//------------------------------//
// Utah 
// Story: A Volunteer at the Bureau 
// by Comma Typer 
//------------------------------//

Months passed.
Much ruckus was made over Alaska being the next American state to fall to the Veil. Pictures of the transformed Aleutian Islands spread all over the internet, showing off the maybe-too-colorful photos of magic grounds and waters. Weird and exotic plants had sprouted up, among other things like a lake of anti-gravity.
In spite of those attractions, however, all eyes weren’t on Hawaii or Alaska. Everyone was thinking about the contiguous States. The real trouble would start in California.
San Francisco was the first major U.S. city there to face the Veil head on. By that time, almost everyone within city limits had taken their potions. A few held out to the very end, with the majority of them making their last-minute decisions with a slightly panicky staff at hoof. The rest who’d truly resisted, though, either moved farther East or had enough bats in the belfry to stand up to the imminent Veil.
They died.
The party that’d been planned for the occasion did go on, but it wore a dark coat. It’s hard to celebrate persevering through the Veil when some didn’t.
The big news story right after that was the mayor of Los Angeles, now a griffon, visiting San Francisco. He wasn’t looking as smug as he was back in that interview; it’d be impolite and rude to one-up his counterpart when a gloomy mattered hung over everyone’s heads.
But, his original purpose for the visit remained: To see what Los Angeles would do when it’s their time to see the Veil.
While there were news over Portland’s and Seattle’s preparations for total Equusification, pop culture osmosis over the decades had cemented Los Angeles as a premier city in the minds of billions, along with San Francisco and New York to tower over the biggest cities of its neighboring states.
The one reason for everyone turning to Los Angeles next, however, was that Los Angeles was next.
In the immediate aftermath of its bureau’s disaster, Los Angeles had suffered a calamity of extremes. Many rushed to the bureau, mostly to avoid being targeted by the PER and to be able to fight or flee from the HLF; there was enough demand to force both Equestria and Los Angeles to build three more bureaus there. In contrast, the other extreme consisted of the plenty who continued or joined the protests although with much more supervision, much more restraint, and much more tact, resigning to just picket signs. No weapons allowed.
As time counted down to the Veil’s day, everyone was busy wrapping up everything. The last human movies in Hollywood were made and shown, the last Dodgers game batted up by humans was played in their stadium (along with the Lakers’ last game, the Rams’ last game, Galaxy’s last game….), and the last concert was performed—funnily enough, by a rising band named Magic Magic. It was their first and their last time performing in front of a live audience.
The band members proceeded to the bureau right after.
It was all a whimsical and magical whirl, and then it was their Day Zero. The Veil slugged its way through the Big Orange, beginning with the beaches and then sprawling to the rest of the city—the ordinary houses in South Bay and South Central, the yawning skyscrapers in Downtown, the upscale homes of San Fernando Valley, and finally the forested mountains of San Gabriel Valley.
Several more hours, and the whole county was behind the Veil. It’d gone over without anything staining the event; everyone had their parties afterwards, especially the bureaus where all congratulated themselves in one huge fiesta for a job well done. Already there was talk of rewarding those who had appointments right from the get-go, converting the establishments into quasi-embassies, and such.
Canter Crowhop did enjoy it all, but, as the clock struck midnight by a brightened South Sepulveda Boulevard, she sat on the bureau’s rooftop, away from the revelry going down at street level. The unicorn had her gaze eastward, seeing the Veil inching away from her and towards Nevada.
Towards Utah.
Two and a half months would pass before the Veil loomed over St. George, Utah.



It was a hectic night at Better’d Bread. All kinds of creatures filled the room in the bakery as waiters dashed about, serving plates of food with their hooves or wings or magic. The same mixture of the three Tribes mingled together in everything else: at the cash registers taking orders from the lines, in the kitchen whipping up a variety of pastries, at the delivery stalls carrying bags of bread before launching off for a gallop’s (or flight’s) trip to give someone a tasty night.
