Few people, be they ponies or otherwise, would ever think about witnessing a changeling working a menial job as a restaurant associate. Much less would they ever think said changeling would be working said job without a disguise of some sort to keep unwanted attention from befalling them.
Personally, Ebonfallow wouldn't have made such a career her first choice. But, here she was; spraying water and sweet-smelling blue liquids from a pair of translucent cleaning bottles on a wooden table's flat surface, then wiping it down with a dry rag and making sure it looked spick and span for the next would-be diner who sat here. When she was done that, she left with the items at her disposal to attend her next task—dish-collecting duty.
She worked such a job as that. Here, in an old and well-known seaside restaurant and bar, the Leviathan's Maw. More specifically, she served as a waitress and busser, with maintenance duties on the side. Her main tasks were simple; she would brings folks their food and collect spent dishes, then bring said dishes into the kitchens to be washed. Rinse and repeat (quite literally, most of the time). Sometimes she would receive odd looks her way for her efforts, even rarer still a tip. Most other times, the ponies who came here to eat and drink would ignore her.
Ebonfallow knew that there was little wonder as to why she received such cold and unfriendly reactions. Changelings were creatures with an outward appearance resembling something more insectoid than mammalian. Dark, craggy chitin covered their thin forms, magic-producing horns stuck out of their heads, and instead of a mane of hair running down their necks, there were spiked projections held together by fleshy webbing. Ebonfallow's own eyes were two big, teal, compound orbs, and a thin shell along her back housed a set of transparent, hole-filled wings with a droning buzz to their pitch that would make anyone's skin crawl.
If her visage was "off-putting", that was surely stating it mildly. To put it much closer to what these ponies probably thought, changelings were like foul, twisted parodies of what their kind were like. While ponies had fingers ending with nails that could be filed down as they saw fit, changelings had hands ending in claws. While ponies had simple teeth made to munch on vegetation and fruits, changelings possessed two, long saber fangs to display. Wicked holes littered their chitinous forms at random, practically emphasizing the point that they were creatures only worth disgust and contempt by the more fair beings to inhabit this world.
"Off-putting" indeed...
Before she began working here, in a place where anypony with two functioning brain cells in their fur-covered heads would know she never belonged, things were far from easy for Ebonfallow. Changelings were supposed to possess their iconic, if infamous ability to change forms. They would use such an ability to disguise their unnerving-looking selves as ponies or other creatures, and then use their unparalleled skill at subterfuge to live alongside other intelligent races. They would steal and feed upon the love of the creatures they sought to imitate and grow close to, for the emotion of love granted changelings true power and the nourishment to keep it. Typically, after gaining enough love and storing it within their bodies, they would return to their hives to share it with their siblings and fellow hivemates, strengthening them for the days ahead.
Ebonfallow would perhaps have had no problem against doing what needed to be done to please the hive, but there was one glaring issue she was faced with: she couldn't change forms. It wasn't a choice, nor was it a punishment she was cursed with; it was something she was born lacking. A defect. A disorder. A shameful mark fate had stricken her with. A flaw that rendered her all but useless to the queen and her family as a whole.
She lived in her hive, enduring the issue of her condition until she was a young adult. By that time, she could barely handle her insipid and unavailing lifestyle any longer. If there was anything she wished not to be for her hive, it was to be a burden. And so, Ebonfallow left the hive one dark night in tears, slipping away from her family for their sake alone. Abandoning them for their betterment, and what Ebonfallow needed to now forge into her own.
It was around that time, two years ago, now, that she came upon the Leviathan's Maw, situated in this warm, coastal pony city of Fallport. She had willingly taken this opportunity to labor in an environment all but foreign to her, working under and alongside creatures that had every right to distrust and despise her. But what other choice would she have had?
However, if there really was a single, infinitesimally minuscule speck of fortune in her case, it's that these ponies were at least tolerant of her presence. Tolerant enough to accept her for what she was when she came knocking with her plea. Tolerant enough to understand her plight and offer her shelter and work for her troubles. And, most importantly, tolerant of her queer presence to keep just far enough away from her to not cause any sort of ruckus that might disrupt what little there was left of her simple life, now bearing at least some coveted meaning. Ebonfallow could handle the stares. She could handle the aloofness. Just as long as they kept out of her business, she would keep out of theirs.
The changeling sighed. She, like all of her kind, longed for love to devour, but she knew she had no legal way of obtaining it here without surely harming somebody and ruining her chance at living alongside these ponies. Her very appearance drove away any who had even a small chance of wanting to share their most tender emotions with her. Without love, changelings like her could survive on the sustenance of simple, physical foods that ponies naturally ate, if only just. It was enough to keep the body running running, but the spirit would inevitably grow dull and their magic would lack substance and power for all but the more simple of abilities. Either way, Ebonfallow believed she could make do on it. After all, if she had the phrasing of that pony saying right; "when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade..."
Upon collecting another set of dishes from an empty table and finding no tip left behind for her to collect, Ebonfallow, balancing the dirtied plates, cups and silverware in her left hand, bit her lip anxiously with a pearly fang. Her webbed ears twitching, the changeling's head slowly looked over her shoulder, spying the clock situated just above where the bar rested in the middle of the bustling establishment.
