//------------------------------// // Chapter 7 - Acceptance // Story: Lost Little Wolf // by PrincessColumbia //------------------------------// “We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.” ― Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire My first molt came at the perfect time. Just as my depression broke and I came out on the other side a new changeling, so too did my old exoskeleton fall away to reveal a new, shinier carapace. Of course, just like breaking through the emotional process to leave my human life behind, ecdysis was accompanied by...irritations. “You’re going to bruise your new carapace.” Chrysalis warned. I looked over at her, hind hoof paused like a dog interrupted mid-scratch. She hadn’t even looked up from the scrolls she was reviewing. I spluttered, “How...how did you even know I was…?” She shuffled the scrolls, surfacing one that had some detail she was looking for, “I’m over a thousand years old, a mother many times over, and I’ve molted more times than I care to count.” She glanced over at me, a hint of humor in her eyes, “Besides, your flaking exoskeleton makes rustling noises when you move.” I gave her my best I-see-what-you-did-there glare before whining, “But it itches!” the syllables on the last word being drawn out to impressive lengths. “Then return to your studies. It should help distract you from the itching.” I grumbled a bit. “More like the itching is distracting me from my studies…” I groused. Mama Chrysalis giggled quietly, knowing I was just reacting to the omnipresent itching. -~<^>~- “No offense, Moony, but the single greatest thing about sleeping these days is getting away from the itching.” I pulled another card off the deck and compared it to the cards fanned out in my hand already. Nightmare looked at me through half-lidded cat-like eyes and a wry smile on her face, “Oh, feathers,” she sarcastically replied, “How shall I ever cope? Downgraded to the same level as topical ointment.” We were more-or-less human. While our current forms very much resembled the polychromatic humans from the Equestria Girls franchise, there were small hints that showed our inhuman nature. The saddle-like thorax that Changeling Queens had was wrapped around my torso, giving all the appearance of a spectacularly color coordinated waist cincher corset. Nightmare’s previously mentioned cat-like irises were present, as were both our horns sprouting from our foreheads. Her cutiemark was also manifest, visible thanks to my dream’s insistence that there was no such thing as clothing that covered more than a bikini. And we were, indeed, wearing bikinis. Hers was a brilliantly contrasting white, shining like a rising sun against her obsidian skin. Mine was forest green with emerald highlights. As I shuffled the drawn card into my hand and pondered my next move, she adjusted her top slightly. “What is the purpose of this clothing, though? It’s obviously not for environmental protection and it does nothing to support these oddly placed teats...” “...breasts…” I absently corrected as I pondered my cards. “...whatever. These...scraps of fabric appear to be entirely ornamental. Why are we even wearing them when simply doing without clothing would be easier?” Smirking, I made sure she saw me openly ogling her form. “If you gotta ask,” I said, “You’ll never understand.” She processed what I had just done, then blushed furiously and pelted me with the cards in her hand. “Thou art getting entirely too familiar, thou cad!” Abandoning the cards I leapt up and fled her assault, laughing my head off as she gave chase. -~<^>~- Now that I’d shown some magical ability, it was time to go back to school. Well, the changeling version of school. The little changelings who’d achieved their first molt were all in the same class. This was simply due to the hatchlings not having the necessary mana channels and nerves in their horns prior to this first molt. I was a special exception, being required to attend in spite of not molting yet because apparently even hatchling queens had enough access to magic. I quickly learned that I wasn’t going to get special treatment for being a queen. So far as the teachers were concerned, their queen was Chrysalis, and as she’d already ordered them to give me the best education they could, so I was now in educational boot camp. It took a few weeks, but I caught on to the written language fairly quickly. I can also confirm that mouth-writing was a thing, and doing so with a quill rather blew. Magic control could not come quickly enough. Speaking of, my teacher for that, an older drone by the name of Azalea, was unforgiving, but in a good way. She knew what Chrysalis was capable of, and expected no less from me. The pace and intensity of the training were brutal, leaving me mentally exhausted and frequently suffering from a headache. I swear I was going to melt those damn stability balls down into puddles of molten metal when I got advanced enough. The caretakers were still seeing quite a bit of me, but for a different reason. Mama Chrysalis wanted me to be able to fly and keep up with the drones, if not necessarily her (for a few years at least). Consequently, I was spending a lot of time with the teachers for flying. Pretty much just basics, but I