The first time Cheval molted, Flurry Heart wasn’t allowed to watch. Cadence thought it would be too disturbing for a small child, and so she made Flurry stand out in the hall with her father. Double Time was there to help with the first molt. She taught Cheval how to rip off her own wings and shatter her own legs.
When it was done, Flurry Heart came into the bedroom, and saw Cheval lying there. “Is she okay?” Flurry asked.
“Yes,” Cadence said, “but you can’t touch her right now. Her shell needs to harden. Until it does, it’s like her bones are made of rubber. She can’t move and it would be very easy for her to get hurt.”
“Okay,” Flurry said. For the rest of that night, she stood guard by Cheval’s bedside, and refused to be moved. When Shining tried to drag her away, she screamed, and eventually her parents gave up. They got her a pillow, and she slept there on the floor.
The second time Cheval molted, Flurry got a very soft pen and drew angry eyebrows on her face.
In Griffonstone, in a cold dorm room with a single slit for a window, Cheval lay in bed surrounded by her broken shell. She could neither move nor use her horn, and over her stood a creature with knives for hands.
For a long time, she and Gia watched each other in silence. Cheval didn’t talk because it hurt to breathe. She wasn’t sure why Gia stayed silent. The room smelled faintly of vomit. Gia had thrown up at the sight of Cheval ripping off her own flesh.
“You look different,” Gia finally said.
The shell that lay on the floor, damaged though it was, was still recognizably a changeling. Her face had become a mask, whole enough a particularly macabre pony could slip it on and look our through her eye sockets. Her orange shell and rainbow-tinted wings lay in a pile next to her legs. Her membranous “tail” had cracked at the end, and lay underneath a pile of bright yellow-and-orange chunks that had once been her hips and groin.
The layer underneath was black. There were holes in her legs.
“I can’t really turn my head right now.” Cheval’s words were quiet and slurred. Her voice box still worked, but she didn’t dare move her jaw. “Looks classic?”
“Yeah. But some other things.” Gia approached her, laying her talons on the bedside. Cheval followed them with her eyes. Then she snapped her gaze back to Gia’s face. “You’ve got the um… saddle look.”
She reached out with a talon, only for Cheval to plead: “Don’t touch me. Please.”
Gia’s talon froze. Their eyes met. “I, um…” Cheval mumbled around her frozen jaw. “My wings are very delicate at this stage. If you touch them they might not grow right. So please. Please don’t.”
“Um… okay.” Gia sat back away from the bed. “Well, um. You’ve got the saddle look. Like, your back has this purple finish under the wings, and there’s these green bands that run under you like straps. Like the old changelings.”
“I look like a warrior drone? From the old days?”
“No.” Gia pointed with a talon, but got no closer. “Your colors changed. Your eyes and shell highlights. They’re blue instead of orange. And you’ve got um… I mean. It’s still really wet and matted. But you’ve got hair.”
Cheval didn’t reply, and so Gia went on: “You’ve got an actual tail, with blue and white hairs. And a mane. It’s short, but it’s there.”
“That’s a frill.”
“Yeah. No.” Gia’s usual sarcastic bite reared its head. “It’s definitely not a frill.”
“Changelings don’t have hair.”
“I’ve seen pictures of two particular changelings with hair. So there’s at least three. Those two and you.” Gia picked up a bit of Cheval’s leg off the floor, and held it up to her. “And you… seem bigger? How did you fit in this shell?”
“The inner layer expands as it hardens. That’s why changelings grow when they molt.” Her eyes flicked over the shell chunk Gia was holding. “But you’re seeing things.”
“I’m not. You’re definitely bigger.”
“I’m already fully grown. You’re seeing things.”
“Well, you know. I see a lot of things. I’m smart.” Gia tossed the bit of shell away. “So you’re a changeling from the Crystal Empire. One who had to disguise themselves as a pony even though there’s no law against changeling students.”
Cheval said nothing. Gia went on, “And you have blue hair. Take after your father much?”
“Dad and my mother have sex a lot. I’ve got like a hundred thousand sisters at this point.”
“Do all hundred thousand of them call Prince Shining Armor ‘dad’? Because that seems a little casual.”
Cheval shut her eyes. Gia snorted. “You’re an awful liar.” She picked up Cheval’s old face off the floor. “Changelings all kind of look the same to me, but you had this notch in your horn here? I recognized it from your pictures.”
“Do you feel clever then?” Cheval’s word carried a bitter snap.
“Do you admit it then?” Gia tossed Cheval’s face away. It shattered on impact with the concrete. “Are you, in fact, Her Royal Highness, Princess Cheval of the Crystal Empire? The mysterious princess in exile?”
“I am.”
