//------------------------------// // Chapter 11 // Story: Friendship Abroad // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Ocellus deposited the injured Marie along the only flat part of cave she could find, laying her down as close to all at once as she could manage. She might not be a doctor, and she didn’t know any healing spells, but she could still remember the basics she’d learned in Twilight’s school. But as engaging as it had been to hear Meadowbrook lecture on the subject, she couldn’t absorb enough to save lives in a few hours. The others weren’t far behind her—Sandbar carrying the filly named Helen, and David walking on his own two feet in defiance of the wind. Had the circumstances been different, she might’ve remarked on just how easily Helen rode a pony, which wasn’t a skill that most bipeds bothered to learn. But either she was an expert, or Sandbar was. Something’s going on here. Something that would have to wait. “Your cave won’t be able to help her,” David said again, dropping to his knees beside the injured Marie. He didn’t actually touch her though, and kept looking down at the split running along her head. A few drops of blood turned the water dribbling down her hair bright red. The other human remained on Sandbar’s back. Her skin had gone white, and she watched her friend, frozen. You’re not used to seeing blood like this. You humans are as sheltered as the ponies of Equestria. “Ocellus is multi-talented,” Silverstream said, resting one of her claws on David’s shoulder. “She can be anything, including magic. She’ll use some magic to heal your friend. Right?” Ocellus could feel the eyes of all the others on her. Smolder started tossing logs onto the dying fire, filling the air with warmth. From the desperately-cold look to the humans, they needed it. “I know… something I can do,” she said. “But it’s…” She glanced to Sandbar. He was the only one who might know about it. But considering some of his greatest memories of suffering involved almost losing a stuffed toy, he probably hadn’t followed the stories from the invasion very closely. “What?” David asked. While the other human remained frozen, he still spoke with clarity. “I’ll accept you have magic—I know Marie believes it. So use it—she’s only here in this storm because of you.” He leaned to one side, dropping the huge bag he was carrying with a thump. “She didn’t want you going hungry out here alone. Help her.” His voice cracked more than once as he said it, and the area under his eyes hadn’t dried like the rest. “No reason to wait,” Smolder said. “Do you need some space? Maybe you need help remembering?” You’re talking to the wrong changeling if you think I memorized a bunch of unicorn healing spells. “Space, yeah,” she said. “Everyone back up. Humans, you too. You shouldn’t watch this.” “Yona not understand. Is healing magic more delicate than Yona remembers?” David slid back, so that he wasn’t within reach of Marie anymore. But he still remained close, close enough that he could’ve lunged forward to protect her if he needed to. He didn’t look away, didn’t do anything to cover his eyes. “I want to see,” he said. “I’m not afraid.” Helen did look away, along with Sandbar and Silverstream. The others, if anything, were more fascinated. “It’s not just a healing spell,” she began. “It’s… another thing. But I know it heals when it happens. It’s been used for that before. Or for… worse things. Queen Chrysalis showed me.” The cave fell silent. Ocellus heard another crash of lightning outside, and the resulting rumble almost made her afraid the cave might collapse on them. It didn’t, though somewhere further in she could hear stone caving in. “I’ve seen this before,” Gallus said. “Not… not what you’re saying, Ocellus. I’ve seen what happens after a nasty fall. She’s… not gonna make it much longer. Whatever you’re thinking of, you should do it soon.” “Yes,” Smolder said. “The small one is right, she was here to help. We have to help her.” Ocellus changed in a flash into a form she hadn’t used in a long, long time. It took enormous effort, and concentration to maintain even for a few moments. But she’d been mentally preparing for this the second she’d seen blood. She changed back into her old self—black, transparent wings, holes up and down her legs. She felt the cold now, fierce and biting. This body was terribly vulnerable to it, just as it was dependent on the love of others. But it also had what she needed. David gasped, falling backward himself. Silverstream caught him, but she couldn’t stop him from shaking. Ocellus braced herself for his revulsion, fear, disgust—but she felt only confusion. Her friends, though—the ones watching, she could taste a few traces of their discomfort. There was an instinct about changelings that only their new bodies had cured. Before she could lose concentration—or lose her spine—Ocellus leaned forward and bit Marie on the neck, bit her with all the venom she could muster. She tasted the human’s warm blood, a disgusting metallic burn like badly cooked meat. She held her fangs in until she felt wrung dry, then lifted up, cleared her throat, and spat. She felt hot moisture rising up her throat, and saw the slime emerge from below. It shone green and translucent, exactly like she remembered. She was dimly aware of David finally looking away, clutching his stomach with the disgust he hadn’t felt at first. Ocellus kept going—she couldn’t stop now, or Marie would die. She covered every part of her head that looked even remotely hurt with transparent green. Only when she could see no more red did she finally stumble back, let her concentration break, and change back into herself. Her real shape this time, soft blue with transparent pink frills. She probably wouldn’t be able to change again for hours, maybe not until tomorrow. But it didn’t matter. On the ground in front of