s about the changeling—that is, if it’s about Girard—I’m already well aware,” she replied.
“Are you aware he’s knocking on death’s door as we speak?”
She glanced back at me, but only for a moment before returning her attention back to the mountains. “How’s that?”
“It’s a long story. The short of it is that he’s had a reaction to the magic suppressant, and he needs all the love he can get if he’s going to survive.”
“Well… he has my condolences. Sincerely,” she said, straining. “But if he needs love, I will not be of any help to him.”
“It doesn’t have to be steamy. Just be there for him, and tell him you don’t hate him.”
She bowed her head. “What if I do hate him?”
“Do you hate him?”
“I hate his kind, Detective. I wasn’t lying when I said I see them as repulsive creatures, inside and out.” She shook her head, and afterward needed to adjust her glasses. “Recall, I wrote a book making fun of everyone who thinks otherwise.”
“Do you hate him?” I repeated.
She glanced back, this time holding my gaze. “I don’t hate him, but I don’t have the smallest, saddest scrap of love for him, either. I’ve never seen anything in him, and whatever Girard saw in me—as an author, as a friend, or whatever-the-hell—he was mistaken. I cannot give him what he wants; I literally do not have it.”
“If you don’t hate him,” I said plainly, “you can come along and help him. If you want him to die, you can stay here.”
She sighed. “If that’s how it is, then I don’t have a say in the matter, do I?” She stood up and joined me. “I don’t want his blood on my hooves.”
We left the sunroom, and set out on our journey from the far end of the villa back to the foyer. We traveled a quarter of the way at a half-trot in the strictest silence. Blanche’s lips were pursed all the while.
Silence, if it worked, worked best.
“That letter I wrote him… You should know I only wrote the last half of it to be nice to him,” she eventually spoke up. “I can’t imagine, now or ever, that my feelings on the matter will change.”
“Why did you feel the need to be nice to him?” I asked. “Why did you feel the need to write back to him at all?”
“Tch. Hmph.”
We half-trotted another quarter of the way without another word between us. This time, I was the one to break the silence:
“For what it’s worth, Blanche, I think you have a right to feel the way you do about him. His circumstances don’t excuse him.”
“Well, I’ll admit they go a long way, at least,” she said. “But thanks.”
Another lull in the conversation, up until the last quarter.
“There’s just one more thing that doesn’t fully add up,” I said. “Maybe you can help clarify.”
“Yes?”
“That changeling you were telling me and my partner about last night, the one who’s currently locked up in a Manehattan prison. What did you say his name was, again?”
“I never said his name,” she replied, “but it’s Myrmex. And he was never imprisoned in Manehattan—he was held at a special facility in the Foal Mountains for nine years. Last year, he was transferred to a county jail in Baltimare on good behavior.”
“You seem to be well acquainted with his story.”
She shrugged. “I do my research.”
“And this changeling, Myrmex, you said that his story was the one that inspired you to write your book in the first place?” I asked. “Your book that is, supposedly, making fun of everyone who would believe changelings aren’t universally repulsive?”
She didn’t seem to have an answer for either of my questions.
“You know, I spent a long time on this case trying to fit a simple answer to a complex question. I tried to convince myself it was the only answer,” I told her, “but I don’t think I ever would have succeeded. Even if I wrote a whole book about it.”
Throughout the course of our partnership, Bluebird and I always had our different outlooks and predictions as to how a case would pan out. For his part, he believed in innocent misunderstandings, in fairy tale endings. For my part, I believed in cruelty and betrayal, and in crimes without justice. I didn’t keep a close count, but I would say there were about zero times that either of us were completely correct.
This case was no different. As it drew to a close, it had both its high and low notes.
For example: If Zorn’s serum had been the poison, then Blanche had been the antidote. Despite her misgivings, her performance (if it was one) in reassuring Scolus that she had meant what she wrote in her letter—not a word more or less, from either the mean or the nice parts—was all that he had needed to hear. The last of the glow returned to his eyes, and he could even lift his head to show her them up close. She instinctively cringed and looked away, as if viewing something indecent.
“Y-you know…” he said to her. These were his first words since his crisis. “… my real name is Scolus. You know, just so, you know.”
“Hmph.” She overcame her instinct, and met his eyes with the corner of one of her own. “Like the setae-covered spinose projection?”
“Haha, is that what my name means?”
Scolus was still unable to transform, and had to catch his breath after each utterance and movement he made. Nonetheless, he would survive, once the magic suppressant ran its course. This was the highest note of all.
As for the lowest note of all: Gloria was going to walk away from this with no more punishment than her victim. There might have been enough mercy to go around in this world; the same couldn’t be said for justice.
“Say, an idea just popped into my head,” Gloria mused, as she and I stood at the front door arranging her winter gear. “What if I don’t go alone? What if I insist on taking Scolus with me, and I say it’s either my way or the highway?”
“Frankly, I would rather Scolus be in prison than remain in your clutches,” I told her. “You’re free to call my bluff and wait around for the Guard, though.”