was “the slow learner,” mostly because while my body may have everything it needed to manipulate a third set of limbs, my 40-year old adult human mind kept tripping over itself trying to just keep me in the air. I was trading off between body-size bruising to intensely aching wing muscles. And my peer group was...less mature. About two decades prior to my death was about the time I met my future wife at school. As she was four years older than me, she actually worked for the college I was attending as a student at the time, her as an Interpreter for the Deaf and myself studying to be a computer programmer, a Criminal Justice major, undeclared, or whatever flavor-of-the-week major I never really picked before leaving college entirely. I had taken a break from school to get married and have a honeymoon and get a household started, then went back a year later. Even the course of a single year of being married created a relatability gulf between me and the rest of the students at the college. About the time I was getting into the third argument with my wife about why the rent payment was late again (we were never very good with money, especially together) the other students were getting into arguments over...some damn stupid celebrity gossip thing that I can’t even remember. That was pretty much the moment I decided to leave school, it just took a few months to really take. I just couldn’t deal with being around people who just didn’t have any real concept of what the “real world” was like. If the separation of a single year made a group of college age peers seem out of touch, imagine being shoved into a class of elementary school kids after you’d completed your doctorate. That was the experience and information gulf I was dealing with. It was a bit of a balm, however, that as a queen, they had a bit of genetically programmed deference, so when the inevitable “cootie conversation” came up, they actually listened to me instead of getting into an inane debate. “No, ponies do not have a disease that makes you turn into one.” OK, so they usually didn’t get into an inane debate. “But Tarsus said that was why we live in a hive and ponies live on the surface, to keep them away from us and keep it from spreading!” said Coxa. Tarsus was a name I’d heard before. He was older than the rest of the class, but not by much. The age difference gave him an air of authority around the rest of my classmates. It didn't help that he was also a big bruiser, out-massing even me, and I was already about half the size of a fully grown drone.  “Didn’t you tell me last week that Tarsus thought that all ponies were born as alicorns but the Princess cut off their horns and wings as punishment?” At Coxa’s nod, followed by the wide-eyed nodding of the rest of our class, I rolled my eyes, “Haven’t we learned by now that Tarsus is full of…” I was interrupted by a throat clearing behind me. Seeing the looks of child-like “Oh, crap, the adult is here” fear in the faces of the larvae in front of me, I sighed, turned around, and looked up at the stern gaze of the teacher. Ah, well. In for a penny, in for a pound. “What?” I said defiantly, “He is full of shit!” -~<^>~- For the record, soap tastes just as horrible to a changeling tongue as it does on a human tongue. Nor does having access to a hive mind make the punishment of standing in a corner any less dull. -~<^>~- A routine had developed. This was good, as routine, especially good and healthy routine, was ideal for helping to recover from depression. Chrysalis would come to get me out of bed, or occasionally send a drone or caretaker to do so, then we’d share breakfast and talk about whatever. “I’m not sure how this...ut-tar-ee relates to this ‘enter-net’ you keep making reference to.” I sighed, “I’m getting there, but you can’t make an apple pie without first creating the universe.” That spun us off into a tangent about Carl Sagan and a universe where magic didn’t exist as a fifth fundamental force. One of these days I’ll be able to complete a story about my old life without a tangent. Or complete one at all. Save for a few, small, tiny handful of stories about my daughter, not a single story about my human existence had been finished yet. After breakfast I was off to flight practice. While repetitive, it wasn’t dull, and every time I mastered something a new variable would be added. This week we were starting on horizontal strafing. Rather, the other changelings were starting on horizontal strafing. I was starting a new and fascinating bruising pattern for the caretakers to work on. Once the requisite visit to the caretakers was done with, it was off to magic school. I was picking this up relatively quickly, and though my control was still lacking, I had a pretty good well of power. I’d managed to take up quills without setting them on fire or crushing them out of existence. I was practically giddy with the thought of being able to write again. And speaking of writing, after magic was reading and writing. While the foal’s books were absolute crap (apparently it was a “state of the industry” thing, I recall a similar period in America’s publishing history where the so-called “children’s books” were things like Treasure Island, fiction that had fantastical elements and was therefore