//------------------------------// // Sweet Dreams? // Story: I Am a Pet Changeling // by Queen Sanguine Dreams //------------------------------// I was back in the hive, changelings of every caste swarming around busily. It was dark, the only illumination was provided by the forest of glowing eyes that moved around in an unseen concert of unity that directed their day. "Hey, get back to work!" A deep chittery voice demanded, punctuated with a shove that made me fall to the slimy ground of the hive. I buzzed myself upright, looking at whomever had pushed me and noticed their armor. They were a warrior. "Y-yes! Right away!" I stammered, quickly moving away from the annoyed changeling. It was not my place to question, or to decide. I was a Tunneler. I returned to the clear memory of my work area; A half-excavated tunnel that was to be expanded into another nursery for Queen Chrysalis. Breaks were a concept I had only learned of from watching ponies in my short time around Ponyville. Here, it was a tunneler's job to tunnel. Everything else was secondary. If you needed love to survive, you would be given just that. Enough to survive. Injuries were common, as well as cave-ins. Nothing wrong with that; it was part of our duty to the hive. The strongest would become warriors. The smartest would become infiltrators. The meek or timid would become tenders and caretakers. The quick would become scouts. The rest? Tunnelers. That is what I was. I was good at being a Tunneler, too. I had come up with the idea of reinforcing my hooves with my magic, allowing me to burn and carve my way through rock and hard dirt far more easily than by fang or 'normal' hoof. The only problem with this, is that it used more than I was given daily for love allowances and left me very weak come the end of each work period. It was discovered very early on that without at least one rest period in a day, changelings would simply fall over. No amount of love would make them get back up. I had refined my own methods of tunneling so that never waking up again wouldn't be a possibility, at least until the hive itself began to starve. Then the Queen would siphon off love from her changelings to sustain herself until a new source would be found. It is far better for simple tunnelers like myself to sacrifice their lives for the Queen. No Queen, no hive. No hive, no changelings. I had arrived at my work station, ready to start digging when the ground shook fiercely. Earthquakes weren't a problem where our hive was stationed, a place that the ponies had reportedly named 'The Badlands'. No, this was a different problem. Gougers. Gigantic worms that tunneled through solid rock, eating everything in their path and collapsing entire sections of the hive behind them. First the ground would shake, then the walls would tremble, then a deep groaning would come through the rocks and out would burst a colossus of destruction. Our only hope was to evade the creature, or be lucky enough to be caught unaware. "Everyling get to the exit tunnel! Move it! Fly!" A warrior bellowed, joined by a flight of even more warriors and a few scouts that went further down into the tunnels to retrieve the few that couldn't hear the warning calls. For changelings, this was common place. There was no panic, there were no changelings being trampled underhoof as I saw in Canterlot. No, this was uniform. Side by side, one changeling next to the other. Orderly. Except for me, of course. I was trying to assist a fellow tunneler after part of the hive had caved in from the Gouger's quakes. Their hind leg had been trapped underneath a fallen rock and I was doing my best to chip away at it. At least I had been, until... until the love drained out of them. I felt a hoof on my shell. A very large hoof. I looked behind myself and saw Queen Chrysalis. "There is nothing to be done for this one. Retreat into the hive; this Gouger is mine!" "Aaah!" I blurted, jolting awake and falling off of the bookshelf that I had called my sleeping area for the night. A wall of books followed my plummet downwards, battering me before the shelf itself landed atop of me. "Aaaooow..." "What in the flying fun!?" I heard Soft shout when they jolted awake. "What happened!?" I felt the bookshelf being pulled off of me, and I pushed myself up until the books slid off of me. My wings felt strange, so I shook my body and buzzed them a few times for inspection before looking up at Soft. They were wearing a lot less clothes than I had seen them wearing before. Why were they blushing? "Ah, heh... So, do changelings wear clothing where you're from?" Soft asked with an embarassed tone. "No. I've noticed that you and Rough wear a lot of clothing though. Why?" I asked, curious that Soft's demeanor would change so much from a simple lack of clothing. "Well, normally for people it's a social thing. Some are just more comfy in clothes, others can't stand the things... like me. If it wasn't illegal, then I wouldn't wear a thing but... I'd get thrown in jail for it if I did." "Jail?" "Oh come on now, don't you tell me that Changelings don't have jails! You gotta have criminals too. Just cause you're some bug thing from space don't mean there's no bad Changelings!" Soft complained. "If we don't obey the Queen, we are recycled." I stated plainly. "The same would apply for those