//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7 
// Story: Pearl's Travels 2: Canterlot 
// by Makitk 
//------------------------------//

There was the strange sensation of floating. Floating in a dark void in which a low thumping sound reverberated in a familiar rhythm. Every thump came with a disorienting blurring of my vision, as if I could not properly focus on the world around me while hearing the sound at the same time.

Even with me drifting in what was essentially a pitch black void, there was the hint of a dark blue light surrounding me even if there was little it could illuminate. I could faintly see the outlines of my own form, which only disoriented me more as I put my focus on it.

Rather than my Changeling self, I appeared to be Human once more, with human arms and human legs drifting uselessly through the void. Strangely enough I had no control over my limbs, even when I tried to focus on moving them. All that did was increase the blurring of my view and make me feel nauseous.

I slowly became aware of another form near me, but could not focus enough on the blue shape to recognize them. The thumping sound and blurry vision just drowned out all details of the form, other than the general shape of a winged pony drawing slowly nearer to me as if they were able to walk in this strange realm where I was stuck drifting without any control whatsoever.

A soothing female voice spoke to me in a maternal tone, but the words sounded like utter gibberish to me. The intonation made it sound like a question, then a statement, but all I heard were guttural sounds. Guttural sounds uttered by a most beautiful voice, but no less useless than my limbs were to me in this strange place.

Another question was uttered while the thumping grew ever louder. The blue figure before me slowly started to pull away, even as they started to move their hooves as if walking forward. As they did, a blue light erupted from their forehead, enclosing a large horn protruding from their head. The more they pulled away, the more their motions seemed to indicate they were trying to counteract it by first walking, then running, and finally spreading their wings in an attempt to fly closer. What magic they attempted to manifest, fell away without form or substance; I was clearly utterly beyond their grasp.

One final guttural sound was voiced as if from a far-away place as the figure disappeared from sight altogether, and a wave of nausea and pain washed over me to replace the dreamlike state I had been in.

I blinked my Changeling eyes open to the unexpected green tone of soft resin surrounding me. The thumping continued to hit me in its rhythmic pattern, now accompanied by a spark of pain on the back of my head.

It took me a moment to realize the thumping was actually my heartbeat, pumping blood to what must be a wound, and that strange realm I had been just moments before could have well been a fever-dream.

I tentatively moved my Changeling limbs, noting that my front right leg felt stiff as if it was held by harder resin than that which I was floating in. It gave me flashbacks to limping through the outpost's hallways after the first playfight I'd had as a Changeling had gone sour.

It had just about been the one and only reason I had been goaded into helping my siblings with their plans to stave off a Changeling attack on Equestria, thanks to my hurt leg having taken me out of the regular Changeling training sequence. The time they had spent with me while my sprained leg healed had given them the opportunity to fill me in on the state of affairs which would otherwise not have been possible.

The fact my leg was feeling stuck yet again made me think there was more wrong with it than I had initially considered. It was very clearly a weakness I would have to keep in mind from now on.

There was a pain in my back as I tried to stretch my wings out in the resin, but I blamed it on the thickness of the resin and the flimsiness of my insectoid wings. They were probably bending in an odd way as I tried to get them out from under my chitin shield. Probably.

Having come to terms with being a Changeling again, who was clearly suffering from a weak right leg and a headwound, I tried to move my attention outward - beyond the confines of my own situation. The resin pod I was stuck in was dangling from the ceiling of the room Burst and I had slept in just the night before, with Camellia's botanic items still haphazardly put away so as to create room for us.

I attempted to swing my pod by moving my lower legs through the resin, as I had when I first woke up in one back at the Changeling hive outpost, but it did not give way at all. I could potentially cut my way out of the pod with my fangs, but the pain in the back of my head made me think it was better to stay where I was. For all I knew the pod was filled by a Matron's healing resin, after all.

After settling into the idea of waiting until someone could fill me in on what was going on, knowing I was about as safe as I could be while in a resin pod, I just let my thoughts drift.

Not all of it made sense to me, not the least of which the odd way in which Camellia's behaviour had changed just before I woke up in this pod. We had been talking on a friendly level, or as friendly as a pony and Changeling could, and then suddenly there was that buildup of tension coming out of nowhere!

The attack was unwarranted, and I was obviously no match for her magical abilities. I remembered flying backward down the flight of stairs... and then waking up in the pod. The floaty fever dream was most likely induced by the way my head had hit the floor below. I would be utterly amazed if I had not ended up with a concussion from it.

This was what a concussion felt like, right? The painful thumping of my heartbeat, the way my memories were seeming a little more jumbled than usual, the way I felt like I was drifting in-and-out of consciousness even while I was thinking things to myself?

I honestly had no reference for it, and I was prone to overthinking things.

It took an undeterminable amount of time before the door to the room opened and Oval wandered in, her bug eyes giving me a good looking over before she opened her mouth.

"How long have you been awake for?" I heard her speak through the layer of resin, which was not unlike hearing someone on the edge of a swimming pool speak to you while you were yourself submerged in the water.

There was no way for me to answer her while I was stuck in my resin pod, of course, so I just raised an eyebrow at her.

"Ah, right. Well, I had to put you in there so you would stop struggling; you were still trying to fight back even as Camellia and I moved you up here," Oval revealed. "The fight's over, and Camellia is downstairs. Why did you have to attack her?"

Wait, Camellia thought I was the one attacking her?? I slowly moved my head side-to-side in the resin to protest, but Burst's eyes narrowed slightly at my response.