That sweet and sugary starch smell of freshly baked bread saturated the eatery as customers hankered for their edible wares, socializing and getting their different-sized stomachs full under a banner saying Veil Day! Over there, an Abyssinian held a cinnamon roll with a paw and a bottle of chocolate syrup with his tail, giving himself a free hand—no, a free paw to gesture with as he discussed his future plans in being a magician to a unicorn who was not impressed by such a bold future. On the other side, a hippogriff was annoying his kirin friend with the same boring joke, but was then escorted off the premises for needlessly angering an emotionally flammable being.
In the outside this unfortunate hippogriff was banished to—here lay a huge, almost carless parking lot. What took the places of so many automobiles was a sizable crowd of more Equestrians socializing, toasting themselves to a new era, being silent for the death of an old one, or just spending time with each other in small talk. Among them, some claws and hooves pointed at something in the horizon.
It was the Veil. Only several dozens of kilometers off. The sky looked bluer there than it was on this side of the line.
Back inside Butter’d Bread, Mike was helping around, serving customers as he’d always done, albeit different times called for different measures: Mike now trotted around as an Earth pony, having adopted Hot Potato as his pony name. Potato-and-bread dishes were his specialty, after all: potato sandwiches, potato pizza, potato casserole, and potato muffins, to name a scant few.
This owner chatted amicably with his patrons, knowing full well about the incoming Veil but, overall, staying relatively optimistic about the years to come. Hot Potato was already hyping up another branch as a drive-in bakery by Interstate 15, just a bit South of Atkinville, straddling the Utah-Arizona border. “We’d be giving our neighbors a warm and delicious welcome!” he boasted to a griffon who didn’t want to hear over-enthusiastic advertisements for relaxation.
Overall, it was good times all around in Butter’d Bread. Jars of butter were passed around in high spirits, and Potato told all to lick a spoonful of butter once in a while to perpetuate that age-young tradition. Aside from that, compliments abounded as the drinks flowed—and, speaking of drinks, still more drinks were being served up. It wasn’t just soda and energy drinks, either. The bakery had wine, beer, and whiskey at hoof/claw/paw/wing at this junction.
To add to his list of credentials, Potato was also a good janitor. He showed that tonight by wiping clean a table of a dragon who’d just left with a substantial tip of both banknotes and gems.
“Potato!”
All inside turned their heads to the kitchen.
It was a pegasus coming out from the kitchen, holding a phone with her wing’s feathers. “This is for you!”
“Give it to me,” the Earth pony said, smiling although he reached in for the phone anyway without waiting for the pegasus to do it for him.
The pegasus hurried back inside as Mike took the call amid the noise of customers, of plates and utensils and glasses clanging and banging. Everyone had returned to their own little worlds, their own little conversations and foods, leaving Hot Potato to be—must be some business call.
Potato turned his head to the wall and whispered, “Hello?”
Nothing.
He glanced at who the caller was on the screen.
Unknown. A random number.
“Who’s this?” asked Potato, becoming more serious as he pressed the phone to his ear.
A while of more nothing. Then, before the pony could ask again, there was:
“M-Mike?”
Stopped himself from blurting out in awe, hiding his gasp from the phone. “S-Sam? I-Is that you?”
“Yeah, but it’s Lucanidae, not m-me—n-not Sam.”
Nothing. Could hear no background noise, except for maybe the wind.
“I-I’m just paying my old place a visit.”
Mike’s cheeks bulged, holding in his breath as he rested his head on the wall. “Wh-What?” he whispered loudly. “You’re here? That’s great!”
“It’s not that great.” A pause. “I...I have to—”
“Stop right there,” and Mike pointed a hoof at him—or the wall since Lucanidae wasn’t in front of him. “I know what you’re about to say. You have to be...not yourself out here. Shame and all that, right?”
Silence. Just his breathing and the wind from wherever Lucanidae was.
“I got you there. What’s your location?”
A sigh from the other end. “Your house, your place. I...I don’t know if—”
“I’ll be there. Just wait for me, OK?”
