//------------------------------// // Evening // Story: Ocellus' Ordinary Day // by RainbowDoubleDash //------------------------------// Ocellus’ natural instinct was to drink her fill of love from Rarity quickly, taking everything that the unicorn possibly had to offer and leaving Rarity as a catatonic shell of a pony who would be extremely pliable to Ocellus’ suggestion, easy to lead back to Ocellus’ burrow. Once there, Ocellus could put Rarity in a hibernation pod, or leave her out as a door guard or other servant, and feed on the pony’s (admittedly much reduced) love every day for as long as she could keep Rarity alive (not easy - creatures under changeling thrall tended to barely eat, even when ordered, and would eventually starve). But that would be bad for a number of reasons: First, ponies would wonder what happened to Rarity. Ocellus was of course capable of transforming into the unicorn and fooling Ponyville for a time, but she doubted she could hold up under long-term scrutiny, and the gain of love from an enthralled Rarity wouldn’t equal the loss from impersonating her for an extended period without abducting additional ponies to feed on, which only compounded the problem. Second, the solid food requirements of keeping a pony alive would be prohibitive. Ocellus could eat anything organic in a pinch, and only needed to eat every few weeks. Ponies, even an enthralled one, were by comparison extremely picky while also being voracious eaters. Third, there was no need to take such a risk: love in Ponyville was plentiful, the town a bottomless cornucopia of love for a single changeling drone. So why risk exposing herself? She hadn’t known gnawing, consuming, driving hunger for months now, meaning her current feeding strategy was working just fine. Fourth, a catatonic creature could occasionally “snap” back, some external or internal stimuli restoring their senses, and they tended to be quite cross - and quite dangerous - when that happened, feeling rage and hate that could badly poison a changeling caught unawares, especially if the changeling was feeding at the time. Fifth, an enthralled creature had no ability to perform specialized tasks, or really any tasks more complicated than basic physical labor or guard duty. Ocellus wouldn’t get her cloak if she drained Rarity. And sixth: Snails had told her that it was just wrong, something that shouldn’t be done on an intrinsic level. Or at least the broad strokes of draining ponies in general when she'd described the process to him. Ocellus wasn’t certain if that was true given that there were upsides to it, but then again reasons one thru five carried enough negative repercussions that they were more than sufficient. So instead, as Rarity worked on her winter cape, Ocellus lapped up love slowly, just a bit at a time, keeping her actions hidden from the unicorn due to a combination of positioning and using her scarf to hide her changeling tongue. It became almost a game, finding openings where she could steal a few quick sips without being noticed, and making sure to not take too much at once lest she harm Rarity. The game became harder when Rarity asked her to keep her scarf down while indoors, as it wasn’t “ladylike”, whatever that meant. But Ocellus complied anyway, since it would make Rarity less suspicious. Changelings were never full, but by the time Rarity was finished with her cape, Ocellus had at least almost completely restored her love reserves to where they had been before going to sleep last night...though keeping the Opalescence-scratches hidden was a slow drain. She was...what was the word Snails had used...peckish. But not hungry. Not starving. Her thoughts on that were cast aside as Rarity threw the new winter cape over her. Deep pine green, with a trim of fluffy wool around its edges and a mantle of still more wool, it was surprisingly heavy, but also instantly warming. It’s edge was about an inch above her hooves, and brass buttons closed its front. “Now isn’t this the most fetching thing you’ve ever worn?” Rarity asked as she had Ocellus turn in front of her mirrors, inspecting her work. “And it should help with the winter that the Weather Patrol has brewed for us this year - honestly I do trust them to know their jobs, but is a mild winter really that much to ask for? I should think not. Try the hood, darling.” Ocellus complied, pulling the hood of the cape over her head as far as it would go, but after a moment Rarity clucked a little in disapproval. “No, not like that, dear, not unless you want to look like some sort of, admittedly fabulously attired, highway rapscallion. No, a lady should always keep her face visible when she wears a hood.” Her telekinesis reached out and pulled the hood back. “There!” she let out a little squeal. “Oh, you look simply precious! If you had a basket of matches, I’d buy the lot!” Ocellus looked at her own reflection for aid, but got nothing from the mirror other than