She chuckled in what I think was the closest thing to good nature for her. “Oh, I wouldn’t be surprised if even Scolus feels the same way by now.”
For once, there may have been a certain truth to her words. When I had returned to the therapy circle with Blanche, Gloria had not been a participant. She had instead sat and sulked in the corner, mentioning something about “her usual” not working like it should have. In the end, the bug was revived without her assistance.
“Oh well. I need a vacation from him, anyway.” Gloria slipped on one winter glove, and then the other. “Perhaps a vacation from the crooked and fraudulent, too, if I’m going to be lying low. You know what I mean? Try out this whole ‘law-abiding citizen’ shtick I’ve heard so much about.”
I felt her use of air quotes was justified. “Law-abiding, you say?”
“That’s right!”
“You mean, apart from the fraudulent promissory notes you’re planning to redeem.”
“Eh, right.”
She finished putting on the remainder of her winter gear, and slung her bag of survival and getaway essentials over her shoulder. I opened the door for her to leave (chivalrous as I was) but she only stood there, staring wistfully at the horizon while the cold swirled around her like a cloak.
“You should know, I’m actually a couple years older than I made myself out to be,” she said into the outside air.
“How old are you?”
“I don’t remember.” She fooled with a few zippers on her coat and bags, even though they were already exactly where they needed to be. “But if I’m caught, I’m sure I’ll be tried as an adult.”
Now that’s tempting. “What is this with regards to?”
“Oh, nothing, I suppose. I just felt like saying.”
She turned to me.
“I really had a good thing going here, didn’t I?”
Just as quickly, she turned back.
“Ciao.”
And with a mighty beat of her wings, she took off into the sky and was gone.
If, at the end, there were the high notes and the low notes, then there was also what could best be described as a deceptive cadence. It was a long one, and one that the orchestra had scarcely an hour to practice ahead of time.
“You’re saying what?” Commander Brightdawn had barked upon hearing our testimony. “You let the changeling get away?”
“I’m sorry, sir. There wasn’t much we could do,” Bluebird testified.
“Negotiations broke down. The situation was volatile,” I corroborated.
“She took Girard as a hostage!” Bon cried. “We let her get away with murder!”
“It’s not murder. We haven’t found the body, if there even is one,” Zorn corrected. “At present, it’s a kidnapping.”
“It’s not even a kidnapping,” Blanche contested. “Girard may not have been the changeling, but he was a co-conspirator. Honestly, I would be surprised if this wasn’t their escape plan all along.”
“You think you know someone!” Grid bellowed.
“Hold up, hold up,” Brightdawn said. “Lemme hear it from the detective: What happened, and where do we need to look?”
I explained to them with sober regret how it had all gone down. Gloria had been the changeling, and she was in cahoots with Girard. The two of them had been living under fictional identities as Kralle-Karom royalty for years now, completely undetected. It had been hard to believe at first, I said, but I was confident that a closer examination of their paper trails would prove the extent of their lies.
“Sir,” Brightdawn’s second-in-command interrupted. He was currently taking a call on the villa’s phone (for good measure, I had made sure to wipe off the green blood) while Brightdawn’s other subordinates crowded the hall. “Should we circulate posters of the perps?”
“For the Girard kid, sure,” the commander replied. “For this Gloria girl, don’t bother. The bug will already have a new face, and we don’t want to split our resources. The best chance we have of nabbing this changeling is through its griffon accomplice—focus any search bulletins on him.”
“Yes sir!”
“What a fantastic mess,” the commander groaned, turning back to me. “Do you at least have any idea where they might have knocked off to, Detective?”
“I found an itinerary that would have me believe they were planning to flee to Seaquestria. She took it back by force before she left,” I said. “As for their immediate line of escape…”
I guided the commander to a window, and pointed out a large, distant peak that was 180 degrees in the opposite direction from where Gloria had set out.
“… that is where they flew.”
At risk of stretching this musical metaphor to its breaking point, there was one more key feature to Scolus's ending song: a series of unresolved chords. His future, in other words.
Bluebird unlocked the boiler room. While standing at the threshold, he called out, “Did you hold up all right in there?”
Scolus stumbled out from behind a piece of machinery, and smiled at me and my partner. “Yeah, I think so. A little dizzy, but I made it through!” he said.
Just to be sure, Bluebird strode up and gave the changeling a warm, nourishing hug. Scolus's face was equal parts surprised and sublime. He wasn’t used to such a luxury.
After the moment had passed, he asked, “Are they gone?”
“Yes, the Guard has left,” I said. “For now, it looks like we’re getting away with it.”
Scolus hummed a pleasant tune as we walked him back to the foyer. I wasn’t feeling very carefree, but I was surprised to see my partner wasn’t either, if his meandering eyes and stiff upper lip were any indication.
He spoke up, “So, kid—actually, ahah, that’s not even remotely the correct term for you anymore, is it?”