whom are injured, sick, weakened by age or otherwise no longer useful." Soft stared at me with their mouth open. "That's..." "If you are going to be outside, won't you need to wear something?" I asked, observing that Soft wasn't wearing a single piece of fabric. "Oh." Soft realised, looking down at themself. "I was so tired last night that it's kinda just habit to not wear anything..." Soft looked back to me with worry and concern. "This isn't nothin' you haven't seen before, right? You don't seem too bothered by it." I blinked. "I have no idea what I'm looking at, or what that is supposed to mean." Soft waved a hand at me, moving over to a dresser and beginning to dig through it. "Nevermind, it's just a human thing then, I guess." A few moments later and different shelves having been dug through, clothing flew behind Soft and landed onto the bed. At that point I noticed something strange. "Where are the dogs?" Soft looked up with alarm and spun around, attempting to spot them. They then looked towards the door and sighed. "I guess Ricky must've taken them out for me while I was asleep. I dunno how long they were cooped up in here before we got back last night, so I'll have to thank him later for it." I thought back to my experiences in Ponyville, for the few hours that I had been told to wait in the market there with a few other changelings before the attack on Canterlot. I remember seeing something similar to the dogs, but it had been smaller than myself, not larger. They were called a Winona. "Hey, Changeling." Soft asked, pulling something over their torso and squirming around until it fit correctly. It had the letters 'AC DC' on it, accompanied by the Wonderbolt symbol between them. "You sure you don't have a name? Mine's Maria." This didn't make sense. There was another not-minotaur that was similar to Soft, that they called Mom. In equestria, ponies would be named based on traits they were good at. Twilight Sparkle for example was very smart, and stood as the midway reference between Celestia and Luna in temperament. Thus, their name made sense. Queen Chrysalis was the Queen, and they were the only changeling that could create chrysalis'. Thus, they are Queen Chrysalis. Maria, Mom, Ricky, Officer Brady; those were not names. Even Winona was a name, as it meant 'companion to Applejack.' Then again, perhaps those words meant something that I was unaware of? "What does Maria mean?" I asked abruptly, changing the topic unintentionally. "Well, my mom told me it had a few meanings," Soft began, "Wished-For-Child, Star of the sea... and for your interest, Loved and Beloved." Their name means love? "But love is the name for love, not Maria." "Well, english is weird sometimes. We got a whole load of words that all mean the same thing, yet we only say 'em in certain situations." "English?" "Nevermind!" Soft snapped before taking a moment to calm themself. "I know it's not your fault that you don't know a whole lot about humans and everything. Its just so strange that one moment we're able to have a nice conversation and understand everything, and the next moment you don't even know what language we're speakin'!" "I thought we were speaking Equiss?" "Eq-what now?" Soft blurted. A knock on the door interrupted our conversation and caused a spike of fear to lance through Soft, giving me anxiety and causing my wings to buzz nervously. "Ey Maria, you still in there havin' fun with the alien bug monster? It ain't gonna lay any eggs in you, ya know. You ain't it's type!" I heard Rough taunt through the closed door, laughing to themself. "Shut up, Ricky! You're gonna wake up Mom!" Soft shot back, opening the door quickly and startling Rough with the abruptness of the action. Rough raised their hands in surrender. "Hey, hey, calm down Maria! Mom left to go get some groceries! It's just us, and she took the dogs too." "Did... did she take them from my room?" Soft asked nervously. "Yup. Saw you butt naked, too. Didn't even flinch. Well, I mean it's possible she didn't see you either, with the cataracts n' all." "What's she doin' driving? Ain't that normally your job?" Soft asked with a bit of annoyance, jabbing Rough in the chest with a finger. "She's a big girl! She can take care o' herself!" Rough replied defensively, his tone joking and carefree. "If she gets into an accident, it's you who's tellin' God why she's up on his doorstep!" Soft complained half-seriously. "I am guessing from your conversation that Mom going out to Drivin' is a normal thing?" I asked uncertainly, earning the attentions of Rough and Soft. "Did you two do something when I went do bed? Bug monster here seems a lot shinier." Rough noted, looking at Soft. "I gave it a bath." Rough inspected me more closely, squatting down to eye level. "Yeah, and it looks like that crack in its belly is gone too. Give it some good lovin'?" Soft smacked Rough across the side of their head, knocking them over. "Shut your face, Ricky." The two of them looked between themselves, sharing a small moment while I stood there awkwardly. Before long, their attentions refocused on me, Soft placing their hands on their hips. "So. Where are we gonna keep you? I can't have you staring at my butt while I'm asleep all night, now can I?" Soft joked. I decided it would probably be for the best to avoid asking what a butt was.