not “serious” and obviously meant for children, ergo the actual books targeted at actually learning to read were utter garbage for the task), the teachers were pretty competent. I’d gone from an absolute incomprehension to being able to identify letters and even recite the Equestrian equivalent to the ABC’s. From there I leapfrogged the rest of the class, as I already knew what a word was and how they formed sentences to communicate ideas, etc. I needed to know what those words were, of course, which required an accelerated course in translating written Equestrian (which was based alphabetically on the Pegasus lettering system but used Unicorn words with Earth Pony grammar and sentence structure mangled over time by lingual drift...this actually explained quite well why Princess Luna-slash-Nightmare Moon sounded like she was using Olde English, she was using a pre-drift version of Earth Pony grammar) into something my hive-assisted language encyclopedia could understand. It would be awhile before I was at my pre-death reading speed (my personal record was three books in a single day), but the progress was very heartening. -~<^>~- Chrysalis’ perplexed gaze met me over her morning beverage, “So the ‘computer’ only knows how to manage a one or a zero.” “Yes! Exactly!” I replied excitedly. “But if it can learn the difference between a zero and a one, why can’t it be taught the number two?” I deflated over my juice, double-facehoofing. “OK,” I sighed, “Let’s review binary again…” -~<^>~- When my daughter had been required by the school district to transfer to a different school due to her autism, it was like mixing nitro and glycerin. I really don’t know what the district administration was thinking by putting the only special needs class for autistic kids in the first grade in the objectively worst school in the district. And when I say “objectively worst,” I’m not kidding. The district had been struggling for years to get that school out of having the worst test scores, matriculation rates, and hell, crime, in the entire district. It was even in the category of “worst schools in the city of Phoenix.”  So obviously, that’s the best place to put a class full of kids who in the best of circumstances will be a little bit disconnected with reality. That was the year she got her first ever suspension. Apparently, there’d been a fight between her and another student. I personally had a feeling she had been goaded into it, but I was doing my best to not let my parental bias weigh in too heavily on matters I wasn’t a direct witness to. Besides, with my job at the time being a part-time gig and my wife working for a school, that meant that I got to take time off and spend it with my daughter. It wasn’t a vacation, I didn’t let her just play all day. We did reading and science and math. I took her on walks where we looked for specific types of plants or birds. During the time she would normally have been at school, she had to do school type work. Given the small sample size of one, I’d say I made a pretty good substitute teacher for those four days of suspension. Freya had so much fun learning from me she didn’t want to go back to school when it was time. Given the environment she was returning to, I don’t blame her. And right now, I was well and truly empathetic to what she went through. Tarsus was glaring down at me. This was a position I wasn’t used to, given that in my human life I was six foot six. I was mildly comforted that, in a few years, my growth would continue and eventually outpace his. That didn’t help here and now, though. “I heard you were talking shit about me!” he poked his hoof into my shoulder. I glared at him, “No, I said you were full of shit. Merely a statement of fact, not a hyperbolic campaign of disinformation and rumor.” The confused look on his face was priceless. Ah, bullies, so universal, so easy. Find a weakness in their armor, and you’ve got them right where you want them. Right up until they charge you, hook you against their shoulder, then slam you into the wall. Of course, that may have simply been this one incident. Honestly, when you’ve dealt with as many bullies as I have, they tend to blur together. With the breath knocked out of me, it made it easy for Tarsus to land a few kicks on my abdomen. That we were both covered in carapace was only a minor help in keeping the injuries from being grievous, instead just really hurting a lot. At least the bruising would be beneath the carapace, unless he managed to crack it. -~<^>~- “Ow! Mom, seriously, it’s not that bad!” I was ineffectively trying to slap her hooves away from my head, which she had in what felt like an iron grip as she examined the changeling version of a black eye. Turns out the carapace bulges rather disturbingly when the tissue underneath it swells. “Which drone did this to you?! I shall make them wish they were never hatched!” she leaned in closely. I whopped her nose. This seemed to be an effective tactic before, and it worked again this time. “Mom! It’s just a bully. I’ll deal with him.” She paused, then with a sigh lowered one hoof back to the ground and wrapped the other leg around me. “Of course, of course. If you’d come to me crying about it I’d have told you to act like a queen and deal with