"She said you just became ever more agitated while you were talking to her, and she had to defend herself so you would not feed off her," Oval continued. "I don't know you as someone who would risk everything like this. Blaze, perhaps, but not you. You've shown yourself to be more levelheaded than me and my sisters, so this makes no sense to me!"

I shook my head more, even if it made the pain and dizziness spike up from my movement.

"Well, you'll have a chance to explain yourself once you're healed, okay? Camellia has sent for a friend of hers who might be able to help us out where she can't herself, so your fight with her doesn't appear to have caused too much harm," Oval muttered. "You should get some sleep; you've been out for most of the day and the sun has gone down a few minutes ago. That's why I came up, actually; to get some sleep myself."

I watched as Oval closed the bedroom door and laid herself down on the ground between my pod and the door. Her back was turned to the door as if she trusted our host to not rush in during the night, and she was facing me with a small amount of distrust.

Obviously Camellia's experience of the fight had been different from mine. To me, Camellia had seemed to be the agitator; having forced me to defend myself against her. Yet Camellia had spun that around as if I had made the first move? It made no sense, but thinking about it too much made the pain in my head rise to the point where my vision became blurry again.

I took a page from Burst's book and closed my eyes to get some more rest. The pod would heal me as long as I was in it, so I would just have to wait until Oval thought I had recovered enough so I could be let out again.

The green glow of my resin pod and the, near-black, blue glow of the strange void I had been in before, bled through one another as I had more fever dreams during the night. At one point I woke to find Oval had gone again, but I had not seen her leave the room. The whole thing was just one disorienting moment after the next.

When I finally started to make sense of things again, I realized I had been staring at the worried face of Oval for more than a few seconds, my sister having moved to stand right in front of me at some point in the recent past. She was looking at me as if she had asked a question, her forehooves placed on the pod's exterior wall so she could keep herself standing upright on her back legs to get on an even height with me.

I blinked a few times, then shrugged noncommittally in an attempt to make my sister aware that I had only just regained consciousness again.

Oval sighed in worry, her breath barely fogging up the resin between us. "I asked if you were still in pain, Pearl. Your wound has healed to the point where I'm not sure my resin will do much of anything for it anymore, but I'm not sure you should come out if you're still in pain. I'm not a Matron, so I'm not sure if I'm judging it right."

I thought about it a moment, realizing the pain had lessened to nothing more but a background nuisance. It was still there, but it was no longer causing me nausea or blurriness.

I shook my head in the resin, a bit stronger than I probably had in the previous day when Oval had asked me about my fight with our pony host, and immediately regretted it as the nausea returned with a vengeance. I must have visibly winced, as Oval prodded my pod with her right hoof while staring me down with a frown.

"Please don't lie about your health, Pearl," she chided me.

I shook my head again, slightly slower this time.

"Hmm, if you're sure you're ready to come out," my Changeling sibling responded in a questioning tone? After another slow nod from me, she appeared to make a decision in my favour and leaned forward while preparing me for what was to come; "Okay, try to keep your weight off your right hoof there. I'll cut you an opening and try to support you where needed."

I gave another nod as Oval sank her fangs into my pod and dragged them down as she let herself sink down until she was on all fours again. The resin around me washed out of the gashes her fangs had made, splashing over her, but she barely seemed to mind.

I breathed out the resin from my lungs so the air could replace it, then opened my mouth and gave a quick cut sideways wih my fangs pressed against the wall in front of me. With the two cuts Oval's fangs had made, the slice I gave it made the resin wall before me fall forward so there was a large gap for me to escape out through.

Keeping Oval's warning in mind, I landed on my left foreleg more than my right as I fell out onto the now wet wooden floor, and immediately found my sister standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me for extra support, her breath landing on my wet back.

"Thanks, but I could've cut myself out, you know?" I mumbled back to Oval, shivering a bit to the cooler air of the room outside the resin pod I had just left. Her body was slightly warmer than the ambient temperature, but mine had been sitting still for too long and simply needed to adjust.

"Sure, but it would have taken too long; Camellia's friend is waiting for us downstairs, which is really the only reason I'm willing to pull you out of this right now," Burst responded flatly, giving a slight nudge with her right shoulder to mine. "My resin doesn't have the best healing abilities, especially not compared to Matron, so it would have been better for you to stay in there for a few more days."

"How long have I been in there now?" I asked, letting my chin come to a rest on Burst's chitin backplating.

"A day-and-half now, it's just past lunchtime," my sister replied calmly, reaching up a hoof to my flank to rub some resin off. "There's probably still some sandwiches left if you feel like eating?"

I sighed longingly at the idea, but then moved my head away from Oval's back to look down at the hard resin covering my right foreleg. It was a situation I had been in before, and I knew how bothersome such a cast could be when trying to go places. "I'll have to stumble down the stairs, I guess, but I could definitely do with a sandwich or two."

"I didn't want to take the chance by not encasing your leg, considering your luck with that particular one," Oval pointed out in a half-joke, detaching herself from me to look back past our forms at the cast as well. "We could chip the resin off later today so you can check whether it's fine, but let's go down first. You'll have to meet Meadowsweet."

"Meadowsweet?" I replied in surprise as Oval turned around fully and then walked past me to get to the door, even if we were both still dripping with green resin.

"You'll see," Burst spoke enigmatically, pulling the door open for me and nudging her head at it.