“Heh, I guess not. I’m not really sure what I am,” he said. “Whatever I want to be, in a way! … At least, once the magic suppressant wears off.”
He wouldn’t be Girard, at any rate. No matter the Royal Guard’s best efforts, that face would never be seen again.
“Well, I was just hoping you weren’t feeling too anxious about what happens from here on out,” Bluebird projected. “I know we might not be as experienced at it as Gloria, but me and Pesco will do our best to craft you a new identity and keep you in contact with your old friends. And hey, it’s no Villa Vivant, but crashing at my place won’t be so bad!”
“Thanks, I’m looking forward to it!” he said. I had to admit, his positivity was contagious. “But no, I would say I’m feeling less anxious than I have in a long while. Dropping out of high school wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
“Ahah, is that what’s on your mind right now?”
“Yeah, sort of! But part of that was because I didn’t want to have to say goodbye to my friends, or upset Gloria. For different reasons, I guess neither were very well-founded fears.”
I thought to myself: That about summarizes it.
Sometimes, we were a changeling in the throes of respiratory failure. Sometimes, we were a self-serious detective about to be mauled by an Ursa Minor. And sometimes (but hopefully never), we were a worthless abusive liar abusing and lying for all we’re worth in order to outrun the long leg of the law. But when we weren’t any of these things, then our fears in life tended to fall into one of two categories: those that had no basis in reality, and those that weren’t worth worrying about.
The crisis was over, but Bluebird knew he and his mentor both had their work cut out for them as far as Scolus's living situation was concerned. He had volunteered to host the bug at his place, sure, because he felt it was the least he could do. The conclusion of an investigation was a mountain of paperwork as it was without adding an illegal alien to the mix.
“Just in case the Guard returns, you stay here with Scolus and the kids,” Pesco told him. “Myself, I’m going down to the sheriff’s. I’ve got a police report to fabricate. Among other things.”
And like that, he was off.
Pesco wasn’t the only one who made himself scarce following the action. Soon afterward, when the conversation among the five friends was finally starting to sound like one—more laughs, and fewer tears—Bluebird realized that it was actually a conversation between four friends: the young reindeer doe, who had been standing right beside him, was no longer there.
The cadet looked around briefly, but she was nowhere in the room. If she had wished her changeling friend goodbye and good luck before leaving, she had not said it very loudly. Perhaps not at all.
Oh well. The conversation continued anyway, and Scolus was happy to be a part of it.
“So… how do you feel?”
Surprisingly, this had not been a question for Scolus, but from him. His three remaining friends—Bon, Grid, and Zorn—were puzzled.
“What do you mean? Like, knowing that you’re a changeling?” Grid said. “Guess I feel kinda excited, really! There’s this whole other side of you we get to learn about now!”
“And truly, at risk of sounding vain,” Bon said, “how many people can say that they’re friends with a changeling?” He tipped his head and crossed his chest. “I’m honored.”
“Uh, aren’t we not going to say we’re friends with a changeling?” Grid asked. “Wasn’t that the plan?”
“You’re right, Grid. Poor wording on my part. All I mean is, Scolus's secret is my privilege.”
Scolus surfaced a smile, and covered half of it with a hoof. Please, no more, the gesture seemed to say. “I appreciate all that, really, I do. Though, what I really meant to ask is… I hope I didn’t take too much?”
Zorn placed a hoof at the pulse of his neck, turning inward in thought. “I should think not.” In a charmed tone of voice, he asked the cadet and the others, “What about you? Feeling healthy?”
The cadet wondered what sort of illness could possibly overshadow the relief he felt that all of this was finally over. He, Bon, and Grid said they felt fine.
Zorn turned back to Scolus, and said, “If anything, I may have more than I did before.”
“Heh, that’s good to hear. It’s a little bit weird sometimes, isn’t it?” Scolus replied. “Love, I mean. Even I don’t really understand it, how it’s made and how it’s consumed.”
“Perhaps it’s not subject to a conservation law, unlike so much else in the world,” Zorn said. The cadet had to wonder what his batting average was for understanding Zorn’s oblique remarks.
“You were worried, Scolus, that you might have induced this ‘love malaise’ in us?” Bon asked for confirmation. “I was under the impression that was a changeling-exclusive affliction.”
“Yeah, it is, I was just, just wanting to make sure. After all, you gave so much, each and every one of you.” Scolus's gaze zigzagged in the empty spaces between his friends’ heads. “I don’t think I deserved it.”
Nobody countered with “Why?” or even “How so?”—Bluebird felt it was understood. It would only cheapen something on Scolus's part, something which he spent a good deal of time trying to verbalize as he stared at some ripped up carpet.
“It’s just, I was lying to you, all of this time. And it goes deeper than just being a changeling.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t my plan to go to Canterlot Country Day, and I wasn’t qualified to be there. It wasn’t my plan to befriend you guys, and I’m not qualified to be your friend. I put all of you through so much trouble, and why?”
Bon rose to the challenge: “Scolus, the one who put us through so much trouble has already left the building.”