a glance at what Sprite looked like when Ocellus was confused. She looked back to Rarity. “Basket of matches?” She asked. Rarity’s head tilted to the side. “Don’t know that one? Just as well, I suppose, it’s rather dark for a Hearth’s Warming tale, though at least the ending is happy.” Not many of the stories Ocellus knew had happy endings. Most of them were cautionary tales of changelings who were foolish enough to disregard the rules of the Hive or the orders of the Queen or a Hive Lord. They tended to have endings involving being eaten by a hexarachnid or chasme or tatzelwurm or other mutant monster of Protea, or dying alone of starvation or exposure, or something else. The only stories with happy ends were those about Queen Chrysalis saving the Hive from some great threat. But pony stories had happy endings. Ocellus put on a smile for Rarity’s benefit. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. After a few moments, she remembered something else she was expected to do. “Thank you very much for the cape, miss Rarity.” “Oh you’re quite welcome,” Rarity replied, though she stifled a yawn as she did, and she sat down on her haunches. Creative energy had left her, it seemed...and now the fact that she’d been fed on by a changeling for hours was catching up with her, even if she didn’t know it. Ocellus mentally bit herself. She’d been too gluttonous. It was nothing that a good night’s sleep wouldn’t fix for Rarity, but Ocellus shouldn’t have eaten so much, no matter how good the opportunity was. “Always happy to lend a helping hoof to a foal in need,” Rarity continued after another yawn. “I was hardly going to let you freeze. As well, as I said, it was good practice for me. I might turn that into the first of a line...” her face darkened a little. “Oh dear. Speaking of lines, as wonderfully distracting as making that was from the hustle and bustle of the season...” Her horn glowed blue, and Ocellus saw her remove the “Out to Lunch” sign from her door and unlock it. Instantly it opened, and Ocellus had to bite back a startled hiss and an urge to shift into something small so she could run and hide as more than a dozen ponies poured in through the door. “How big was your lunch?” One, a red-maned earth pony Ocellus remembered was named Roseluck, demanded. Rarity laughed nervously, hiding her tiredness. “Apologies, apologies, one and all, I was caught up with another matter. But thank you for your patience, and welcome to Rarity’s Boutique, where everything is chic, unique, and magnifique! Hours will be extended due to the delay.” She turned to Ocellus. “You’d best run along, darling. It was a pleasure meeting you, miss Sprite.” Ocellus couldn’t stop herself from licking her lips, though at least she had the presence of mind to make sure her tongue was a pony one. “Nice to meet you too, miss Rarity,” she said, and left as Rarity drifted off towards the first customer who needed help, with less spring than she’d had when she and Ocellus had entered her boutique. Yes, the unicorn was definitely going to sleep deeply tonight, and for longer than was usual for her. As she left Rarity’s Boutique and stepped out into Ponyville, Ocellus once again put her mental fangs to use on her mental image of her own throat (and ignored the anatomical impossibility of the act). A wave of drowsiness sweeping over Ponyville was the last thing that Ocellus needed. It would reveal her presence, or at least run the risk of doing so if anypony started trying to investigate why it was happening. This was why she’d been restricting herself to small nibbles of love from a bunch of ponies, not getting her entire daily dose of love from one pony. It was a stupid mistake, one she couldn’t make again. She also took a moment to look down at her leg, letting go of the magic hiding the wound there. She hissed slightly in pain as beneath her fake fur, the flesh opened up in four small lines, and red pony blood started slowly seeping out. It was a superficial, unimportant wound for the most part, even if it would translate over to her true form, the only form in which it would heal. It would scab by the end of the day, be gone but for a few pale marks on her carapace by the week’s end, but that wasn’t the problem. No, the problem was what happened when Ocellus ducked into an alley so no pony could see her, and shook her hoof a little, scattering a couple drops of blood into the snow. Detached from the rest of her body and no longer subject to changeling magic, the blood reverted to its natural color: an almost fluorescent, bright green. Ocellus shook her head, shifting away the wound again and then licking her leg free of blood, then - after double-checking that nopony was watching - doing the same for the changeling blood on the ground, ignoring the taste of dirt mixed with snow and the cobblestone beneath. She really wanted to eat Opalescence now. But Snails had told her that pets weren’t to be eaten, and