it, and here I am acting like a weak little pony.” I hugged her back and sighed, “Mom, we talked about this.” She rolled her eyes, “I know, I know...don’t talk down about the ponies. I still don’t think you know them well enough from this show you keep telling me about.” “It’s not just that they’re ponies, mom,” with an extra squeeze she released me to go back to her seat. “I don’t like hearing that kind of generalization about any race, especially in a world where the word ‘race’ actually means something.” Having returned to her seat and resuming her eating, she nodded at me. “You were telling me something about that a couple weeks ago. Something about a King Martin…?” I chuckled. Chrysalis still struggled with the way humans were named by the 20th and 21st centuries. “Martin Luther King Junior,” I clarified. “A great man with a great cause. Gave some of the best and most iconic speeches about what it truly meant to treat others as fellow humans.” That tangent distracted her from my injuries enough that she didn’t bother me about them for the rest of the day. -~<^>~- Tarsus didn’t bother with the preamble this time, which meant I was taken completely by surprise when he tackled me against the wall. -~<^>~- Chrysalis gave me the stink-eye over her breakfast, “You’ll handle it, huh?” With the one eye now swollen shut and a wing kinked out of place, I rolled my eyes and took a sip of my juice. -~<^>~- I had formulated an improvised shield. It was merely a continually pulsing mini-explosion of force, rather than a wall of magic, but it was effective in knocking Tarsus for a loop when he tried to charge me this time. As he sat on his haunches holding his head, I dropped my shield. “Listen,” I began. “We can keep doing this over and over, or you can drop it and…” I was interrupted by a faceful of the thick, nearly mucus consistency spit that changelings can use in constructing parts of the hive. Even when still wet it had the consistency of rubber cement and was just as unpleasant to have plastered across one’s eyes, nose, and mouth as you could imagine. One nostril was thankfully left free, otherwise the beating I received after Tarsus recovered would have been even more unpleasant. -~<^>~- “Nobody tells Chrysalis about this, got it?!” I barked the order to the caretakers. “Of course, your highness.” came the feminine reply from the nice caretaker named Immanis gently chiselling the dried spit off my face. “Immy, I’m serious.” I glared at her with the eye she’d prized free from the gluey material. “Chrysy, I know you are,” she replied with a smile, “That doesn’t mean I can’t find it amusing.” The other three caretakers in the room just giggled even more. -~<^>~- Tarsus was many things...well, OK, that was giving him too much credit. I really couldn’t find it in myself to hate the guy. Sure, he was a dick, but he was merely trying to flex his juvenile masculinity. I’d humiliated him, he was striking back. In the end, he wouldn’t be a problem. Really, when you’ve lived under the thumb of a woman who spent a decades long campaign to emasculate anything with a Y-chromosome (whether they wanted it or not) and had honed her art to a craft, one learns to reserve hate to only those who truly deserve it. My step-mother was a nasty piece of work, a woman who was the cause of my fractured teenage memory and the source of my PTSD and night terrors. Compared to her, Tarsus was a poor, misguided idiot. Now if only I could match my conviction to reality, it would be less painful after our encounters. As I walked down the hall from magic school to meet my instructors for written language, pretty much like clockwork Tarsus charged me from what he presumed would be an effective blind spot. The same “blind spot” he’d charged me from the day before. As before, I threw up my primitive pseudo-shield, and again, he bounced off it. He recovered quicker this time, and tried to glue my face again. I dodged the attempt by leaping into flight. This proved to be a mistake, as I suddenly remembered why I was at the bottom of my flight class when he leapt into the air to give chase. It was over in less than thirty seconds as I pancaked myself against a cave wall, followed quickly by Tarsus taking the attack of opportunity to use me as a braking pad...without attempting to slow his own flight first. -~<^>~- “Yuck it up, drama queen!” I groused. Nightmare Moon’s wings twitched spasmodically as her sides heaved,  her barrel positioned awkwardly against the floor, her neck stretched out in front of her and her eyes squeezed shut with tears flowing down her cheeks to the nearly rictus laughing smile on her face, her forelegs wrapped around her ribcage and her hind legs propping her flank up in a singularly undignified position as she laughed her butt off at my waking world predicament. I snorted in insectile-equine indignation. -~<^>~- Charge, shield, duck the spit, but instead of attempting flight, this time just run. I forgot his legs were longer than mine. -~<^>~- Chrysalis simply stared at me. The crunching of a nut being demolished by her jaw echoed around the otherwise quiet dining room. I glared at her over the bandage on my nose, my attempt at a dignified silence being sullied by the sniffling I had to do in order to not