The cadet was pretty sure he didn’t mean Pesco. Not one-hundred percent, though.
Scolus didn’t buy it. “I didn’t have to go along with her plans. I could have stopped her at any point.”
“It sounds like you tried to,” Bon countered. “And if being manipulated by Gloria is a sin, I’m afraid we’re all beyond salvation.”
“Blanche doesn’t really forgive me. She was just being nice.”
“Either way, it’s a first for her.”
Scolus pointed at Bon’s splint. “Your leg. I broke it.”
Bon chided Scolus; he was just reaching, now.
Grid agreed; that was all his and Bon’s fault, and Scolus had nothing to do with it.
Bon asked Grid if he had helped throw him off the roof.
Grid was confused. Of course not, he had climbed up there himself!
Bon told him that was exactly his point.
Grid was even more confused.
Bon hiccuped as he laughed. “We’re all hopeless, aren’t we?”
At the end of it all, Scolus allowed himself to cheer up, as if to say he had no more arguments. It was a brittle kind of cheeriness—it was a signal for others, and not an emotion for himself.
Zorn must have picked up on it, as he walked over and clapped a friendly hoof on Scolus's shoulder. (It was surprising how many things you didn’t realize someone never did, until they did it.)
“Somebody wise once told me: You do not have to understand something to believe in it,” Zorn said.
“Heh, who was that?”
“Ancient zebra mystic,” Zorn said with a wink. (It was surprising how many things…)
“What is ‘it’ in this context, exactly?”
“Love. Friendship. Amitaminergic compounds and interactions, generally,” he said. “Any sample of it has its impurities. No system can reliably produce it. Let us be grateful it exists at all—not in abundance, but in sufficience.”
None of us are the characters we want to be, or pretend to be. Our story never develops how we want it to, or expect it to. And yet, the narrative strings us along anyway, until the very end.
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So, without knowing how readers have reacted to this final chapter, I think I already regret the publishing schedule I committed to for these last three chapters. Probably, I ought to have just released all three at once. I didn't anticipate that so many of the daily readers would actually be tricked by the ever-pessimistic Pesco that only the epilogue remained (or that his gloom and doom soliloquies really constituted an epilogue). Even worse, I didn't anticipate that those who weren't tricked wouldn't automatically realize that this was another bout of Pesco's status as an unreliable narrator exacerbated by his own despair (a precedent for this being his repression of Scolus's side of the note, of course) and so would not foresee that the epilogue was all in his head, that Scolus was not dead—if it wasn't an intuitive consequence, I was hopeful the lack of a "death" tag would be commented on and settle the matter. As a result, I expect all this leaves a bad aftertaste of cliffhanger/"it was all a dream" for certain readers, for which I can only apologize. It wasn't my intention.
Ideally, as in the Gdocs version of the story, the table of contents simply omits Afterlives from its listing, but the reader isn't constrained to a publishing schedule. So, one would likely get tricked by Pesco into thinking Scolus had died, but one would only have a minute of suspense in Pesco's noir delusion, not a full 24 hours. And there would be no moment of ambiguity as to whether the book was already over.
In the end, I just really liked the concept of a character so pessimistic, and an ongoing self-aware tendency of the characters to refer the story as an actual story (and one with a distinctly tragic ending), combining to produce a fake-out that goes so far as to subvert the very conventions of a novel, like that the chapter called Epilogue is well and truly the end. I guess you can blame the likes of Undertale for that very meta ambition I had in mind.
(That self-aware tendency finds examples, by the way, in Zorn's "I do not know the full story: I do not know how it must end" or Grid Iron's "We all know how this story ends! Spoiler alert: It’s not going to be pretty!" or Blanche's whole deal with _Changeling Ringing_ and the line "the reverse deus ex machina that is our protagonist’s sudden and senseless death" in particular. Pesco's own tendency culminates in the strongest instance of it when he asserts "No, the story was over. The plotlines were finished, their loose ends all tied up in a slip knot." There are a lot of such omens like this, and I think the only salient example in the opposite direction is Bluebird's "You’re going to get through this. Everything. I promise." Try to find all the others! I got through Chapter 6 of pretty in-depth accounting of every clue and easter egg like this, but it was a big effort and felt a little self-indulgent. If there's any interest, I might try to finish it.)
I remember reading a story by Agatha Christie, "Murder on the Orient Express", and how the final resolution made the balance between justice and injustice a bit of a gray area since the "criminals" didn't face repercussions for their actions. However, due to the circumstances leading up to the murder the reader isn't left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. If anything, it felt like a grim acceptance of a revenge story that actually came to fruition for the right reasons. This tale masterfully replicates that conflicting emotion of good and evil, where the border isn't easily drawn. I'm proud to place this story among my favorites and look forward to rereading it in the future to see how the knowledge of who the changeling is impacts my appreciation of the author and his use of details.