Rarity would probably miss her, and really it had probably been Ocellus’ fault for disregarding the larval foal anyway (if that was what she was, Ocellus was starting to think she may have made a mistake there). So Opalescence would get away with this, and Ocellus would just have to learn to be more careful, and less gluttonous. At least she wasn’t as cold. The cape was heavy enough that the wind didn’t even cut through it while it was buttoned up, and she could feel how her body heat was trapped by the cloth and wool, barely radiating out. Coupled with putting her scarf to use for its original purpose and keeping her hood up, and she was actually warm, or something like it. That, at least, put a spring in Ocellus’ step as she trotted from the alley, looking for other ponies to snack on to keep the slow love drain of her leg wound to a minimum. --- Romantic love from the Cakes. Familial love from the Apple family. Love for the town from Ivory Scroll. Young love from Tootsie Flute and Truffle Shuffle. Matured, deep, abiding love from Lemongrass and Greenhooves. Love for her craft from Vinyl Scratch. Over the past few months, Ocellus had become a connoisseur of love, sampling more varieties than she’d ever known existed or could exist. Yet in spite of the vast cornucopia before her, Ocellus couldn’t even begin to pick a favorite. They were all delicious, all nutritious, all worth the effort of maneuvering into a position to feed on them, even if it was only a few nibbles at a time. It wasn’t hard, it just required the right words, the right timing. Mrs. Cake was eight months pregnant, three more to go, and both were eager to tell a young foal about how they’d met and fell for each other. The Apple clan were glad to tell stories about each other, the things they used to get up to as foals. Ivory Scroll was always eager to extol the virtues of the town she was mayor for to a pony who claimed to be from Hoofington. Truffle Shuffle and Tootsie Flute were even easier than that, especially the latter; the filly unicorn was absolutely infatuated with everything the earth pony colt said or did. And great gouts of love came off of Vinyl Scratch when she was mixing, recording, or playing her music, which she was always happy to do for an attentive audience. A bit of love here, a small sip of love there. Never too much lest she start to have a negative effect on the pony she was feeding from, but she had so many options for the small bits of love, so many targets, so much prey, that those small nibbles added up… As she trotted through the town, tongue safely beneath her scarf drinking down the love she encountered, she started hearing music. It wasn’t unusual, ponies seemed to sing and dance a lot...but this music was different. Somehow it got under her skin...the sound wouldn’t leave her ears...it seemed perfect, somehow, perfect notes, a perfect tune, just waiting for words to accompany it... “This thing...called love “I can’t...get enough of it “This thing...called love “I’ll sink...my fangs in it “I’m so ready! “Tasty little thing called love...” Ocellus had never sung a single word in her life, but now she was. Nopony seemed to notice, or care, it was like they had become oblivious to Ocellus, no matter what she did - even if she stood right next to them and sang about her fangs. Even Ocellus herself only vaguely had a sense that this was a bad idea, most of her was far too caught up in the moment. This was especially true when she realized that she could see herself, her real form, alongside her, looking just as happy, dancing the way she was dancing - until true-Ocellus slung one foreleg around Ocellus-as-Sprite’s withers and pointed out a couple of old ponies down the street just walking together, close enough that they were always touching. Ocellus-as-Sprite fell into step behind them, true-Ocellus prancing beside her, and both still sang. “This thing (this thing) called love (called love) “Its scent (so good) it drives me wild “Its taste (so sweet) on my tongue (so nice) “Fills me up each and every night “And I like it! “Tasty little thing called love...” True-Ocellus slipped away from Ocellus-as-Sprite and over to the window of Bon Bon’s Bon Bon’s, where the cream earth pony proprietor and her mint-green marefriend we’re taking a moment to themselves. “Come see these ponies… “Lookin’ deep in each others’ eyes “I’ll slide right on by… “Take a little sip and then move “To the next in line.” Ocellus-as-Sprite had gone inside and drank from them, then followed true-Ocellus down the line of ponies. Friends, family, lovers, they were all her prey…until Ocellus-as-Sprite realized how nearly open she was being and dashed back outside, true-Ocellus following with a disappointed look. Ocellus-as-Sprite tried to get control of herself... “I gotta be cool...relax...be hip And leave no tracks I’ll take a bit here...not much I can’t fill up ‘til I burst inside!” “But I’m hungry!” “Tasty