have a drippy mess on my lower jaw. Eyes never leaving mine, she took a sip of her morning beverage, the tea-coffee-chocolate beverage allowing her to make a pointed slurping sound as she washed down the nutmeat she had just been chewing on. “I d’now, mom. I’b worgkig on it!” I grumbled. -~<^>~- Clearly, I was getting nowhere trying to solve things like a changeling. I was less than a year old as a changeling, and the results of trying to act like one with so little experience were showing in an increasing difficulty to move about without pain. So it was time to problem solve as a human. Requesting and receiving permission to end magic class early was fairly simple, I had been doing fairly well by the rest of the class’ standards. Apparently, as a queen, my innate well of magic was already quite large, the challenge was bringing it out and properly doing something productive with it. Finding the kitchen was a challenge, as I’d never been there before, but a ping to the hivemind and following my nose yielded results in fairly good time. While there’s been some debate amongst scholars who just don’t leave their ivory towers enough to take in the real world, the prevailing theory as to why humans came to dominate Earth so thoroughly as to establish and even maintain a presence in every single ecosystem on the planet is the use of tools. We inherently take bits of our environment and make new things to manipulate said environment, and as we get better and making and using said tools, we use those tools to make better and better tools. What is an iPhone but just a really, really, really heavily refined wad of metal, petroleum, tree sap, and assorted chemicals? I retrieved my chosen tool for the task at hand and backtracked a bit to my usual route from magic class to language and had to double-time a bit to make sure I wasn’t going to arrive too late. After all, Tarsus might just get bored and wander off. Timing was actually a pretty important part of this particular attempt to resolve this bullying problem. I rather despised school bullies. In elementary school they could be problematic, like Tarsus. In middle school they often upgraded themselves to genuine pains in the ass. By the time high school ended, most had figured out there were better things to do with their time. If any of them held on to their bullying ways into the workforce, they often were met with the harsh reality that late twentieth and early twenty first century workplaces just didn’t put up with that shit. The ones that refused to adapt after that were usually broken husks of people by the time they got as old as I did when I died, and often met their end from heart attacks and other stress related illnesses. The path of the bully was an incredibly short sighted one, often revealing the bully either simply didn’t understand they were on a dead-end path, or were just too stupid to think that far ahead. I also observed that the “big dumb bruiser” image that most people had of bullies was often incorrect. As I was a tall drink of water to begin with and my growth in adolescence launched me from “tall for my age” to “there’s maybe only 1% of people on the planet as tall as you,” the people who might actually have qualified for “picking on somebody their own size” dwindled quickly to zero by my high school freshman year, but I still had a fairly sizable number of bullies. That all stopped when I returned to school one year and one of them decided to try something on the first day of class. Something in me just decided I’d had enough, and pretty much before I could think I had him hoisted up by his collar so his feet were barely touching the floor. To this day I’m now sure how I delivered the stern, yet calm, movie-scene perfect line, “I’m done with your shit, and you and your friends can just fuck off.” I dropped him and turned away amidst the sound of applause from my fellow students and that was the last I saw of him. I had a few remaining bullies that tried stuff after that, but not many, and once I’d unlocked the appropriate formula for confronting them, I learned to shut them down fast and hard. Speaking of fast and hard, Tarsus was about the size of a large Maine Coon cat, or maybe a small bobcat. With the average speed of a housecat at full-tilt run being around 30 miles per hour, getting a tackling shoulder-check from him was like getting hit with a boulder hurled at professional baseball pitcher speed. Unpleasant, and even more remarkable on his part that he was able to recover from smacking headlong into one of my force fields. Sure enough, as I stepped into the usual “target” zone he aimed for, I heard his hooves scrabbling across the floor as he built up momentum. A cast-iron skillet, even a smaller 8-incher, swung off the back like a tennis racket adding it’s angular momentum to Tarsus’ own forward momentum, turns that “whopped by a baseball” feeling into “shot at close range by a riot-control gun loaded with beanbag rounds,” especially debilitating when one takes the brunt of that to the face. I checked his unconscious form carefully, ensuring he was still breathing and that I hadn’t cracked his carapace. I then checked the skillet for damage, pleased to note that cast iron was pretty awesome no matter the universe. “Damnit!” I