11250677
if it's worth anything, I didn't really buy that the "epilogue" would be the end. I did comment on it, and I did remember that there were 26 chapters to be read, or that there was no Death tag. I thought that there would be either an alternative ending where Scolus lives, or that the epilogue would be the reflection of what the detectives would be telling the police and Equestria.
But... I could have been wrong about it. While tragic endings aren't what I prefer... if that's what you want to write, well, that's what you want to write, right? Sometimes stories end poorly. I didn't want to get my hopes up for them to be immediately shot down. If Scolus were to die, and the last chapter would be how the other kids try to deal with the aftermath, then I'd be wrong in a way that would have been kind of cruel to myself, but also that would perhaps... deny you the right to write the ending you wanted, in a way? By pushing the """happy-feelings""" resolution when that wasn't the story you wanted to tell. I don't know.
And... I guess I didn't want to be wrong about that.
But hey, that didn't happen! Scolus is free, he has friends, hopefully they figure a way to keep in touch after that. Gloria is off to who-knows-where, perhaps making good on her word, or perhaps off to Crimes yet again. Who knows.
Amazing storytelling, amazing characters all around. Thank you very much for this story.
(Oh, and actually I'm kind of curious: Blanche's primary source for her book was that Myrmex person, right? He's still in jail? Were his crimes that... extensive, or did the government just decide that they didn't want to release a confirmed changeling out in the wild?)
A fine tale indeed. Frustrating in some parts of the resolution, but that’s the point. There are no perfectly happy endings. There’s no perfectly happy anything. But there’s still good to be found, and denying that can do even more harm than denying the bad. All told, thank you for this.
11250715
Thank you for reading! Despite how much I put into this story, I really didn't expect that I would get any amount of readership whatsoever. My median expected outcome was, like, a couple comments on the first chapter, and then zero afterward. So I am truly exceedingly glad to have had regular readers and commenters all throughout the daily releases.
The latter. As she elaborated in The Drift, he's one of the few changelings who have been discovered in the absence of any real crimes beyond identity theft. One can expect that someone like Scolus (who has technically been a co-conspirator of Gloria's schemes) would be treated at least as bad, if not worse, if captured.
In my mind, Blanche and Pesco both realize the injustice of the changelings' plight, but they have difficulty processing and expressing their sympathy. Blanche styles herself as a changeling racist, but she's actually a self-loathing changeling racist, and her book is as much reaction formation (as Pesco suggests in this chapter) as it is a mockery of selfish, hypocritical well-wishers would enjoy reading feel-good stories about changelings but would do nothing to solve their social problem. Pesco's is much of the same reaction formation, and a doubt that Scolus would get a fair trial/that he and Bluebird could do anything for him even if he was being honest about turning himself in.
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I'm very much a fan of bittersweet endings, yeah. We can't always get what we want, but with enough effort, we can get what we need and suffer through the rest.
This was a delightful mystery story. It was phenomenally well-written, with a great attention to character depth and individuality, with characters full of layers, and others exactly as they appear... but leaving the reader unsure which was which until the appropriate time.
I am a little bummed out that a hoard of evil cherngelerngs didn't show up and they all had to battle to survive, until one of them managed to achieve a higher power level.
As bittersweet as it is, that's honestly a more optimistic ending than detective mysteries often get lol. Thank you for many hours well spent.
This was an extremely good mystery story. I followed this for every chapter update, and found everyone's hypotheses and the story's tension to be top notch stuff. You got a knack for this, and I'd love to read further mystery stories by you.
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Thanks for the praise. It means a lot. I hope to write more mysteries in the future (in particular, since before even writing this story, I've had the skeleton of the sequel in mind; these were RPs before they were adapted to text), but I probably won't be any sort of regular writer on the site. I'm slow and finicky with my stuff, and it took over half a year of maximum effort to bring this to completion. It's a miracle in retrospect that I didn't stall out, as I have a tendency to for even my shortest stories.
It's what I kept pointing out every time the subject of the letter comes up. She didn't have to be so civil in it, or so apologetic...but she did anyway.
It may not be the level of love Girard wants...or even maybe what he needs right now to survive...but deep down under that stuffy exterior of hers, she does care about him at least a little, even if just in the platonic sense. And right now he needs any scrap of that care he can get.
And I agree with that too. As much as I sympathize and pity Girard, and would much rather he live than perish, he still did wrong of a sort to Blanche, and I can't blame her for that...putting her off the subject, put mildly.
You know, I had once the thought wondering about whether or not Blanche actually believed in full the things she said about changelings, or if that was just her defaulting to her usual realist/fatalist viewpoints out of self-protection for herself.
But until now, I'd never had enough evidence to support the idea to comment one way or another on it.
I know, but I've gotten so used to calling you Girard (even if just for clarity's sake) that I'm not sure I can break myself of the habit now.
I half want her to.
Mwahahahaha, that's going to make "lying low" a little harder for her all right.
And the hounds are off. Happy hunting, boys.
Nah, not Pesco. It took him longer to come around to the truth than it should've, true, but ultimately that was in part because he was one of Gloria's pawns just as much as the rest of them.