little thing called love...” True-Ocellus continued to cavort around Ocellus-as-Sprite, guiding the disguised changeling to prey after prey, her movements only slightly more subdued than the dancing figment of an undisguised changeling that only she could see. It wasn’t long before the two found themselves at Sugarcube Corner, where there was love aplenty from the Cakes, Pinkie Pie, Tootsie Flute and Truffle Shuffle and so many more to feed on… Then both true-Ocellus and Ocellus-as-Sprite noticed a thin, shy looking pegasus colt, Featherweight, looking at the latter. Not strangely, but with a bit of a blush and a nervous glance away when both Ocelli noticed him...and both could taste the attraction. The changeling shared a hoof-bump with the figment of her imagination, then true-Ocellus slid up to Featherweight and leaned against him, hooves tapping the floor rhythmically while Ocellus-as-Sprite tried her best casual saunter, eyes never leaving Featherweight’s. “I gotta be cool...relax...be hip And leave no tracks I’ll take this colt here...eat up. But the taste that I’m gettin’ might drive me wild. I’m still hungry (I’m always hungry)! “Tasty little thing called love...” All Ocellus-as-Sprite did was put one hoof to Featherweight’s cheek, and the colt let out a slight eep, a sigh, and then fainted contentedly away. True-Ocellus looked to Ocellus-as-Sprite, both shrugged, drank their full, then moved on. “This thing called love “I can’t get enough of it “This thing called love “I’ll sink my fangs in it “I’m so ready! “Tasty little thing called love...” The changeling in disguise and the figment doppelgänger of her true form danced from Sugarcube Corner, out into the street, the former’s movements still only a little more furtive than the latter’s as nopony else seemed to notice, making them that much easier to prey upon. “Tasty little thing called love (yum yum)! “Tasty little thing called love (delish)! “Tasty little thing called love (piquant)! “Tasty little thing called love (divine)! “Tasty little thing called love (scrumptious)! “Tasty little thing called love (toothsome)! “Tasty little thing called love (so rich)! “Tasty little thing called love (luscious)! “Tasty little thing called love (tasty)!” “What was that, deary?” an elderly green earth pony asked. Ocellus froze, eyes going wide. “Uh...” she intoned, staring at the pony. Granny Smith, she thought the name was. The earth pony looked at her expectantly. Ocellus, for her part, looked herself over, confirming she was still in her fillyform, then looked around and confirmed that there was no sign of her changeling form, the...whatever it was that she had just spent the past two minutes and forty-five seconds dancing and singing with. "What, uh...how much...was I just...singing...? And dancing? What happened?!” “Well how should Ah know?” Granny Smith asked, scoffing and hobbling off to resume doing whatever she had been doing before encountering a singing, dancing, weirdo-freak. “That's between you and your song, Ah ain't got time to help ya with whatever's goin' on. Hearth's Warming shopping still needs doing!” Ocellus continued to stare blankly straight ahead, waiting for somepony to pounce on her as a monster who was slowly draining the town of love. But it didn't happen. Ponies continued to trot around, completely oblivious to the song and dance and...where had that music come from? There had been musical accompaniment! Very well performed musical accompaniment, and some backup vocals beyond even her figment doppelgänger! Which, also, what?! Still nothing happened, however, and the sun was continuing its descent, and the night was getting colder. Finally, Ocellus shook her head. “Nopony noticed. Don't do it again,” she admonished herself. “Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it...” --- “This thing...called love...“ “Hey! Sprite!“ Ocellus leapt at the sound of her assumed name, glancing up and forward and grateful for whatever it was that broke her from quietly singing that song (Changelings didn't dance! Where had the dance choreography come from?!) that had sent her gallivanting around Ponyville without a care. Her mood improved considerably when she saw who it was, and a genuine smile appeared on her pony face. “Snails!