“OK—"
“Wait.” Glanced at the bakery itself, everyone going around and not paying him any attention, not paying him any suspicion. He turned back to the wall. “Are you in disguise?”
“Of course, I am.”
“What are you?”
More silence. “Blue unicorn with the vending machine cutie mark. That’s all.”
“Alright, I’ll go—”
Call ended.
Potato’s ears perked up. “Huh?” Looked at his phone.
It was Lucanidae who ended it. Wasn’t a mispress.
Then, turning to a passing pony waiter: “Gratip, there’s some important matters I have to attend to immediately. Is it OK if you take over while I’m gone? I promise I’ll be back in an hour?”
The stallion saluted him, using that time to check the watch on his foreleg. Still, he shouted, “Will do!” both at his superior and his watch.
Hot Potato groaned as he hid his phone in his mane. He didn’t know the details of how putting stuff in his hair worked aside from saying the word magic, but it made some sense. When it came to being a creature who only wears clothes as a choice or on special occasions, there were no pockets to store objects.
But, there was the more pressing matter of Lucanidae. Or Sam. Or whoever that fake unicorn was.
Potato trotted out of the bakery, first getting out of the crowd in “Excuse me!”’s and “Make way! Make way!”’s before really entering the arid night outside.



Living in Southern Utah acclimatized the average resident to its great highs and great lows of temperature. At day, the sun would be scorching hot, and all shadows were pleasant to the body unused to the desert heat. At night, like now, the moon did nothing but shine. Still, the absence of the sun stomped the city with freezing cold; the only good thing about it was that it wouldn’t be bogged down by snow.
As Hot Potato trotted under sparse streetlights and passed by sparse bands of merry Equestrians who he couldn’t tell if they were from Earth or from Equus—as he trotted, he saw the houses in his neighborhood. Those simple houses of flat walls and beige or cream colors, of thin lawns and trees that’ll never be tall in the sizzling heat: they didn’t strike him as interesting on their own.
But then, there was Sam. Sam hadn’t been his best friend, and he’d never had any wrenching heart-to-heart talks, but he’d come close to being an intimate friend. Their employer-employee relationship had been warm, to say the least. As he passed by a zebra and a pegasus hugging each other as they walked down the sidewalk, he remembered the old days of talking as a human to his human staff and partners, serving human-made bread to human customers.
Turned out the old days weren’t so old. He caught himself imagining those times with the filter of nostalgic yellow.
Potato rounded the corner and there was his house gleaming under the moonlight.
It was a modest house. Two floors, small garage, and a front yard of grass that was conspicuous against St. George's surrounding red, yellow, and orange rock, sand, and lightly vegetated soil.
There, leaning on a street light and just outside its glaring beams, was a unicorn, face partially covered by the newspaper he was reading.
Potato halted, looking at him up and down. He leaned to the left to see the cutie mark, and it was indeed a vending machine. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
The unicorn lowered the papers, surprised at the arrival. “Yeah. It’s me, Mike.”
Potato made a wry smile, trotting closer but going around the light to avoid attention. “You have the courtesy to call me by my old name but not yourself? That doesn’t sound right.”
“Shh!” and the unicorn snuck a glimpse behind himself, seeing only a road and a lonely desert in the horizon. “They m-might know!”
“It’s an open secret here,” Mike casually explained. “We all know you’re a changeling.”
“I know that,” he replied, now slightly caustic. “But...but, let’s talk about it inside? I-In case anyone strolls by?”
“Everyone saw you in the news.” Mike lifted one cheek in confusion, though. “Besides, you’re a...you know. I’m sure you got this whole shapeshifting disguisy thing in the wraps now.”
The unicorn rolled his eyes, one touch of irritation away from an audible groan. “Let’s go inside already. It’s very awkward out here. You, talking to some stranger no one’s seen before...they’ll know it’s me.”
Before Mike could respond, Lucanidae brisked to his friend’s house and knocked on the door in a fit of panic.
