//------------------------------// // To Uncharted Waters // Story: Walk Where There Is No Path // by theOwtcast //------------------------------// Several days after my escape from the hive, I was still making my way through the seemingly endless jungle just north of changeling territory. It was a slow and tedious journey through dense vegetation and without landmarks or milestones to gauge my progress by. My luck was still holding, and so far there were no signs of any changelings trying to hunt me down. Not daring to push it too far, I tried to walk as silently as I could and avoided flying as much as possible lest I get noticed, and slept as little as possible in order to make more time available for continuing to move forward. Sooner or later I would find a place to settle down - or at least I hoped so - but for now, the more distance I could put between myself and the hive, the better, if only for my own sense of safety. At least the wild animals I encountered from time to time didn’t seem very interested in me! I’d thought of transforming into one of them for safety, but in my paranoid state of mind, I began to overthink things. I only knew so much about any of the wild animals I’d seen. What if I failed to mimic their normal behavior correctly? Would it alert the real animals? Would any changelings on lookout for me notice the animals’ weird behavior and realize something was off, such as a runaway changeling sneaking around? How long would it take them to track down the source of the commotion? What would they do to make me show my real face? What wouldn’t they do to make me show my real face? Yep, definitely overthinking things. I needed a break, bad. But was I overthinking? What if- Calm down, Thorax. You’ll never get anywhere like this! If there were any changelings around here, you’d have known it by now! I was beginning to grasp the state of mind Coxa must have been in when she decided to cooperate with her captors in Trottingham and betray those two infiltrators. And I wasn’t even captured… yet. If I was having it this badly now, I didn’t want to think how I might act… how I might feel if I did get captured! It took quite some more walking forward and looking back until I finally reached the end of the jungle, but when I did, I almost wished I hadn’t. In front of me was another wasteland, not unlike the one surrounding the hive, stretching as far as I could see. At first my heart skipped a beat, believing for a moment I’d turned around at some point without noticing, but the realization that I couldn’t see the hive anywhere in the wasteland brought a wave of relief. If I had walked in a circle, I would have seen the hive in front of me now; such a colossal structure would be impossible to miss! Upon closer inspection, there were other clues this wasn’t the same wasteland as the one around the hive: there were more rocks and boulders, the dead trees were slightly different, and the ground was of a different color. My relief of not having mistakenly returned to the hive was soon replaced by a new worry: where to hide now? Surely Chrysalis wouldn’t have given up trying to find me so soon! In the jungle there was plenty of natural cover I could use, but in this bare terrain I’d be visible from miles away! I could pretend to be a rock in a pinch - maybe - but I couldn’t cross the entire wasteland looking like a rock! Going as an animal would be better, but I didn’t even know if anything lived here. I could end up being as obvious as a walking rock if I opted for a wrong animal! Reluctantly, I decided to proceed undisguised for the time being. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but eventually managed to convince myself that this was what I’d escaped the hive for in the first place: finding a friend who would like me for who I really was, not who I was pretending to be. I’d probably still have to use a disguise to make the first step without risk of getting attacked and captured on sight, but if I wanted to find someone who would ultimately want to be friends with a changeling, I should start being comfortable with being a changeling openly among non-changelings! So here I was, stepping out of my comfort zone, an undisguised changeling out in the open for all the world to see. Well, maybe not quite that last part, because there wasn’t anyone around to see me. Or maybe I’d spoken too soon. Not far into the wasteland, I passed by a larger rock and got face-to-face with a peculiar creature unlike any I was familiar with: about my size, with a brown coat, mane in a slightly lighter shade of brown, and wearing a feathered headband. I froze. “I haven’t seen you around here before,” she said. She seemed friendly enough. “Yeah, I’ve kind of just arrived,” I shrugged, trying to hide my nervousness. Why wasn’t she afraid of me? Had she ever seen a changeling? Had she heard of us? It didn’t seem like she had! But how was that possible, living so close to the hive, relatively speaking? Maybe this was my chance to make a good first impression on someone uncorrupted by preconceptions! Could I really be that lucky? “You seem tired. Would you like to come with me to my village? You can rest there, or grab something to eat if you’re hungry,” she offered. “Would I! Thank you so much… um, what’s your