//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 - Denial // Story: Lost Little Wolf // by PrincessColumbia //------------------------------// “Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.” ― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood I think that on some level I knew what I was doing was stupid, irresponsible, and counterproductive. Being someone with 40-plus years of experience under my metaphorical belt, I made those first few weeks a little slice of parental hell for Chrysalis. I took every unsupervised moment to search and explore. Said unsupervised moments got to be fewer and farther between with each incident, a couple of times she even slept in the same bed. Honestly, that was going a little far, in my opinion. I mean, sure, one of those was when I had wandered into some fresh construction and nearly got trapped when the entrance to that section of the hive closed up behind me. And yes, the other time was when I’d stumbled onto one of the...er, “love harvesting” chambers and seen things that baby-bug eyes weren’t supposed to see. Honestly, I’ve seen worse...hell, the fact that I’ve got a daughter proves I’ve done the stuff they were doing. Of course, I couldn’t say I knew what all that was about and it was no big thing, thank you language barrier. Once I’d gotten a good solid idea of the layout of the place, I began searching the hive for books. Apparently, there’s not much need for books in the hive, what few I did find were from ponies, or at least, I assume they were pony written, as I couldn’t read the language. It didn’t match the writings I’d seen on the walls and the few changeling artifacts that had writing on them. Then there was my attempts to use magic. I’m sure “mom” was laughing with me. I’m sure that I was finding it just as hilarious as she was that I was grunting and straining like I was constipated and only little sparks came out of my horn. I’m absolutely sure that her being collapsed on her side, panting in laughter because I made a tiny little firecracker-like pop at the tip of my horn that left my face blackened and sooty was in no way a blow to my ego. She kept snuggling me and cooing in affirming tones while dropping loads of love onto me when I failed to produce anything, so that was nice, at least. Next up, find a way out of the hive. Why was I doing this? To get home. See, I had figured that I had this new lease on life, exploding fuel trucks notwithstanding, and I was now a princess to boot. Sure, I was princess of a nation of spies, but if nothing else, I’d get me some sweet, sweet diplomatic immunity. Ignore the speed limit and park wherever I wanted? Who wouldn’t want that? OK, I was really trying to get home to my daughter. For two years it was the realization that I had to be there for her that got me out of bed every day. She was my only reason to be awake, to pay my debts, pay my bills, to face my ex-wife...she was the reason I even kept living. Other people may have helped pull me back from the edge of suicide, but it was them reminding me of my daughter that kept me going. Even now, right after I woke up every day, I would spend the first fifteen minutes or so with my eyes closed, recalling every feature I could of her face, the sound of her voice, the fairy-bell tinkling of her laugh...horse-bug or not, I was never going to let myself forget her. Then, I would spend another 15 or so minutes focussing on my memories of my wife. The times we laughed, the times I held her when she was crying. Even some of the times we fought until 3:00 AM over really stupid crap. The first time we had sex (six months before the wedding), the first time we made love (the honeymoon), when she wanted to get experimental and when she wanted it simple. How she looked in her business casual clothes, how she looked in her church clothes, how she looked in a swimsuit, how she looked naked. Even with as much heartache she caused in the last two years, I still loved her dearly and never wanted to forget her, either. So every day, I’d wake up with a new determination to see them again. Where there’s life, there’s hope, right? Honestly, if I’d just woken up in Heaven’s Waiting Room after the accident and told I’d have to stay there until either my wife or daughter joined me, I wouldn’t have blinked. That conformed with everything I’d been taught since joining the Church with how the afterlife was supposed to work. Waking up being re-born as a bug-horse-queen hatched from an egg in a kid’s cartoon show? Not so much. Consequently, everything I knew was in question, and with no way to communicate my plight to my new family, it was up to me and me alone to get back to the people I loved. In the confines of my little room, I was hidden from the hive-mind, some aspect of the room’s construction acting as a faraday cage to the mental hive connection. This was mostly done as a protection for my own mind. Momma Chrysalis saw how agitated I got with the constant droning of the background whisper of the hive and so allowed me more time with my own thoughts than I think she was really comfortable with. I could tell from the many (many) times she took me to see the caretakers that she was growing increasingly concerned about my lack of native changeling abilities. While we were with the caretakers I got a chance to interact with the hatchlings, and I actually found that the most enjoyable, save the time spent with “mom.” Just like human babies, these cute little wriggling grubs were overflowing with loving and happy emotions. Even when one of them injured itself, it wasn’t long before the playful nature of infants overtook them and they were once again joined with the other hatchlings in whatever activity I couldn’t quite figure out. Sometimes