Changing Ways

by Comma Typer


Dry Pot

They could hear the calm roll of the ocean, swishing by with their humongous waves down the craggy cliffs, frothy at the tips and crashing against the eroded walls to subside back into that greater body of water. At the horizon, there was nothing but the sky and the sea—two endless things in this space, alone together, the seas sparkling with their froths and the sky twinkling with their stars. The moon’s reflection flashed on the surface of the sea, and, from certain angles, it looked like there were two moons—one in the sky, one in the ocean.
It was peaceful here. The only other sound that penetrated the air was the hooting of an owl and the cackle of a fire.
At the edge of the cliff, those three creatures—besides the owl—sat around a little campfire made up of only wood. The dragon scratched her orange scales and twirled her purple spine. The hippogriff fiddled with her necklace’s pearl fragment, then warmed her claws before the fire. The pony stood near the edge of the cliff, feeling the breeze in his flapping mane.
Smolder took out a bag, brought out some marshmallows. “Hey, Silverstream, want some?”
Silverstream nodded and held out an open claw at it. “Totally!”
The dragon threw the marshmallows into the fire, letting them burn.
The two of them sat on the grass and waited for their snacks to be toasted.
Around them were the trees, though it was not enough to warrant a forest. Beyond, it was plains all around, the grass swaying with the wind. The smell of fresh air could not be more exhilarating, especially in the night.
Smolder watched the fire as it swayed a bit, too, and watched the marshmallows gradually turning brown. “I can’t believe he just slept. I wonder what they must’ve done to him.”
“Love?” Silverstream suggested in her usual perky voice.
“It’s got to be more than that,” Smolder replied. She rested an elbow on her knee. “What labor did he do?" Eyes to the marshmallows. "Oh—it’s done.”
She bent forwards and grabbed all the marshmallows from the fire. She held them up, smoke rising out of them.
Silverstream took some and popped them into her mouth.
Smolder let out a sly chuckle and ate some, too.
Star Tracker turned around, seeing his rescuers eat. “Uh, could I have some, too?”
“Why not?” Smolder asked with raised shoulders, and extended her open hand out with marshmallows.
Tracker trotted to them and grabbed some.
Silverstream chewed on them loud, nobbing them.
Tracker looked at her, then looked at the marshmallows on his hoof.
He got one and ate it.
They were silent as they munched on their late marshmallow dinner. After a few minutes, all of them were sitting on the grass before the fire, feeling the warmth against the cold night.
“So...yeah….” Tracker noted the creatures before him. “I honestly never saw dragons and hippogriffs like you...until now.”
“I like being mysterious!” Silverstream said, flapping her wings in excitement. “But that’s before we had to open up and actually reveal ourselves to the whole world and convince everyone we weren’t half-myth—I’m a half-bird!”
Smolder laughed, though kept it mild. “If there was a good cop-bad cop pair around here, then it’d be us.”
Tracker smiled, looked at Smolder sitting on a log. “And you’re the bad cop?”
“I breathe fire, she doesn’t breathe water,” Smolder said, motioning to her. “Well, she doesn’t breathe water half the time.”
“Oh. You mean the...hippogriff and seapony thing….” Tracker slowly turned back to the sky and the ocean over there.
Silverstream nodded and held up her pearl fragment which shone orange against the fire. “We had to break our pearl into a million pieces, but we also had to prepare for the worst, which is why Queen Novo issued our finest magicians to make a new pearl...which we’ll break to accommodate for whoever wants to seek shelter with us. If there’s one thing that changelings can’t do, it’s that they can’t breathe underwater!”
“Unless they turn into a seapony,” Smolder pointed out.
“Which is why we should thank Zecora for the weird green stuff she invented!”
“It dissolves in water.”
“Then we’ll throw flaming arrows at them when they attack!”
“That won’t work if they jump into the water.”
“Stop ruining the moment!” Silverstream whined from her place on the grass.
Tracker slumped his shoulders. “I don’t know...I don’t know what to do if I become a seapony and live underwater for a long time...maybe forever if it gets there.” He sustained a stare at the moon above. “I’ll miss the sunshine, the sky—“
“You could get out of Seaquestria,” Silverstream said, trying to encourage him. “There’s lots to do on the beach and on Mount Aris!”
Tracker half-turned away from the hippogriff. “But it won’t be the same.”
Smolder shrugged. “Just remember you won’t be going there until it gets really bad. In the meantime, you get to hang out with us dragons and we’re always cooking up something for the shapeshifters!”
Tracker merely sighed.
A minute passed in silence, each of them looking at the fire, then at the sea, then at each other, then back at the fire.