Really, the only one who did anything wrong here was, and always shall be, Gloria alone.
As such, mildly miffed she was allowed to escape, but it's made up for it by them effectively framing her for the whole shebang anyway by claiming she was the changeling. She may get away, but that doesn't mean she's going to have an easy time of it.
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It does a little, but I can see what you were shooting for a bit better now that's its been explained. Personally though, I don't think the epilogue bit was necessary at all then, because no matter how you reformat it, it's probably always going to seem out of place for this very reason. One of those things where it seems like a great idea on its own, but it's sadly not right for the rest of the story, I think. But it didn't hurt it all that much either, more of a just a stumble at best, and really only if you absolutely hated the idea of the story ending badly for any length of time (and some do, oh boy do I ever know that
), so at the same time I wouldn't want you sweating too much over it.
Anyway...can I admit that, now that I had a day to adjust to the idea, there is a part of me that wishes you committed to the implied "bad" ending anyway, if just a little?
It would have made for a great bit of tragic crime noir, that ending, and I kinda have to give props for its audacity, even if it wasn't the actual intended ending.
That said, obviously I had been rooting for the "good" ending more, so I'm glad we still got that. There's rough spots to it, such as the problem of Gloria having been allowed enough control of the situation to bring it to that point in the first place that I mentioned last chapter(s), the aforementioned epilogue coming across as a bit of a fake-out, and how it doesn't feel like we get quite enough closure with Blanche. I didn't need her to accept Girard's advances or anything like that--I can totally get her wanting to keep it platonic, and I think at that point everybody could respect that--but I do feel like she still owed Girard a one-on-one talk so to set the story straight, at least one we the readers could be privy to (I suppose that could've been what she said to help Girard recover, but we didn't get the details, so...). But I digress.
Beyond on that, the only other thing I'd like to point out (which I'd been holding off on in case the ending did something to change my mind on it) was that those dream sequences with Scolus's flashback memories, in chapters 9 and 10, ultimately didn't do anything for the story that wasn't already repeated by Girard himself later on, and I don't think were necessary. In the end, that wasn't something we really needed to know in that level of detail, and I think it only made it easier for putting us readers on the right trail, because that confirmed without a doubt that our 'ling was benevolent and not malevolent, and as a result, we could pretty safely dismiss any and all assumptions to the contrary from that point on.
Obviously, we were still going back and forth on who our culprits were and why (looking back, I don't know why so many of us entertained that "second changeling" theory for as long as we did, because there really wasn't any evidence or reason to
), but it meant we wouldn't spare much of any thought for Pesco's fatalist assumptions on the subject and it only helped to serve us to narrow it down who the 'ling probably was too soon. Without that, we wouldn't have reason to rule off such assumptions and thus could've been more uncertain for longer which it could be. Looking back, I figure that, without the Scolus dreams, I probably would've started to pin Gloria as the changeling on up until nearly the reveal instead of signaling out (correctly 
) that it was Girard.
And as mysteries are always about keeping the readers guessing for as long as you can, any chance where you can effectively do so is worth taking, so I figure it's worth pointing out.
But that's really my only criticisms for the story on a whole, because despite these few weak spots (that are honestly not that very weak to begin with), you had us all second-guessing what was actually going on pretty much the whole time, and it was a joy to experience.
And you proved to be excellent at getting us reader to focus on all of the wrong details while overlooking the right details that should've been obvious (I'm still kicking myself for missing that frankly obvious tell where Grid described Gloria and her supposed "father" showing up at an event but not Girard. Gaaaah, how did I miss that? 
) which is a very good skill to have in these sort of stories.
You were also very convincing with your portrayal of the characters. I was able to rule out some characters as the culprit simply because you successfully portrayed them so well and so consistently that I could safely rule them out simply because it didn't match up with their character--this is largely why I never truly believed at any time Grid was the changeling even when the story was going well out of its way to imply that it was--but also was able to still leave blanks and mysteries about them to leave us questioning if we've still missed something, or, better still, luring us to take them at face-value when we really shouldn't have in the end--the other thing I'm still kicking myself for was for ever believing Gloria's cover story as true at any length of time. If I hadn't, I'd like to think I might've actually caught on to the truth about her a little sooner than I did, but dang it, she was just so convincing! It's not hard to see how she was able to get them all but eating out of her paw until near the end.
But anyway, a great read, and I'm glad I was able to pick it up in time to catch it all fresh as it was posted.
Hot damm i absolutely loved this.
It became kinda obvious like half way through, but the journey there was amazing.
Would recommend
~Reggie
Thank you for this masterpiece of a story. This is a straight up published book quality, no joke. Unique and well-written characters, intriguing mystery, suspicion being cast back and forth between several suspects, and characters' background and relations coming up along with the investigation, making the reader question who is the real villain here. I'm a sucker for changeling stories, and this one stands out a lot and doesn't fall into clichés (it's actually genius how author acknowledges tropes of the genre through Blanche).