growled at the silent hallway, “I shoulda said something cool and quipy! ‘The thing about cast iron is…’” I mimicked a swing, “‘...it’s always in season.’” I pondered that one, “Nah, doesn’t work. All right,” I put the skillet on my back and wrapped some grappling magic around Tarus, “Let’s get you to the caretakers.” I couldn’t lift him. I could only just drag him along the floor. “Oof, you’re a heavy one!” I grunted with the effort of dragging, “Looks like I’m going to be late for language class. Again.” -~<^>~- Via messenger, I’d pulled rank and cancelled the rest of my classes for the day. Well, OK, I had mom pull rank, but I was comfortable taking credit for it. Chrysalis was apparently rather pleased with how I’d handled things and was willing to give me some leeway with the cleanup. Which was why I spent the majority of the day waiting for Tarsus to wake up. The caretakers had done their nurse-like, matronly thing and taken the unconscious larval drone off my hooves, tut-tutting at me with knowing winks about the escalating response. One thing I was observing about Changeling culture, you were expected to be a problem solver. There was no room for excuses, whining, or dithering. Queen Chrysalis was an absolute monarch both through biology and because, as a race, Changelings didn’t care much for bureaucracy. They saw it as having far too many opportunities to pass the buck and make sure nobody was held responsible. This went a long way to explaining why Chrysalis held ponies in such contempt in spite of them handing her her own plot on numerous occasions in the last millennia, really. From the small town of Ponyville all the way to the courts at Canterlot, there was some form of bureaucracy and plenty of ponies to fill the rolls in it. Hell, some of the funniest stories in the Brony fandom were about the bureaucracy. In other words, the only consequences I would have to deal with for delivering cast iron to the face of a pesky not-quite “enemy” was having to deal with the fallout myself. Some of the changelings, usually the younger ones, just let the chips fall where they may and ignored the potential problems until they just couldn’t ignore them anymore. I had a bit of a “cheat” in that regard; 40-odd years of human life where that attitude had bitten me in the ass more times than I care to remember. As Tarsus stirred, I closed the book I was reading to pass the time and cleared my throat. He opened his eyes briefly, the closed them again quickly, gripping his head with his forehooves and groaning. “Consider that paying the piper,” I snipped. At the moment I didn’t care that I was using a human colloquialism or worry about whether there was an Equestrian equivalent. He opened one eye a tiny slit and glared at me. “Don’t give me that look, you’re not nearly as good as Chrysalis is at it.” Rather than reply, he shut his eye again and squirmed as his headache was clearly his primary concern. I sighed, “Look, Tarsus,” I began again, “I’m sure you’re expecting me to demand an explanation or grovel at my hooves or whatever. Well I’m not.” That got his attention. He opened his eyes again, though his glare hadn’t diminished. “By Changeling justice, you’re mine now. Of course, you were mine anyway, since I’m your queen...well, OK, princess...my point is that I could have done many, many things to make your life miserable,” I paused and leaned in, returning his glare, “Or ended it.” For the first time since I’d met him face to face nearly a week ago, the anger he’d had on his face melted like ice in a desert at midday. As he processed exactly what he’d done, fear started to form behind his eyes. I shook my head, “I’m not that kind of royal, though.” I leaned back, “So you can either continue the path you're on, and now that I’ve found a way to take you down, I’ll become your personal brick wall. I’m a Queen,” I made sure to emphasize the title in my voice to drive my point home, his compound eyes seemingly becoming unfocused as he started imagining the scenario I was painting with my words, “The only way to keep me from becoming more powerful than you by a nearly infinite factor is to kill me now, and if you were to do that you’d earn the wrath of Chrysalis. That path is only a trap.” “Or,” He focussed on me again, “You can simply...leave me be. You need to understand, at this point I only see you as a nuisance. I don’t hate you, I don’t have anything against you. If you want to avoid the fate I just described, just...leave me alone. Live your life, serve your hive, harvest love and do a good job.” “The thing is, Tarsus, I just don’t care.” His brow scrunched up at that, “I’m a 40-year old male alien that’s been given a second chance at life as the daughter of a freakin’ queen. What I’ve got is pretty awesome, and I may even be immortal. There’s pretty much nothing a schoolyard bully could do to me with the promising future I have in front of me and after all the shit I’ve been through to get here.” I hopped up from my seat and used my magic to put the book I’d been studying on my back. As light as it was, being a foal’s primer on writing in essay format, it still wobbled. Tarsus’ eyes still tracked it, I knew from his teachers that he was incapable of even that slight amount of magic