“What’s your story?” Tracker asked the two of them. “How come you’re together? Was it some kind of weird friendship that somehow stuck?”
“It’s a long story,” Smolder said. “Let’s just say that, if it weren’t for me and Ember, Silverstream wouldn’t be alive today.”
Tracker looked at them astonished. “Wow...what happened?”
Smolder felt annoyed. “I said it’s a long story. I don’t have time to tell you everything.”
“But it’s early night.”
“Ooh, ooh! Could I try?!” Silverstream yelled, raising her claw in the air.
Smolder sighed, now feeling pestered. “Fine. Might as well give us a breather while we rest here.”
Silverstream giggled, and turned to Tracker, raising her arms in order to gesture about, then: “We had to go and save a couple of coast towns from changelings, and I was part of this team and we were fighting and—pow! Wham! Choo! Then, a flying airship came by and these mean parrot pirates came over and started stealing everything and I went there and tried to defeat them, but they had swords and other sharp objects and they hurt me a lot—they kept jabbing me with those pointy edges! They were on their way to Griffonstone across the sea, when Ember and Smolder here caught sight of the ship and they wanted to steal the gems inside because they’re greedy dragons—“
“You’re not helping,” Smolder snarked, crossing her arms.
“—and they got in and they didn’t get all the gems they wanted, but they managed to carry me to safety and into their home and that’s where I got nursed back to health and then they told me that some dragons saved me and I was like ‘Wow! Really?! That’s awesome!’ And I wanted one of them to come along with me since I was the one who said, ‘Would it be cool if I had a dragon with me?’ Ember’s too old for that, but Smolder’s around my age, and, after asking her family, we went away and we went on all sorts of adventures—“
“We only went on three,” Smolder corrected, holding up three fingers to remind her of it.
“You could count our time together as one big adventure!” She ate some more marshmallowed and gulped them all in one go. “And that’s the end! Happy!”
Tracker smiled at that. He faced her dragon friend with a small sneer. “Is she always like this?”
Smolder groaned, moving her head a bit. “I do my best. Sometimes, she’s too happy for my taste.”
Tracker became silent for a short while. Then, he spoke up: “How’s it going in your home? Any news? What do you do there because...you’re the first dragon I’ve ever met and what else can I do but...uh, talk?”
Smolder rolled her eyes. “Nothing much happens there. We hoard gems, find food for the ponies hiding there, and we talk with each other and see what’s the next thing to do. It’s not much, and I’m still not used to working with ponies like you, but I’d rather have peaceful ponies around than to have a big army of changelings across the sea.”
Tracker then turned to Silverstream. “What about you?”
“You know, we swim and fly!”
Smolder poked her on the neck. “I think he means what do you do to help all of us fight Chrysalis?”
Silverstream nodded. “I knew that!” Facing Tracker: “We do our raiding thing!”
Tracker, somewhat nervous, put up a smile. “OK, I think that’s enough. I...I know what you do….”
Silverstream grinned, swiped the marshmallows from Smolder’s claw, and devoured them.
“What are we gonna do now?” Tracker asked.
“We take shifts,” Smolder said. “Two of us sleep, one of us stays awake in case a changeling comes by. After three hours, someone else wakes up and the other sleeps, and the same thing happens after another three hours. Then, we head to Choctown and take you off to the Dragon Lands.”
“Or you could stay in Choctown,” Silverstream put forward. “I heard it’s a good place. It’s still a city, and the ponies there are quite friendly—well, what pony isn’t? Plus, dragons and hippogriffs live there, too!”
Tracker looked down, deep in thought.
“Let him be,” Smolder said. “What we all want now is a bit of sleep.”
“I’ll go first!” Silverstream shouted, raising her claw to the air. “I want to be the guard, I want to be the guard!”
Smolder sighed, though she could not help but smile at that innocence. “Fine. You’ll be the guard.” The dragon threw the whole bag of marshmallows at her. “Take it, but save some for us. We need the carbo.”
Silverstream gave her a thumbs up. “You don’t have to worry about it! I’ll protect these marshmallows to the very last, even when I’m hungry and I really, really want to eat those marshmallows—those sweet cute little bites of sweetness!” Her mouth then salivated.
“You can’t have too much sugar,” Smolder reminded. “Remember what happens?”
“You get all jittery,” Tracker answered for the drooling hippogriff.
The dragon and the pony laughed with each other.
“Yeah!” Silverstream yelled, punching the sky after wiping her saliva away. “Now, the two of you go to sleep or else I’ll throw marshmallows at you!”
Smolder laughed at that. Tracker, too.
The two of them said their good night’s to each other and to Silverstream, then lied down on the grass.
The hippogriff was left awake with a bag of marshmallows at claw.