The ending is good too. Not sickeningly happy, and not full of despair either, leaves some hope for the future of the heroes.
11390635 You watched enough Mr. Plinkett Star Wars reviews?
...
I still hate Gloria.
And that's it.
About the resolution itself, nothing's really resolved, at least on the surface. What we do have is lots of hope: hope that Gloria finally wises up to actually doing good, hope that the Royal Guard and the sheriff get misdirected, hope that Scolus and his group finally grow together as sincere and transparent friends, and perhaps a hope that society would move onward to be closer to accepting changelings and finding out a solution where everyone can win.
For now, things are better, but it's still a rocky road moving forward, especially now that Pesco and Bluebird have dipped into the path of criminality. It's a complex solution that I honestly don't agree with fully, but given Gloria's pressure on Pesco, I could understand that they felt it was the least destructive choice. Perhaps I should've gotten used to this sort of ending already, given the mysteries I've encountered from second-hand books or the bargain bin, but I know I'm stubborn in wanting everything tied up in sunshine and rainbows when reality is at least a little slow on that front.
And of course, I got fooled by the previous chapter thinking that Scolus was dead and that the last chapter was an even further-out epilogue. For the first two or three paragraphs, I still believed that, thinking that Bluebird's words were from the future in some apparently unrelated case (like a shootout somewhere else).
As for the story itself, well, I've scrolled past the comments here and they're long. At the risk of repeating myself, it's something that I think should be in the Fimfiction Hall of Fame, not just on the featured box. Dealing with OCs is already a hassle of extra work when it comes to fan fiction, and having a mystery on top of that... honestly, if you published this in a bookstore with some of the names changed and I read the exact same thing, I wouldn't notice, because it's just that good. Characterization is on point; there was never a time when I felt like I wasn't sure who was talking or if someone felt too much like someone else; everyone's got their moments (Zorn being scientific and distrustful for the most part, Blanche being a writer, Bon being the "funny drunk rich deer, ha-ha," Grid being the jock, Gloria being the insanity she is, and Girard being... well, that). Even the characters we don't get to see a lot of (those in Scolus's flashback and the Royal Guard) still stand out well. And with the challenge of having to juggle six suspects plus the two detectives with their own dynamic, you've bounced from one character to another with just the right pacing so that when we revisit someone, it feels fresh once more.
And even though the character arcs are more important than the mystery itself, that mystery is still pretty good. I employed the "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" strategy for figuring out where the changeling was, and while I got it wrong, I didn't feel like I got cheated out of the correct answer. Justifications for how Girard acted (and the little things like sneaking the paper in Pesco's clothes) just seem too right for it to be out of nowhere, and if anything, I myself strayed from my own strategy since, other than the two interviews in the middle of the story, Girard was not as serious of a subject of investigation as the others precisely because it was clear to Pesco and Bluebird that, changeling or not, he had serious problems that went beyond anxiety. Even Grid, whose backstory remains mainly untouched, still had his own present conflicts tied up with the changeling come to light.
You said something about a sequel? That'd be nice, but as it is, Bug in a Blizzard is a masterpiece. Thank you very much for this story, and good wishes on your future endeavors.
Ehhhhhh… I couldn’t get myself to marathon this so I’m sure I’ve forgotten or mixed things up in the month-plus it took me to finish.
That said, this reads like a dime novel adaptation. The characters don’t quite mesh with one another and the counterfeiting subplot is ignored even by the detective as a shallow red herring almost immediately after being introduced. The implied legal system is slapped together Victorian English meets MLP and the “changeling problem” is fucked up.
I’m sure you wanted a happy ending but the fake ending was more fitting: The detective mishandled things, it goes bad, someone dies, the end.
Instead we get a “power of love!”-fix and… hope… I guess?
You can has review!
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Oh. If I'd noticed your reply earlier, I may have put more effort into commenting each chapter. Instead, after my chapter 6 comment, I kinda just buckled in for the ride.
I never totally took my eyes off Girard because of my initial guess, but also because the others all seemed like bad candidates:
Some of these reasons weren't particularly strong, but any of it being some gambit for the changeling to clear himself seemed risky or counterproductive. The main thing going for Girard was Gloria's vouch, and I'd forgotten about that at some point. Even still, I couldn't figure out what his angle would've been, so I wasn't 100% on him. I spent a good amount of the story wondering if the changeling were just lurking in the walls.
I started to put the pieces together slightly before the reveal, but not quite. I thought Girard's motivation was a standard friendly-changeling-fic motivation of blending in and making friends. I thought Girard broke into Blanche's room to see if her changeling story meant she'd found him out, and I though he'd tried to break into Zorn's room to destroy his samples, but it didn't occur to me he could be colluding with Gloria. I didn't figure out the significance of the willow paper until the reveal, though I hadn't forgotten it.
But above all, I had fun and felt the resolution was satisfying. Thanks for writing it, by the way.
I know which episode of The Twilight Zone this is. On a nostalgia trip, old timer?