power and control. “Make sure you get some rest, head injuries can be nasty.” I said as I walked out, dismissing Tarsus from my mind. -~<^>~- The process of molting is disgusting and uncomfortable and the less said about it, the better. ...OK, fine. I freaked right out and was actually climbing the walls while it was going on. Chrysalis was alternating between laughing in near hysterics at her daughter having a phobia of herself and just using her superior magic ability to keep me corralled and contained while my exoskeleton shed itself from the new one taking its place. It was not funny that she stayed with me that night and entered my dreams with Nightmare Moon, apparently wanting another immortal to share the memory with. That it was my absolute morbid embarrassment that turned them from suspicious of each other to leaning against each other in laughter as Moony helped Chrysalis replay the memory in the dreamscape was pretty much the only salve to my very much bruised ego. My pouting only made them laugh harder.  The next day was thankfully uneventful. I happily talked about anything except the molt with Chrysalis over breakfast (experimenting for the first time with solid foods and falling in love with the taste of cinnamon danishes all over again) and diplomatically ignoring her occasional giggle. In magic we worked on producing more music. The other hatchlings seemed to like my reproductions of 2NU and They Might Be Giants while the teachers were more interested in Two Steps from Hell and AudioMachine, though I’m not sure if it was just because the massively layered scores were a true test of my magical ability or they just really liked the music. Flight classes were the same as always; marginal, gradual improvements over time. Language was getting interesting. Grammar was proving to be less of a challenge than I thought, once I started figuring out that my familiarity with the King James Bible and the Book of Mormon made it easy to understand the Earth Pony based lingual structure to written Equestrian. This allowed me to start working on reading and writing more complex works, especially now that I was able to use a shaky magical grip rather than trying to manipulate a quill or pencil with my lips and tongue. And so went the day. That evening I opted to watch the moon rise, letting my mind wander in contemplation, if not meditation. As the whole of the moon finally crested and the sun sank beneath the opposite side of the horizon, I heard Chrysalis’ hooves crunching the gravel. “You’re doing much better, daughter,” she said as she sat down next to me. I smiled up at her, not replying immediately, and then returning my gaze to the moon. A silent and companionable moments later, I said, “I still miss them.” “Your human family?” she inquired. I hummed in acknowledgement. A few more silent moments and she spoke again, “...I’m afraid I don’t...feel the same things you have for them.” At my curious look in her direction, she clarified, “Before you...the only thing I’ve ever cared that much for has been my hive. Even then, as much as I...love…my hive, you’re my first queen. I...I don’t know how to explain how I...feel about you.” I smiled knowingly, returning my gaze to the moon, “When I was a kid...a human kid, my dad loved telling me about when I was born.” I felt her attention on me again rather than saw it. I hadn’t really told her anything about my father, though I’m sure she could feel that I had nothing but love and respect for him, “He told me, ‘When you were in your mother’s belly, I knew it was my responsibility to take care of you, but I wasn’t sure about anything else. When you were born, though, and the doctors put you in my arms, it was like you reached into my heart, grabbed tight, and refused to let go, even today.’” I smiled at the memory, almost tasting the soft serve ice cream he used to buy me nearly every day after school and smelling the fall air of Colorado. “I thought it was a nice story, but it never held much meaning for me until Freya was born. Her mother...the labor was problematic.” Chrysalis knew what the biological process was for mammals to give birth, of course, so I didn’t feel I needed to go into details, “The doctors had to do surgery to get Freya out, so for the first few hours of her life, I was Freya’s only parent while JoLene was still on the operating table. Just like my dad, though, the instant she was put in my arms, I felt it; her reaching into my heart.” A small tear formed in my eye, I sniffed a little to halt the tears threatening to fall. This was a happy memory, and it still threatened to burst my heart whenever I remembered it. “Chrysalis...Mom,” I turned to look her in the eye, I’d used her name on purpose. Sure enough, she had turned to face me. “I...know I’m probably not what you expected, but I know the emotions you’re pouring into me, the ones you’ve been feeding me for the past few months, they’re the same as what I felt for my daughter that first time I held her.” Instead of speaking, she smiled at me, reached over with her foreleg, and pulled me close. In a few hours I’d be meeting Nightmare Moon in my dreams again, but for the moment, I just enjoyed the night with my new mother and the face of the Mare in the Moon gazing down at us.