Mike smacked his own head at this blunder.



It was cozy shelter. Potted plants had their lot cast here on the shelves and cabinets, and the rooms were compact but not cramped. The lights gave off a hint of orange, supplying that old-time feel more fit for the nineties than the extremely hectic new tens projected to end with more magic, more talking creatures, and what not.
At the dining table, Hot Potato poured a shot of whiskey for himself and then another for the changeling sitting beside him.
Lucanidae gulped, studying the glass with its drink. Memories of that inebriated nightmare resurfaced, and he didn’t want to—
“Normally, I wouldn’t do this,” Potato began, putting the almost empty whiskey bottle down on the table, letting its mild stench waft through the room. “It’s only eleven, and we still have campers not just outside the place—no, they have half of the parking lots in Red Cliffs Mall.” He pointed a hoof out a window, although the curtains were drawn thanks to Lucanidae’s earlier request for them to be closed. “We got everybody from all over the country and out of country. Got a Swiss in it, even!”
“All watching the Veil?” Lucanidae asked, turning the glass around with his hoof, watching the alcohol stir around.
Potato nodded, unknowingly copying his friend’s stirring motion. “Yes, they’re all watching the Veil. Estimates say it’ll be in the state by three in the morning, in city limits by five or six.”
“Must be awfully pretty,” said the changeling flatly, dumbly staring at his drink.
That made Potato not drink his whiskey which he had just above his mouth. He put it down and gave his old friend a hard glare. “Sam?”
Sam perked his changeling ears up. “I...what is it?”
Potato looked at him for a while, no words said. He put his shot away, leaned back on the chair, and took one long breath.
“We’ve all missed you, buddy,” Mike said, his tone fully relaxed as his enthusiastic demeanor gave way. Cocked his head to the left, letting some of it rest on his shoulder. “How’re you doing, Sam?”
That was out of Sam’s left field. His mind blanked out for a moment, not expecting such a casual, such a calm, question. Gathering the strength and the will to answer, he squeaked out, “Well...not that OK, but OK enough.”
Mike nodded, digesting the good enough reply. Or, it wasn’t good enough for him. “Like, uh...where’ve you been? What gigs have you been up to lately?”
Sam rested his head on a broken hoof, like he was holding his chin with a giant wishbone. “Job hopping in Equestria. I’ve been a clerk at a couple hotels, waited at a couple restaurants, even acted as an assistant to the Hive’s tour guide for a day...but they didn’t know it was really me.” Paused to inhale the indoor smell of whiskey. It didn’t help clear his thoughts. “You get that, right?”
Mike placed a weary hoof over one eye. “Still scared, aren’t you?”
More left field questions for the changeling to confront. “I….”
But Sam knew the answer. He hung his head in surrender.
“Yes. I’m scared. I’ve...I haven’t visited Earth that o-often, and it was only for a day at a time.” Picked up his glass but still didn’t drink it. Not yet, maybe. “I did get closer...first got the courage to go to the continent, and then to States, and then to West Coast, and then—”
“Sam. Look.”
Now, Mike was putting a hoof on his shoulder and then pointing at his eyes. An expression of asking for attention came over him as the pony bent over, ears straining to listen as he spoke.
“Did you at least visit any of your buddies in Equestria? Close friends?” Rubbed his eyes with a drawn out sigh when he received a silent stare. “What about your parents? You know where they live; you would’ve visited them first according to plan...they must’ve at least given you a hug or something!”
Sam raised his hoof and opened his mouth.
Had nothing to say, so he retracted his hoof and closed his mouth back.
Mike scratched his mane, head getting itchy out of growing discomfort.“Really, now? I mean...really?”
“I—”
“OK,” Mike cut in, pointing at him with an accusing him and not enough time for Sam to make his case. “You’re not dead, so that means you’ve been able to get love.”
Sam nodded, not liking where this was going. He guessed a few strands, a few threads where this talk would go, and he loathed having to approaching a single one of them. He feigned a confounding “Yes?”
