Gin and tonic might’ve been good, but other alcohols and soft drinks mixed were disgusting.
It’d been just over a week since I stopped going after the changeling. Nothing really nagged at me. Speaking to her was enough, I guess. With that idea extracted from my life, new ones had taken its place. Just yesterday, Lackaday had suggested that, if gin and tonic tasted so good, I should try other alcoholic-drink-and-carbonated-drink combinations, too. I didn’t regret it, although I hadn’t yet found a combo that didn’t make me want to vomit.
“Whiskey and raspberry soda?” the bartender asked flatly. “Really.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“…No…”
“I refuse to knock it until I’ve tried it.”
With an eyeroll, the bartender served me.
I should’ve knocked it.
I nursed my tongue back to health with chocolate milk. No, I had to tell Lackaday that do-it-yourself soda cocktails were not good in the slightest.
Out of nowhere, an unfamiliar mare sat down next to me and started using the bartop to drum out a slow, nervous beat. I tried to ignore her, but in hindsight, the green eyes and coppery mane should’ve been a giveaway. Finally, it got to be more than I could take. “Can I help you?”
“Thank you for not following me,” she whispered in a certain sibilant voice, “but I need help.”
I choked and started slamming my hoof against my throat. When my airways had cleared themselves, I whispered to her, “Alley, last place we met. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Her mouth tightened, but she nodded and was soon gone.
I quickly finished, paid, and left. A cool wind was blowing through the alley, but I barely noticed. It don’t think she did, either; she kept walking back and forth, staring at the ground and crunching through the gravel. She wouldn’t’ve noticed if I hadn’t cleared my throat. “Hey.”
Her ears went up and she raised her head. Her breathing hitched for a moment. She smoothed out her mane — not that it needed it — and muttered, “I need help.”
“You said that already. Context, please?”
“Well- It- I- Okay, look, you, you know how changelings aren’t supposed to feed on love anymore? We’re supposed to share it?”
“Yeah.” Vaguely.
“I wasn’t at the hive when Chrysalis left, so I- I… I don’t know how to share love.” She looked away. “I’ve been on my own for so long, and suddenly I’m supposed to share love instead of take it, and I don’t have anyone to share it with, and I- I’m starving.”
Help a changeling make friends? There was no way I could do that, not with my history. “So go back to the hive and they’ll help you there.”
She snapped back to me. I noticed an “I’m surrounded by idiots” expression attempting to crawl onto her face. “I. Am not up. For a long-distance trip,” she whispered quickly, angrily. “Did you miss that I’m starving? And it- I can’t pack food, not like you!”
“You should’ve gone to the hive first thing, you know.”
“I thought I knew what I was doing, and I made a mistake, and I might be literally dying because of it, okay? Don’t get snarky on me!” She snarled, and I suddenly noticed a pair of fangs that hadn’t been there a few seconds before.
I twitched, but my hooves stayed as unmoving as a mountain. “Fine. So what do you need my help for?”
She took a few long breaths. “Teach me how to fit in. It- It’s why I’ve been going to bars, because I wanted to- I was trying to see how ponies behaved so I could copy it, and-” She shuddered. “I’ve been doing it for weeks, and I still don’t know how to fit in, because you guys don’t make any sense. I mean, it- I- Frig, flailing like crazy gets me applause in one place but thrown out in another! What am I supposed to do?” She looked at me with a mixture of confusion and hopefulness, her eyes both hollow and sparkling.
In spite of myself, part of me wanted to help her. She reminded me of myself — stuck in a dismal rut, jarred out of that rut by someone else, clinging to that someone else for fear of falling back in. Yet, part of me said there had to be an easier way to do this, like- “You could be a changeling, try to make friends that way. We’re supposed to be allies with you, now, and you don’t look nearly-”
“You only become colorful like that when you learn how to share love, so I don’t- I haven’t- I still look like this!” She flashed into her true form. This time, I did take a step back; she was still black and holey, an overgrown monster horsefly with blank blue eyes and strange frills instead of a mane or tail. Yet, once I looked past that, she didn’t seem so scary; she was scrawny, underfed, almost pitiful. She’d been right; the chances of her making it to the changeling hive like that were those of a water drop surviving a furnace.
She held up a perforated leg and buzzed her wings. Her voice was quiet. “Can-” She swallowed. “Can you imagine somepony trusting me now? You’re the only pony I know who won’t run away screaming.”
I could think of several answers to that — turning into a changed changeling until she truly metamorphosed was just the first thing that came to mind — but I suspected she’d blow them off. She was panicked and I, as far as she could tell, was a definite solution. Hard to turn away from that. Besides, she was thin and bony. I couldn’t simply walk away from that in good conscience.
She was still babbling, even as she went back to her pony shape. “B-besides, I’ve been thinking of you as prey for so long that my default reaction towards you is to just take your love but I’m not supposed to do that and I’m worried if I stay too long around a specific pony I’ll just start taking their love on instinct so I try to stay away but that’s really bad for sharing love…”
A cold draft picked up and my fur stood on end. I tried to let her run her course, but when I realized I couldn’t see the end, I said, “Stop.” She did so. “Okay, I’m… not the greatest at this-” (Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth.) “-but I’ve got a friend who’d be glad to help you.” (She blinked, closed her mouth, and twitched her ears.) “We’ll meet her here tomorrow, and we can — she and I, not you and I — we’ll start helping you together. Okay?” I knew Lackaday wouldn’t mind. Heck, she’d probably be thrilled.
The changeling slowly started nodding, quickly speeding up. “Yeah, yeah, that’d be great! Thank you, I don’t-”
“On one condition.”
I swore you could hear the screech when her head stopped. She looked at me with half-narrowed eyes. “Okay?…”
“Right here, right now, we’re going to go back inside and spend the next… I don’t know, half-hour just talking. I want to know the real you a little before I introduce you to my friend.” Another frigid breeze. “Plus, it’s cold out here and warm in there.”
Her giddiness bubble popped as she groaned. “I’m a changeling,” she spat. “I don’t have a ‘real me’.”
The phrase was out before I knew I was thinking it. “Then how come you’re as shallowly cynical as a Philosophy 101 student? I doubt every changeling thinks like that.”
“Well- That- It-”
“And you stammer a lot. Way more than me. Just because you’re avoiding your identity doesn’t mean you don’t have one.” Yet another gust of wind made me shiver. “Look, those’re my terms. You don’t like them, you can leave.” I pointed at the street.
“No,” the changeling mumbled, “it’s- I’ll- Let’s go in.” She swallowed.
Soon, we were sitting back inside at a grungy corner table, a glass of water in front of each of us. The changeling fidgeted and kept switching between examining the wood grain of the table and looking at me like I was a judge ready to sentence her to death.
I was the one who broke the silence. “So. What was up with the accents?”
“It’s a-” She swallowed. “Social camouflage thing,” she mumbled. Her attention became wholly fixated on the table. “Ponies feel more comfortable around ponies who talk like they do. Bad habit. Keep slipping into it. Hard to break.”
“Oh. Neat. Anyway. I’m Cobblestone. You?”
The changeling looked up at me.
“Look, friendship is a two-way street. If I’m going to help you, I need to know your name.”
For a moment, silence. Then the changeling began to speak.