name?” “Little Strongheart. Yours?” “I’m Thorax. Pleased to meet you,” I grinned widely. This was going well! “The pleasure is mine, Thorax. This way,” she pointed her hoof. “Is it far?” “No, not really, we’ll be there in a few minutes. Um… I hope I’m not being rude, but what are you? I’ve never seen anyone like you before.” “I’m a changeling.” “Changeling… changeling…” she mused. “The word is vaguely familiar, but I can’t seem to remember where I heard it. Oh well, maybe someone in the village will know!” “Maybe,” I replied. Hopefully not, but I wasn’t convinced. Maybe accepting her invitation wasn’t such a good idea! Oh well, too late to change my mind now! I’d just have to hope they’d go easy on me. “And what are you? I’ve never seen anyone like you before either.” “I’m a buffalo.” I tried to remember if I’d ever heard anything being said about buffalo, but nothing came to mind. I didn’t have time to ask or say anything else before we arrived in the village. “Dad, look, I met someone in the desert!” Little Strongheart called to one of the villagers... and just as she did, everything around us seemed to stop. All eyes were fixed on me. It was beyond doubt that although Little Strongheart wasn’t familiar with changelings, everyone else was. “Little Strongheart, dear, what have you done?” whispered the buffalo with more feathers in his headband than anyone else. He must have been the village’s leader or whatever they were called! “Well, I met him in the desert, and he was tired and hungry… so I thought... “ Little Strongheart was starting to catch on that something wasn’t right. “He’s a changeling,” warned her father. “I didn’t want to trouble you with stories about them at such a young age, but changelings are dangerous creatures that will trick you into believing they’re friendly and then drain you of your love! You must never come near them! You’ve been lucky to have never seen them invade, but I have, and so did my father, and his father before him, and his father before him, and his father before him, and his father before him, and his father before him, and his father before him…” I tilted my head in confusion. Was the guy rambling, or had there actually been such a streak of unfortunate fathers? “I think I get the idea,” Little Strongheart interrupted and looked at me uneasily. “So what should we do?” “We can’t allow him to stay here. He must go, now!” “But I’m not invading, or trying to harm you, or stealing your love!” I tried to explain. “I’m just looking to find a friend! I know it’s hard to believe me after your previous experiences with my kind, but I’m not like them! Can’t you give me a chance?” Little Strongheart’s father gestured to the nearest few buffalo to come closer. “Even if you did come alone, changeling, I don’t want to make a mistake of trusting you”, he spoke to me. “Knowing what your kind did to us in the past, I will not allow you to remain here! Whatever it is you’re looking for, you’ll have to find it elsewhere! These villagers will escort you to the edge of buffalo territory. Do not return, or I promise you, you will face consequences!” I nodded and went away; their minds were apparently made up, and I’d get nowhere trying to convince them otherwise. I might even anger them to the point where they’d decide to proceed with those consequences immediately! The summoned buffalo followed, and Little Strongheart and her father stayed behind. Little Strongheart’s face was distorted in a grimace, her eyes avoiding mine, but her father’s face was frowning unforgivingly. It was nearly evening by the time we reached the border. There was an apple orchard, and we stopped in the middle of it. It seemed strange to have stopped in the middle rather than on either end, but they gave no explanation, and I didn’t think to ask for one. Then they pointed out a few landmarks by which I would recognize a line I shouldn’t cross, and having made sure I’d committed them to memory, they turned around and left me in the orchard. Despite getting banished from their land, the encounter had gone much more smoothly and peacefully than anything I’d ever witnessed in the hive! This was why my spirits were only slightly deflated by this failure to make friends with the buffalo. In the hive, I would have already been dead for the same kind of transgression, but the buffalo had almost seemed like they would apologize for sending me away! It was unbelievable! And, for some reason, I didn’t feel quite as hungry as usual. I was far from sated, but at least my hunger seemed bearable now. Had I eaten some of their love without realizing? And how? Maybe, if all else failed, I could return here and set up a home just outside the buffalo territory. In all likelihood they wouldn’t be very happy to see me return, but if I stayed just outside of their territory, they probably wouldn’t be able to chase me off from there, and over time they might even realize that I’d spoken the truth when I told them I had no foul intentions and lift my banishment! It would be the last resort, especially with the hive being so much closer to here than to many other places I could get to, but for now, I was going to keep looking. I had only started, after all; this couldn’t be the only chance I’d ever get of finding friends! Who knows what lies ahead?