“At least we’re on the same page,” Mike said, clearing his throat to sweep out whatever vigor of whiskey scent remained there. “We...uh, how? Exactly—how did you get that love if you’re not contacting us in either world?”
Sam looked down at the table, fiddling with his hooves. Anxiety was ramping up. “I...I asked nicely. It was hard to keep up my ‘new changeling’ form, but it was w-worth it. I got ponies and others sharing some love with me...and I made some good changeling friends who know my condition.”
Mike said rested all of his weight on the back of his chair, wheezing in relief and staring at the ceiling. “That’s good...but, really...why—”
“Why what?” Sam asked, now the one cutting, trying to be on the offensive.
The pony raised a hoof over his snout, deliberating. There’s the tension, that tension unspoken of. “I was wondering...if you’re like this….”
Sighed, groaned, and put one hoof on the table. He strung the chair some inches forward, and gently wrapped a hoof around Sam’s neck.
Didn’t fight back, didn’t complain.
Sam was silent.
Mike took a while to figure out something to say. Then, he began, in a benign voice: “You know that, no matter what happens, we love you from across dimensions...wherever you are. You got that from the letters we sent you in the aftermath, right?”
The changeling’s ears arched up. “Wait...they were good letters?”
“Don’t tell me you burned them because you thought they were blackmail or something.”
Sam smiled sheepishly.
Without warning, Mike held his shot of whiskey. “Alright, alright...give me some time to tell you.”
Gulped down the whiskey.
Plank! and it was down on the table.
Mike took in a deep breath. One long deep breath. One very long deep breath.
“Why?!” yelled the pony, waving his hooves about in frustration. “Why are you so paranoid about everyone?!”
Sam cowered, hiding some of his body under the table and hoping the furniture would shield him. “What do you think I was supposed to do? Set myself up for adoption? Like the average pony would just accept a leech like me!”
”That’s because you didn’t ask!” Mike shouted, rising over the chair and beginning to stand on the table, two hooves on the surface and two more to go. “Are you telling me you went through this whole thing...this long time without telling us? Because you think we hate you?!”
“I know you love me,” Sam argued, pumping his chitin chest, “but what happens if you take me in? I’ll just be a burden on you! I need your love to survive and—”
“Listen to yourself!” screeched Mike, looking away in disgust at what he was hearing. Now, all four hooves were on the table, standing on the surface and a twitch away from breaking the bottle. “That’s not the Sam I know! Of course, you need love to survive...but so does everyone else! Changelings are too literal, but...agh, it’s so simple, Sam!” flailing an exasperated hoof in the air, causing glass and bottle to wobble. “I don’t eat love on a plate, but my wife loves me, the staff loves me, I have friends who love me…” and spat on the table. “I sound narcissistic, I know, but without that love, I wouldn’t be so nice, would I?”
Then, Sam felt it. The pull, the tug—could see a bit of pink glowing from Mike’s chest.
Hissed and shut his eyes, defying his instincts to lash out“At least you can survive without love!”
Mike stomped on the table. His empty shot glass tipped over and clunk!’d. “So what?! Without love, I’d be much worse than dead! At least you’ll die without love; I’ll still be alive being the miserable wretch I’d be—”
Sam growled and flew forward, now right in front of him. His nasty fanged face right in front of him. “Are you saying I should be dead?!”
“Will you just—agh!” and stepped away, still on the table. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be too tipsy and drunk to think, but you’re the one who sounds like you got buzzed out and brain-dead!”
“Don’t tell me about—”
“Well, I am gonna tell you about it!” and Mike smacked the shot glass to the table.
Crack!
Stared down each other before opening their mouths in surprise.
Mike looked down.
Saw the glass. The cracked glass. A drop spilled to the table.
The pony shot a hoof to the air. “Wait.”
Then, slow breaths. Took slow breaths. Inhaled, exhaled. Inhaled, exhaled, hoof on his chest as it went up and down.