them, Marie started breathing again. Her eyes—now covered—wouldn’t be opening yet. But she coughed, spluttered, then rolled slightly to one side, apparently into sleep. Ocellus could feel her mind returning, sense it as she could feel no others. It was another mind, reaching blindly out into the world of smells and colors and tastes of emotion that it did not yet understand. Where am I? It wasn’t words—but Ocellus had tended to grubs before, and so she knew what the confusion meant, knew what to expect from its subtle variations of fear and trust. Safe, Ocellus responded, just as wordlessly. It could only sense feelings. She sent comfort, confidence, even love. Rest. And Marie did. Ocellus herself drifted in and out of consciousness for a bit. She felt the storm raging beyond the cave walls, but her friends and their human guests became only outlines vaguely vibrating to their emotions. Somepony moved her over to the fire, wrapped her in something warm, offered her a bowl of fresh-tasting grains. She ate them eagerly, relieved they hadn’t tried to give her any meat. She couldn’t imagine she would want any soon, not with the taste of human blood still on her tongue. Then the world came back into focus. The two healthy human foals had removed all but their lowest layer of clothes, sitting close to the fire and huddling together. The fire was much larger now. Marie had been moved safely away from it—Ocellus looked about, and found her tucked into the back corner of the cave, where she lay on a pile of human clothes. Their jackets, maybe? “I think she’s up,” Helen said, watching her. This close to the fire, her hair seemed as orange as any pony’s mane. “Eh, weird unicorn thing. You ‘ear me or not?” She wasn’t making herself easy to understand. Through her throbbing headache, Ocellus nodded. “Y-yeah. I hear you… fine.” “Good.” Helen stared past her, at the sleeping form of her friend. Green was increasingly covering Marie’s body, spreading and thickening from her head. Her clothes were peeling out around the edges, as the cocoon formed. It was a good thing Ocellus didn’t need to do anything else to make that work, because she didn’t even have enough spare love to light up her horn. “Mind explaining what the bloody hell you did?” Gallus was sitting beside her—and from the look of it, he’d been the one to help feed her. He whispered into her ear. “It’s okay if you don’t want to say, Ocellus. We can see how worn-out that made you. “It’s fine.” She stared across the fire at the humans. “I’m not really a unicorn, I’m a changeling.” “I bloody knew it,” Helen exclaimed, rising to her feet in a start that nearly made her friend fall over. But with all her clothes drying by the fire except the thin white bits she was still wearing, she looked even more pathetic than before. Like a brightly-colored kitten was about to threaten her. “You ‘ent gonna fool us. Send us back with some imposter to put in her cradle, that it? Not on us. You can take your fairy magic right back Underhill where it came from and tell the Seelies or the Unseelies or whoever the hell sent you to feck right off.” Ocellus blinked, watching her with growing confusion. “I didn’t understand a word of what you just said,” Smolder muttered, tossing another log onto the fire. “You heard me,” Helen said. “We’re not letting you run away with our friend. We ‘ent gonna help you send back some bloomin’ imposter made ‘a twigs and stardust.” Now the other human was watching her with equal confusion. “Helen, look at her face.” Ocellus wasn’t sure what he was noticing, other than her shock. But maybe that was enough. “So what? Maybe she’s a good actor.” “Maybe you should let her answer the question.” He turned back, and Ocellus tasted the sharp pang of his anger. Only some of it was for his friend—plenty of it was resting on her. “It looked to me like you were changing her into a vampire or something. Is that it?” This time she didn’t need to understand all the words to make sense of what the human was implying. “Not quite, but… almost.” She glanced over her shoulder at the resting human. “I honestly… don’t know what will happen to her. I’ve seen it done to… ponies. I was really small when I saw, but… I remember. But Marie isn’t a pony, so I don’t know for sure.” She forced herself to look at Helen. “I don’t think I’m what you think. We aren’t going to ‘kidnap’ anyone. Whatever this does… we’ll know by morning. You can stay right there and watch. Probably you should… she’s gonna be terrified when she wakes up.” Helen made a few more sounds Ocellus didn’t understand, then slumped back down beside her friend. “Whatever.” But Ocellus was barely even watching her anymore. She could feel her friends’ attention on her, in a swirl of emotions she couldn’t clearly separate. Some seemed resolved, others horrified. Only Gallus beside her briefly leaned up close to her. “It’s okay, Ocellus. We know there wasn’t another way. All we had in our first aid kit were some bandages and fever pills, those weren’t going to help with a head wound that bad.” “This whole thing sucks,” Smolder said, plopping down beside Ocellus on the other side and resting her feet up in the fire. She exhaled with apparent satisfaction, sighing deeply. “If the storm was that bad, little creatures like you three should’ve waited it out. We weren’t starving or anything.” “Should’ve doesn’t help Marie,” David whispered. “She didn’t want to give up. And… I didn’t either. Finding you here, meeting you… she better get a chance to do it. She’s the only reason we’re here.” “She will,” Ocellus said. “By sunrise, if I remember.” “We’ll all be happy to meet her,” Sandbar said. But even Ocellus could detect the hesitation in his voice—like a doctor speaking to the family of a pony doomed to die. She better not die, Ocellus thought. But could such a small creature even survive that much venom?