It was almost three. Her shift was scheduled to end soon. And the sooner it ended, the sooner she could head to the beach and unwind for a few hours in the warm sun and cool surf. And potentially scare some overly-curious foals away if they grew close enough to her while trying to do such things. The shocked looks on their youthful faces were always worth a much-needed laugh.
Just a little longer, she told herself, again and again, carrying on with her duties before the manager, a gruff old horse of a strict-but-fair demeanor named Birch Caber, could see her taking that one second of staring as a gesture of slacking off. Just a little longer...
After minutes of swimming up to it from the deep below, Blackfish finally breached the water's never-still surface with a great splash. His rupture sent small, almost crystalline droplets of seawater all around before they fell and were again consumed by the embrace of the ocean.
The nostrils on his snout puffed out a dense stream of vapor before inhaling a strong breath of the crisp, warm afternoon air hanging above the sea. As he shook his head to get the water out of his eyes, his hair, long and wild white, dark-tipped locks as they were, waved about with his vaguely equine head most slovenly with the salty brine soaking them. His smooth but thick skin, half as black in its texture as midnight and half as white as ocean foam, reflected the glow of the sun above as his pale azure eyes opened wide to see it.
His ears twitching and nostrils flaring, Blackfish dove forth in a western direction when his staring ended, a gleeful certainty of sorts in his stride. His hind legs and long, powerful, fluked tail beating vertically against the water as his firm arms guided his form, his long dorsal fin, situated between the fore of his shoulders, cut through the surf as a knife cut through warm butter.
Where he was heading by his lone self was the coastline, one neighboring where his pod's territory was situated further out to sea. Specifically, the coastline of which he often spied from afar, always with wonder, but never with enough courage to approach.
Not until this day, anyhow...
Now, the elders of his pod were most adamant that he not try to go ashore where sapient life dwelt. Much more so were they vocal in dissuading young Blackfish from making any actual attempt to mingle with intelligent creatures that weren't orcas. But oh, how Blackfish so dearly loved to go against their wishes when something so thrill-promising as exploring was involved. The anatomy of his body permitting him and other orcas to be as capable of walking on dry earth as he was swimming in water, the densely-populated land of the ponies was one of the few places he hadn't so much as dared to visit until now...
An orca through and through, Blackfish was a specimen resembling most bulls of his kind. Sinewy muscle seemed to embody his form, all honestly gained from living an existence in which ninety-nine percent of it was spent treading the rough and fickle currents of the vast ocean. But, most aberrantly, he seemed to long for something more than what the normal orca life expressed. Something more than the thrill of hunting. Something more than staying close to family. Something... more.
There were plenty of reasons to ignore the unknown thirst for something he tried so hard to discover. The love his pod showed for him was genuine and sweet, and he cherished them in turn. Hunting fish, crustaceans, and other assorted sea life was something he excelled at, perhaps a bit more than others his age. His eccentric habits of leaving the pod to explore alone had caught the eye of more than one pretty cow, which he thought many a time to reciprocate, only to be sidetracked by that same thirst that ailed his young mind.
And now, that thirst for more had led him to perform this little adventure. Blackfish paused for a second, as now, in the distance, the sight of the coastal pony city began to show. Little specks of many different hues dotted the shoreline of gilded sand; the shapes of the multi-colored equine creatures that populated land, all come to surely bask in the cool water that rolled in as great waves here.
Blackfish felt no worry in the prospect of interacting with the land-dwellers as his elders showed much concern over; in fact, he felt invigorated. He, and his pod for that matter, had encountered their kind many a time before, all in the midst of exploring this vast ocean of theirs in vessels both great and small. Upon spotting his kind, they would often wave their hands with the mien of excited calves behind the motions, and unable to resist obliging their animation, Blackfish would happily wave back. Some of the equines, especially those in the smaller types of watercraft, actually grew close enough to speak toward the orca, communing in a dialect of a language his species understood quite well.
The thoughts running through Blackfish's head were numerous, but all were drawn toward what he might see and interact with once he made his approach to land. As a matter of fact, he was nearing the shore now. Without even needing to use the echolocation his kind were blessed with to detect incoming obstacles, he could see the water growing ever more shallow. The tallest waves were beginning to build to their maximum height before coming down on what stood below them, and Blackfish rode upon their momentum until it was too shallow to swim any longer.
Leaving the ocean he had called home his whole life, Blackfish's first steps upon this alien land were long, slow and heavy. His webbed, claw-tipped feet sunk deep into the wet sand that the waves thundered against, the sensation all the more sweet with his untempered excitement. Step by step he ventured further, his great tail dragging behind him, leaving at first a wake in the water, and then a trail in the ground, both of which were quickly washed away no sooner than had they taken shape. The waves soon grew smaller the deeper inland he traveled, giving an unobstructed, crystal-clear view of what was ahead of him.
And then, his pale azure eyes blinking thrice with wonder as they gazed upon this world, unimpeded by splashing water of any sort, the first thing Blackfish saw, laying a scant few meters away from him, was something he immediately noticed. Something dark in its texture. Something strange. Something he honestly hadn't expected to see, come his arrival to the beach.
As Blackfish only realized much later, what he saw in this instant was something—a creature—who was destined to change his life forever.