As Sam and Mike stared at each other, that same tension high under the glare of orange lights, glimmers reflecting off the glass and off the bottle to their eyes dead set on their opposite, on the only other one in the room.
Mike looked at his hooves, those destructive hooves. Could’ve gone worse; the table could’ve been cut into two, for example. But, he had enough self-control. “Wh-What...what was I gonna do?” he blathered.
Then, slowly, got himself back down to his chair, struggling like an old man to rest his rump on the seat.
Sam’s senses returned to him. He heard a strange buzzing sound from around him. So, he looked down.
He was flying, hovering with his buzzing insect wings.
Floated back down to his chair to sit.
Yes, sit. Not shout, not argue, not get into a somewhat drunken fight with his former boss. That wouldn’t end well, would it?
As everything wound down. Loud breaths, gawking at each other with tired looks as the orange room let its warm light flow everywhere inside, emitting an atmosphere of turmoil.
Mike broke the silence, first with a cough. He wiped his mouth clean from alcohol. “You...you get what I mean, don’t you? Sorry about that, but…y-you don’t run away from us.” Moaned, rubbed his eyes again, fearing they’re on the way to becoming bloodshot red. “If we didn’t help each other, we might as well be rolling in our graves because we’d be so useless...right? You get me, Sam?”
The changeling peered down at the table. His forelegs, his incomplete and broken and holey and disgusting forelegs didn’t light up his mood. Whatever had come to his mind...he didn’t know if it’d stick.
He sighed. Nodded.
“And I sound like one of those friendship lessoners,” Mike blabbed, on the way to slurred speech.
Sam couldn’t afford a chuckle. On the contrary, he announced, “I’m gonna go check the cupboards. See if there’s any more snacks.”
The changeling was already rising from his seat, so Mike said, with a nonchalant hoofwave, “Alright, go check. I’ll wait for ‘ya, but don’t keep me waiting.”
Nothing else to say, and Sam left the dining room to enter the adjacent kitchen.
So, Mike waited.
This waiting gave him more time to think.
He thought about poor Sam. Seeing him do something as simple, as innocent as foraging for snacks brought a little smile to his face. This was the Sam he knew, the kind and hopeful Sam of old, the Sam that wasn’t the best person in the world but was a decent person by most accounts. He wasn’t used to this dark and pessimistic version of Sam.
He wanted to blame it on changeling physiology, that it was a changeling thing to brood over dark matters than the average human being...or, rather, the average sapient creature since there’d be no human beings left before 2030. But, he could detect hopelessness from a mile away, and Sam was ringing all the alarm bells in spades.
Mike imagined Sam Henry the Changeling in the bakery, ultimately accepted for who he was. Everyone would be caring enough to give him a hug or something that’d fill his love hunger for just a bit longer. The pony then thought of plans, plans to hang out once in a while with friends both old and new, uniting both worlds as it were. He was having a good enough time with this magic Earth thing; why not Sam, the very one who’d gone away to become a volunteer at the bureau?
Then, silence.
The noise of cupboards opening and closing had disappeared.
The silence was loud enough for Mike to go, “Huh?”
He got up from his seat and trotted his way to the kitchen.
Despite being a tiny bit tipsy, he reached his destination in good condition.
What wasn’t in good condition was his fridge. The door had been left open, wasting precious electricity and racking up the numbers on his bills needlessly.
There’s also no sign of the changeling.
“Uh, Sam?” He turned his head around, scrutinizing every nook and cranny in the kitchen before he had his hooves moving. “Hello? Where are you?!”



Mike was so busy searching the house, he didn’t see him out the window and in the horizon as the changeling fled from St. George with his wings, approaching the outskirts with one more push of his wings.
Sam was out of home, entering the night once more to places unknown. Maybe back to the Hive. Maybe to find another job. Certainly not back here, at least for a while. He could start reconsidering after the Veil passed through.
But, for now, Lucanidae had no place in St. George.