“ She exclaimed, galloping forward to meet the one pony who knew what she really was where he waited for her. Snails trotted forward himself, and wrapped his hooves around her when she was close enough, a hug, as the gesture was called. It felt awkward but it tasted warm and sweet, so Ocellus accepted it for several long moments before pulling away. “How was your week?” She asked. Snails shrugged beneath his own winter clothing, a red jacket with a yellow scarf and a fuzzy hat with a hole in it for his horn. “Just the usual stuff,” he said. “I wish you could come to school, then you and me could hang out more, and you come come to recess with Snips and Rumble and everypony else.” On the one hoof, that sounded potentially delicious; on the other... “I don’t have parents to enroll me,” she pointed out. “Yeah, I know,” Snails said, scuffing his hoof in the snow. It was only over the weekend that he got to see Ocellus in her Sprite form that he had seen her create and helped her name; during the weekdays, Ocellus took on a variety of different forms to feed throughout Ponyville, all of them adults so as to avoid questions about why there was a filly or colt wandering around town instead of in school. She avoided Snails during that time as well, since apparently it would be considered strange and weird for an adult pony to spend a significant amount of time with a foal as friends. “So are you ready?” Snails asked after a moment. “Got everything memorized?” Ocellus nodded, and stood up a little straighter like she was giving a report to a Hive Lord. She started listing out the personal details for Sprite that the two had created. “Sprite, born on June 15th, 986 NLE. Mother is Cream Soda, father is Shaken Cola. Place of residence is - “ “Okay, okay, I believe you,” Snails said, holding up his hooves. “You don’t have to tell me, anyway, you have to tell Twilight Sparkle.” Sprite fell into a more neutral stance as the two trotted off, heading towards Golden Oaks Library. “What if she asks why I don’t have a Hoofington library card?” She asked. Snails thought. “You could just say you lost it,” he said. “Or you don’t have one but you need these books for your school project.” The “school project” was the made-up reason for why Sprite was coming to Ponyville from Hoofington. Officially, Hoofington’s teacher Skitch-Sketch had given her class an ongoing, year-long assignment to do on whatever they chose. Sprite has chosen insects. She had met Snails during the Ingathering festival in the fall when the two towns had gotten together to celebrate, and recognized his expertise on bugs, and so he was now helping her with her project on the weekends. It probably wouldn’t hold up to close scrutiny, but it sounded perfectly plausible and so wouldn’t be closely scrutinized. That was the theory, anyway. Whether it was true, well... “Hello!” Twilight’s voice called as the two entered the library. “Welcome to Golden Oaks!” She was a purple unicorn seated behind the library’s desk, a book of her own opened before her. Ocellus swallowed. She’d tried to get a library card before, while disguised as an adult pony...but though she could speak Equestrian well enough, reading and writing in it were a different matter, and at the time she hadn’t known Equestiran months either. Twilight had grown suspicious of “Shooting Star”, and Ocellus had dashed from the library. But there was no way for Twilight to connect Ocellus-as-Sprite to Shooting Star (part of the reason she had gone in disguise in the first place, it had been a trial run), so she pushed down her trepidation and came up to the desk with Snails. “H-hello,” she said, affecting a demure personality that she knew put ponies at ease and in a mind to help her. “I’d like to apply for a library card, please.” “Oh! Of course!” Twilight exclaimed happily, moving aside her book. Her horn lit up with a lavender glow, and she levitated a piece of paper up from beneath the library desk, even as an inkwell and a pen appeared with two small pops of magic. Ocellus couldn’t keep her eyes from widening a bit. Ponies were so very free and casual with their magic compared to changelings. Even Queen Chrysalis didn’t use telekinesis this much, let alone teleporting. “Just fill out this form,” Twilight said. “Make sure to fill everything out correctly. Will you need help drawing your cutie mark, or...?” “Oh,” Ocellus said, uncovering her flank. “I don’t have one yet.” She hadn’t known about them when creating Sprite, and wasn’t sure she wanted to pick one just in case she chose something she couldn’t emulate well. Fortunately her fillyform still looked young enough that this wasn’t unusual; Snails had been an early bloomer himself and had many friends who were still blank-flanks. She actually liked the concept behilnd them, and wished changelings earned cutie marks. It would certainly make organizing the Hive easier. Twilight, meanwhile, still wore a pleasant smile. “No problem! Just make sure to update your information when you do get one. I’ll leave you to it, but let me know if you need help with anything else, okay?” Ocellus nodded, and got to work filling out the form while Twilight went back to her book. The changeling drone needed a little help from Snails to write down all the information, mostly with regards to spelling. Cream Soda and Shaken Cola were two real ponies in Hoofington that Ocellus had scouted out a week ago (Hoofington was about six hours’ trot away, but Ocellus could shift into a pegasus form to cut that down a fair bit by flying), with a real address; Ocellus would just have to head into Hoofington to steal their