I was recommended this fic a year ago and finally got around to reading it, and while I don't know what I was expecting I have to say I was quite pleasantly surprised!
Most of it is in how believable the characters are, it felt very realistic for two competent adults trying to navigate the powder keg of teenage emotions (I remember thinking to myself often how much I'd hate this if it was a TV show, since who wants to listen to a bunch of whiny teenagers in the middle of a crime drama? Mind you, most of that is because of the executives forcing that having never grown out of their teens themselves. Ha.) and every character had at least some depth to them, as well.
I didn't have much guesswork to make while reading since I kind of powered through it all in one go, but it did seem to me like it stopped being "Who's the changeling?" very early on as Girard began to seem an obvious guess fairly quickly, and even stopped with "Who's the villain?" as it was immensely clear Gloria was up to something around the same time, but rather the whole latter half was more just unraveling the villain's plans. I did think the abuse thing was a nice twist, and a fast track to making your villain particularly loathsome to most readers. I'll say I join the sentiment in wishing she'd have gotten a bit more comeuppance, but it's an imperfect world. (And for all we know she got picked up within the hour anyway.)
And as I described the detectives as 'competent,' I'll reinforce that in saying that yes, I liked their investigation quite a bit! They were established from the get-go as the pessimist and the optimist and I think it played well off each other, and they both contributed heavily. Though as a personal thought I think, unbeknownst to themselves, neither of them were looking for the Changeling starting quite early. Pesco was trying to uncover the bad guy, and Bluebird was trying to fix things and find a happy ending, and neither would have succeeded without the other, most likely. There was some tension in the middle and onwards where they talked as though they were falling apart, which at first I found a little confusing to hear when it seemed they were still working together, but reading back over it that struck me more as a "You follow your lead, I'll follow mine" deal and more or less why they were even partners to begin with. They're obviously used to each other and know how to play off each other, so that reasoning makes the most sense to me.
I think Pesco, despite his apparent tunnel vision, was actually very bright in his cluefinding, I was rather tickled at this particular line:
I found it quietly brilliant as it turned out there was in fact, no distinction between those things. At least as far as the case went. The book itself wasn't a smoking gun but it was the biggest sign of the villain's true nature and what got things on the right track. Combined quite nicely with, can't find the quote so I'm paraphrasing, but a repeated line about wild hunches over small stuff being "Either the most or least important clues in a case"? Don't know why I can't find the damned line. In either case, I can look past Pesco's pessimism because even though he had the wrong ideas about some of his findings, he never actually let it affect his search much. Even when he was under the assumption the changeling was a bastard because of the note, he kept making definite progress. Even when he was lead there by false pretense. Bluebird on the other hand was tricked by Gloria's antics more than once, and he was the one believing in our lovebug from the get-go, but at least he still made some important discoveries as well.
Beyond that it was just kind of interesting how the recurring theme between everyone was the mistakes they made. Just about everyone could lead to a speedier resolution if they were thinking straight.
-Bon of course was so obsessed over his feelings for Grid that the thought he's a changeling came to him before the realization he might just not be interested (or even asexual, as it seems to be hinted).
-Grid may have had the least wrongs (That I can remember, at least) and was just made into a scapegoat while having to deal with Bon at the same time.
-Blanche was mostly just full of herself and not wanting to reveal her new novel to the point all she cared about was deflecting its relevance to the situation when it was in fact the crux of the whole thing. Aside from the fact she had every clue necessary to solve things before even calling the cops, she even managed to convince herself that she was the detective's number one suspect when in truth, she wasn't even on the list.
-Girard of course could have done a lot to smooth the situation, but I think we can forgive such a serious abuse victim for not having enough courage compared to a bunch of angsty teens.
-Even Zorn, who had figured out the whole thing before it started, maintained his aloof air to hide that he was probably the most paranoid one of them all, and may have even made the biggest mistakes (beyond the one he admitted to near the end). He didn't trust the detectives to come to the right conclusion, didn't trust any of his 'friends' to do the same. This was very evident in how he spent every waking moment with them trying to clear himself of suspicion. All int, no wisdom as some would say.
Compared to the teens I want to say the detectives actually made the least mistakes, because even when they were wrong about things they were still inching towards the truth, and they did of course solve it all in the end.
The ending did have all the air of a bittersweet one, but on consideration I want to say it was more on the good and happy side. The teens were hit with the realization they were paranoid and selfish and didn't really know each other, but that left them with a clean slate to start anew. Our weeping abuse victim got a new lease on life as, presumably, a budding detective which is about the best thing he could have hoped for at this juncture, and our main characters cracked the case and made the best decision they could in the end. Really the only catch is the wicked witch getting away, but with the cancer excised from this group of friends I think it's all the same in the end.
Overall, good job, very nice read.
This was delightful. A wonderfully written mystery, well fleshed-out characters, and a very reasonable conclusion. Loved it. Pescoe and Bluebird are a fun little detective duo, would love to see more of them.