I’d join them, allowing myself to be a kid again as we invented games on the spot, introduced rules, tossed those rules out, then changed games within minutes of the first. Most nights these days Chrysalis would stay in my room, the entire hive-mind reduced just her and I. Apparently she was trying to acclimate me to the idea of thoughts beside my own being in my head, and I was grateful for the gentle and slow tempering process. Such was the case tonight, having fed me a hearty portion of love (I have no idea how I was ingesting it, just that I never seemed to need to actually eat, so I assumed my body was doing it as some sort of autonomic process), she had drifted off to sleep curled up around me. I could tell, because the gentle humming of her thoughts, which only occasionally were “loud” enough for my mind to interpret to something that I mentally recognized as English, were reduced to the telepathic equivalent of a snore. Tiny little filly-sized legs, bug-like or not, aren’t built for manipulating an alicorn sized body. It took quite a bit of effort to extricate myself from “mom’s” loving embrace, but I managed it quickly enough. It helped that my as yet filly-like body was small enough to squeeze through the spaces I’d manage to wedge open. As soon as I left the room, I felt the hive wash into my consciousness. I admit, I was getting used to it, and since “mom” was asleep, I thought I’d run a few experiments. I need a way out, I thought. I…’listened’ (for lack of a better word) to the susurration of the hive-mind. It took a moment, but soon I had an...impulse. Almost as though a smell was passing across my ears, if that makes any sense, I had a sudden sense of a direction I should travel, and it was guiding me forward and to the left. I could work with this. It took the better part of an hour (by my reckoning) to reach what the hive-mind reassured me was an exit. It looked to be just a blank wall. It was then that I remembered that the Changeling hive in the show had seemingly randomly opening and closing entrances. With a sigh, I sat down to watch a wall and mentally reviewed my plan. Step one, orient myself. Pretty much any Brony has seen the studio released map of Equestria, and so everyone knew the Badlands were to the south, with Appleoosa to the North-West and Ponyville to the North-East. Basically, assuming the sun rose in the East and set in the West (assuming a lot about an alien planet where the star is controlled by an intelligent being on the planet’s surface, I know...I had to start somewhere, damn it!), get a fix on my orientation and travel North until I hit a train line, then follow that. If I got to Appleoosa, stow away on the train to Ponyville. If I got to Ponyville, head straight for Twilight’s castle and hand myself over. Risk? No thanks, I prefer role playing games to tabletop strategy. Essentially, find a way to communicate to Twilight, who was sure to have something in her library to help her magic up a translation spell, then explain my situation. Being the planet’s living expert on trans-universal portals and travel, surely she could concoct something to get me a gateway home. Heck, even if I was here before Tirek showed his ugly mug, then I’d still be on my way home, just with a longer timeline. Just as I was stifling a yawn (it was past my bedtime, and I was a growing changeling) the portal in front of me lensed open. I hopped through it and started scrambling to the surface as fast as my little changeling legs could carry me. When one’s plans are formed in the desperate throes of denial in the mourning process, one tends to go off half-cocked and not thinking things all the way through. After all, why wouldn’t Chrysalis maintain standard diurnal sleep cycles for her hive? It wasn’t like the hive wasn’t built like a termite mound where it towered above the surrounding landscape, making it just as much of a surface city as the rest of Equestria...oh, wait, it was! Standing in the light of the full moon under a starlit sky, I felt all forms of idiot as I realized that even if the sun travels the same direction as Earth’s, I’d be waiting at least 10 hours, if not a full 12, before I could even see the sun. Even worse, I looked up and saw the Mare in the Moon staring down to Equestria. Forget a 10 hour wait, I was at least 6 years too early. At some point I’d dropped to a sitting position, just staring up at the moon. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, but before too long, I heard a much larger changeling come up behind me. Chrysalis settled down on her belly, her forelegs crossed at the pastern (or whatever the hell the equivalent of a wrist or ankle is on a changeling), just watching me for a time. The night air started to cool to the point where winds were starting to pick up. Still gently, but as anyone who’s lived in a desert will tell you, that wouldn’t last. Chrysalis finally spoke, “Mofoblitz, lazap sislaf able reiltas nedril mizule sislaf lazap looking swoquix, foxclore bookbox?” I sighed again, folding my forelegs like her and leaning, our carapaces clacking together as my head hit her shoulder with a thump. I felt her wing touch the top of my head gently, a move similar to a pegasus wrapping their wing over a loved one or… ...or a parent trying to comfort their child. I was doing a lot of sighing, lately. I had a feeling I would be doing so for quite a while yet. I did so again and said, “All right, mom. Let’s go to bed.” As I stood, Chrysalis used her magic to lift me onto her back. I was too broken hearted to object, and besides… ...she was mom. I knew how much a parent wants to dote on their infant children. I turned my head to look at the moon, letting it be the last thing I saw of the surface that night.