mail a few times until her library card arrived. When she was done, Twilight looked over her form. She squinted at the shakey horn-writing, and Ocellus felt a small surge of panic that her spelling and writing had been too awful to read and there was no way a pony would be this bad and the only possible conclusion was that she wasn’t a pony, she was some kind of shapeshifter monster trying to get a library card in order to further her own knowledge of ponies so she could blend in better... ...but that didn’t happen. Twilight produced a stamp and pressed it to Ocellus’ form, then got out a tiny card emblazoned with an image of Golden Oaks and wrote Sprite’s name and a date on the back. “Okay, here’s your temporary card,” she said. “It expires in one month,” she indicated a date at the top, “and you can only take out two books with it. Your real card will be mailed to your address in two to three weeks. Okay?” Ocellus nodded. “Thank you very much, Miss Twilight,” she said, as was expected, taking the card in her hooves and tucking it into her cape, where Rarity had included an inner pocket. “Since it’s Saturday our hours are extended to nine o’clock. Have fun!” “We will, Miss Twilight,” Snails said. As Twilight once again turned to her own book, Snails looked to Ocellus. “So where do you want to start?” He asked. Ocellus thought, and realized that she didn’t really know where to begin. She’d been so focused on getting a library card, what to do with it had escaped her mind... “You pick something,” she said. Snails brightened. “All right! I know just the thing.” --- “I know a changeling named Pedipalp,” Ocellus remarked, looking at the close-up drawing of an insect in the book that Snails had chosen for them to read. “Really?” Snails asked. The two were sitting side-by-side near the library’s fireplace, a large entomological encyclopedia open before them. Ponies really took their cutie marks seriously, Ocellus should have known. Of course Snails would choose a book on bugs, when she gave him the choice. “Mmm-hmm. He’s one of the guards for the Central Hive’s main entrance.” She grinned a little. “His fangs grew in weird. The middle of his mouth rather than the sides.” She glanced around, making sure Twilight wasn’t nearby, then shifted her mouth to have the bucktooth fangs of Pedipalp, giving a broad grin. Snails burst out laughing as Ocellus shifted back quickly, in case Twilight came to investigate. The colt got his laughter under control quickly as well. “Snips has teeth like that,” Snails said, naming his best friend. “Not as big, though. He says he has a donkey in his family tree somewhere. Is Pedipalp related to any donkeys?” “I don’t think so,” Ocellus said. Actually she was certain no changeling was related to anything on this world, but a flat negative didn’t seem like the right thing to say to Snails. She shifted around a little; she was sitting on some library-provided pillows, her cape now loosely draped over her rather than buttoned up. Between the cape and the fireplace, the temperature was finally decent, if a bit dry. Snails had taken off his own jacket as well, though he left it folded nearby rather than over him. Ocellus turned back to the entomological encyclopedia. “Okay, um...pedipalps of spiders have the same se...segment...segmentation as the legs, but the tarsus - I know a Tarsus too - is undivided, and the pretarsus has no lateral claws. Pedipalps contain sensitive chemical...dee-tehk-torss, and fuh...function as taste and smell organs...like the organs on the legs? What?” Snails nodded. “Yup. Spiders smell and taste with their feet, sort of.” Ocellus thought of the terrible, flying hexarachnids of Protea, the greatest predators of changelings. Hundreds of changelings died to them every year. The idea of them smelling with their feet...made them a little less scary. But only a little. “That’s weird,” she decided. Snails shrugged. “Spiders think smelling with noses is weird. I’ve asked. Actually they just think noses are weird.” “They are,” Ocellus confirmed. Her natural changeing form didn’t have nostrils, she smelled by inhaling through her mouth, and not nearly as well as a pony. She poked a hoof to Sprite’s muzzle. “I can sort of see the use...but it also keeps filling up with phlegm or something in the cold...” Snails bit back another laugh. “It’s called snot,” he provided. “What’s it do?” He shrugged. “Be snot. It’s gross. I wish I could just shift it away like you.” Ocellus could understand the envy. She shifted a little more under her cape, then looked to Snails. “How are you not cold?” She asked. Snails grinned, tapping a hoof to his chest. “My mom and dad and sis are all pegasi! So I’m really good in the cold.” “Really?” Snails looked down. “Well, I can tough it out. Nopony else in my family would need to spend money on a fireplace if not for me, at least not all the time. So I just bundle up. But then sometimes my mom or dad or Raindrops gets