“And you decided to move to a country ruled by the International Party?” Gia chuckled. “Because you know they’re not big on hereditary royalty.” When Cheval didn’t say anything, Gia went on: “So why did you leave? Real reason?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Gia reached out with a claw and flicked Cheval’s nose. “That sucks for you.”
“Are you going to turn me in if I refuse?”
“No.” Gia considered her next words carefully. “But we’re friends, aren’t we? And friends don’t keep those sorts of secrets from each other, I think.”
“Ah.” Cheval drew a few slow breaths as she lay there. “I guess not.”
The next minute passed in silence. Cheval did not speak, and Gia didn’t rush her. Both of them could hear that Cheval’s breathing had become labored, and a concerned furrow crossed Gia’s face. But her breathing stabilized in time, and when it did, she spoke.
“We had an interview. With a newspaper. And Flurry Heart said that she fully supported the Society for Harmony with Equestria. And I leaned in behind her, and corrected the reporter, and told her that what my sister meant to say was that she fully supported the Society for Equestrian Harmony.”
Gia frowned. “And?”
“The Society for Equestrian Harmony is a movement that wants the Crystal Empire to fully integrate with Equestria and for all pony nations to become one united country. The Society for Harmony with Equestria is a movement that wants Queen Amaryllis to fully annex the Crystal Empire and replace Princess Cadence. The name is just branding so they sound nicer.”
“The names are very similar. Anypony could have made that mistake.”
“Anypony doesn’t get to be the crown princess of the Crystal Empire. When you’re the heir to a monarchy, you can’t accidentally endorse a rebel faction that wants to overthrow your mother.”
“According to the papers, you’re the smart one. Sharp as a razor.”
“Well screw the papers and screw you.” The bitterness returned to Cheval’s tone. “Flurry isn’t stupid. She’s distracted. She’s eighteen and she still doesn’t have her cutie mark and she’s an alicorn but she still seems to be getting older. And she’s looking at Aunt Twilight and mom and wondering when it’s going to stop. Is she going to be eighteen forever? Or twenty? Or forty? Or maybe born alicorns are different from ascended alicorns and she’s going to die of old age.”
“Not knowing if you’re immortal.” Gia rolled her eyes. “That must suck.”
“Yes, it does suck.” Cheval shivered in bed, but pressed on with sharp words. “It sucks not knowing if she’s immortal. It sucks not knowing if she’s sterile. Cadence can’t have more foals. Remember that? Maybe Flurry can’t have any. We don’t know. We don’t know what her special talent is going to be, or why she was born the way she is, and oh, do you know what her job is?”
When Gia didn’t reply right away, Cheval pressed on: “Her job, the job she was born into, is to take over from her mother after her mother is murdered. Alicorns can’t die except from violence. Her job is to sit and wait and attend parties and wave at crowds until the day a guard knocks on her door and says that the sweetest, kindest, most loving mare she’s ever known was just poisoned and she needs to address her people.”
“So what’s your point?”
“My point is that she doesn’t want to be the crown princess. She hates her job, and sometimes when you hate doing a thing you don’t apply your full effort. So she’s waving at crowds, but she’s only half-there, so she makes little mistakes and the newspapers think she’s an idiot.”
With a snort, Cheval finished: “But she’s not.”
“Okay, sure. That’s uh…” Gia hesitated. “Royal family drama, I guess. But you didn't answer my question. Why did you leave?”
“Because she made a mistake in public, and I corrected her. I corrected her a few times. And ponies started saying that maybe I’d make a better royal heir than her. There’s no rule in the Crystal Empire that the oldest child has to inherit. And the crystal ponies trust me. They see me as one of their princesses. Cadence could name me the crown princess and they’d be fine with it.”
“But you wouldn’t be?”
“I won’t be a weapon to destroy the ponies who love me.” Her slurred words became thicker, until they were nearly unintelligible. “I’m a monster. And I was created by another monster, to slowly poison all the good in the world that was too strong for her to crush outright. And Cadence isn’t my mother and Flurry isn’t my sister but they’ve been nothing but kind to me and I won’t hurt them. I won’t.”
“Um…” Gia pulled back from the bedside. “That’s um… I mean. You know. It’s…”
“Screw you.”
“Yeah, that’s fair.” Gia coughed into a talon. “Well, I’m not going to turn you in, so…”
“You should. If they find out you knew and didn’t say anything, you’ll go to prison. And Gideon will find out. He’s sharper than that.”
“Gideon won’t turn me in, Cheval.” Gia rolled her eyes. “He loves me. You’re a changeling. Can’t you smell it?”
For two days, Gia stood guard over Cheval while her shell hardened. On the third day, Cheval could stand and walk around on her own. She did have a mane and a tail, and when washed, they puffed out into a sporty, boyish look.
On the fourth day, Gideon arrived to see Gia. He told her how he felt about her—that he adored her, admired her, and saw chicks in their future. And she did what she always did: she lied.
So he left her.