mad at me for not telling how cold I am...usually ‘cause I got sick ‘cause of the cold. But I don’t want to be a burden.” Ocellus found herself lightly biting her assumed form’s lip at that. She...she knew what that was like. At least a little, anyway...the Everfree wasn’t as cold as Ponyville...yet...and it hadn’t yet really penetrated down to her burrow...but it would. Snails promised her that it would start getting warmer eventually...but that was still months away. How was she going to deal with the cold? Snails looked at Ocellus. “What are you doing about the cold?” He asked. “In your burrow, I mean.” Ocellus started. She was surprised, sometimes, at how good ponies were at guessing what other ponies were thinking, even if Ocellus wasn’t really a pony. She had no explanation for it. “I can manage,” she answered. “I could dig it deeper. If this world is like Protea, then it gets hotter the deeper you go.” Snails tilted his head. “Wouldn’t you have to go really deep for that? Like, miles and miles?” Ocellus hunkered down and pulled her cape closer around her. “Maybe,” she said. She honestly didn’t know. And, truth be told, it probably didn’t matter. After just a few dozen feet at most she’d encounter bedrock that she couldn’t burrow through on her own in any kind of timely manner. She could shift to something better at digging, but the cost in magic - in love - would be prohibitive. “You could build a chimney,” Snails suggested. “Ooze melts under high temperatures,” Ocellus responded. “Well...it doesn’t have to be built out of ooze. My fireplace is made out of bricks and stone.” Ocellus sighed. “I know a little masonry. Not enough to build anything, just to repair stuff.” Snails brightened as he stood. “We’re in a library, right? We could get you a book on masonry! Or we could ask Miss Twilight if she knows any spells to just make a fireplace. I’ve seen her make doors and statues and chalkboards and zippers and moustaches.” Ocellus blinked at that, looking back to Snails. “Seriously?” She asked. She had never heard of that kind of power before, the ability to just create material on the fly - at least, not permanently, and presuming one didn’t count a changeling’s ability to create matter from magic as part of a disguise (and that, too, only temporarily). “Yeah! She and miss Trixie are the two best unicorns in all of Equestria with magic! I bet she knows something that can help.” Ocellus got up at that, following Snails from the fireplace (and mourning the loss of heat) and over to where Twilight was still behind her desk, a new book now open in front of her. Several ponies had come and gone since Snails and Ocellus had arrived, but none had bothered the two foals. Once they explained the situation to Twilight - loosely, anyway (“my room gets cold at night”) - the unicorn took a few moments to consider. “Well, I don’t think it would be very safe to just magically create a new chimney for your house,” she said. “Not to mention that - no offense - even a very talented unicorn wouldn’t be able to just magically create an entire chimney from nothing. It would be easier to transmute something like a chimney that’s there already, but even then most wouldn’t have the talent or skill...I might be able to if I read up on construction, but I can’t leave the library...” Ocellus held back a sigh of relief at the fact that apparently Equestrian unicorns weren’t all of them Queen-like in their magical ability, even if Twilight seemed to be. “I don’t need an entire chimney,” she said. She also didn’t want one, the last thing she needed was for her burrow to melt. “Just something to keep me warm. It doesn’t have to be as hot as a fire.” Twilight purses her lips as she thought. “Well,” she said, “there are some basic heating spells. I have a scarf that makes me retain all body heat, and Trixie’s cape does the same. But those are difficult to enchant...I’m not very good at enchanting objects. Plus you need another enchantment then to ensure that the pony doesn’t overheat, and that’s even harder. Magically and physically speaking it’s easier to heat something up than cool it down...” She smiled then when something came to her. “Oh! But there is a spell I know that just heats something to about the temperature of boiling water. You could cast it on a rock or piece of metal, something solid. Put it under your bed covers...” she trailed off, looking down at Ocellus. “Oh, but...it’s nearly impossible to learn, unless you have a special talent related to fire or heat. Or magic, of course.” Ocellus stared a moment, unsure of how to tell the unicorn that, as a changeling, she did not have and could never develop a cutie mark, but nevertheless could probably with practice learn any spell by watching and mimicking the pony who was casting it. “Can we try?” She asked. “Me too?” Snails asked. Twilight brightened. “Of course!” She came around from the other side of the desk. “Let’s give it a shot...”