===<Rainbow Falls>===
===<May 13th, P.R. 2>===
Rainbow Dash groaned as light filtered in through the window, pressing on her eyelids. She moved her arm to cover her face, but the motion shook the sleep from her body. With a sigh, she pushed herself up, glanced at her clock, then stepped out of her bed.
The room she had bought was certainly plain; designed to cater to multiple races and cultures, which left it quite barren in turn. Empty brown walls, dull carpet, plain wood furniture. She got what she paid for.
Luckily, this included a balcony, per her request. As she rubbed dust out of the corners of her eyes, Rainbow stepped out into the morning sun, letting her wings stretch to warm up and catch the breeze. With a deep breath, she looked over the town of Rainbow Falls, watching as the wind blew an iridecent mist off the waterfalls the town was named after.
With a sudden shift of the wind, a tuft of stark white fluff covered one of Rainbow's eyes. She swept it away and returned inside to the inn's restroom.
The mirror was plain. The griffon reflected there was as well. White feathers, somewhat darker around her yellow eyes and where the feathers shifted into grey fur. It wasn't Rainbow Dash in the mirror anymore.
Araceli raised a talon to turn the sink on, then splashed it over her beak and feathers.
She found it surprisingly easy to imitate the mannerisms of a griffon, though that could have come from growing up with Gilda as her best friend and wingmate. Araceli wasn't quite sure anymore.
She took a preening comb from her bag, one of Gilda's that she had left, and got to work straightening out and oiling her feathers. Araceli imagined Gilda holding the comb, running it over her feathers as they talked about how far above the other students they were. It wasn't a boast if you could back it up, after all.
Gods, Araceli needed something in her life that wasn't different. For once, taking life slowly sounded perfect. She could forget about Twilight, forget about changelings, forget about Equestria once she crossed the border. Take a few weeks to face herself before anything else.
As Araceli left her room and walked by the innkeep, he called out to her. "Gwyneth, wasn't it?"
Araceli- Gwyneth- turned at the sound of her disguise's name. "Yeah." Her voice was lower, like her impression of Gilda. "What do you want?"
The innkeeper shrugged as he reached under the counter."I don't want anything." He presented an envelope to her. "You might like this, though. Arrived last night by courier."
Gwyneth took the letter from his talons and looked it over. It was from Gilda, sent from Griffonstone. She nodded, then handed it back to him. "Send it up to my room. Just slide it under the door or something, I'm headed out."
He nodded. "Alright, have a good day."
Rainbow Falls wasn't crowded for most of the year, save for when two events rolled around. The Trader's Exchange in the summer, and any year the Equestrian Games rolled around. Rainbow Falls was where many teams, including griffons, tried out for the aerial relay event.
Because of it's location, Rainbow Falls was seen as the 'neutral ground' between Equestria and the Griffon Kingdom, though it was in the former country's land. Griffons were as often seen in Rainbow Falls as dragons were seen in Fillydelphia.
Gwyneth had chosen to disguise herself as a griffon not just because Rainbow Dash was a well-recognized pony, especially with her signature mane, but because it gave her a blank slate. She didn't have the ties that Rainbow had or the stigma and conflict that a changeling would bring. She was who she made herself to be, quite literally.
And as herself, Gwyneth decided to walk the streets of the town, thinking. She wasn't usually a thinker since she preferred doing, but after everything that had happened in the last week, she was out of things she could do. Twilight Sparkle, that nerdy, dorky little unicorn that thought friends were distractions was a centuries-old changeling Queen that also happened to be Gwyneth's mother.
So she sat down on a bench and stared at a waterfall. The 'liquid rainbow,' as non-weather ponies liked to say, was actually a mana-conductive liquid called spectra. It was only after the first weather ponies studied this liquid that they were able to manufacture it. Much like her own Sonic Rainboom, spectra had the ability to absorb ambient mana to the point that it actually was visible to the naked eye in the form of iridescence.
Gwyneth was fine sounding like Twilight when it came to the weather. She scratched the back of her neck with a talon, squirming at the strange feeling of having to move five little sticks instead of a single hoof. It still felt nice to scratch, it was just different.
"It's a lovely day out, don't you think?" Gwyneth froze, then turned to see a pony that had sat next to her on the bench. The pony reminded her of a bumblebee; fluffy black and yellow mane with a grey coat covered by a black suit and yellow tie. The pony looked over the city with yellow eyes. "When the sun's out like this, the light catches the falls just perfectly and paints the whole hillside."
The pony puzzled Gwyneth. They were too much like a stallion to be a mare, but too mareish to be a stallion. Either way, she exhaled through her beak and turned away.
"Alright, I get it," the pony said with a hoof wave. "Let sleeping griffons lie and all that. But, having lived by the Falls my whole life, I think I've gotten the hang of scoping out interesting ponies. I like to collect things, you see. Stories or knick-knacks, it doesn't matter to me."
"Doesn't your house get cluttered?" Gwyneth asked with a raised eyebrow.
"No, not really. It's a big house!" The pony talked like there was no reason to debate the matter. Not that Gwyneth ever would. Though, it was interesting. The biggest buildings in Rainbow Falls were the hospital and the inns. She wasn't sure how big a 'big house' could be.
"Well, I'm not going to share my life's story, and I don't have anything I can give you, so maybe you should talk to somebody else," Gwyneth muttered. The pony instead continued to speak.
"That's fine, you know. Some people have secrets they keep close to their heart." They sighed. "I'll give a story of my own, if you don't mind."
Yes I do mind please just leave me alone, Gwyneth thought, but the pony continued to speak before she could voice her thoughts.
"So, I had this good buddy of mine years ago. I mean years, like, she disappeared off the face of the earth for a while. But anyways, I get a message from one of our other friends saying 'hey, check it out, look who's back in town' so, naturally, I'm kinda excited." They rubbed their hoof against their nose.
"But wow, imagine my surprise when I get the news that not only is she back, she's got new little kids following her around!" the bumblebee pony said as they snapped to face Gwyneth. "Yeah, she's got a whole bunch of little foals. I'm kinda floored because she had been gone so long that I thought she was dead or had moved out of the country, but then there she is with a little family."
Gwyneth didn't really care. Instead, she began to doze off to the pony's rhythmic voice.
"After that, I get a new message from one of my friends to the south-east that one of this mare's kids is coming my way, so I'm thinking... all kinds of things. How should I introduce myself, are they gonna be nice, are they gonna have any stories about their mom?" They shrugged. "But then when the time comes, and I walk up to them, I get kinda ahead of myself. Talk about the weather."
Something clicked in Gwyneth's head, so she met the pony's eyes with a bit of apprehension. "Yeah, it's kinda awkward since we don't know each other, so it ends up being a one-sided conversation, but..." The pony leaned toward Gwyneth. "It gives me time to learn what I need to know about them."
Gwyneth frowned. With a flex of one of her senses, new colors burst to life in the air. Emotions. Some had a light to them, which she learned meant they could be lapped up for energy. The cloud surrounding the pony, however, was flat. Dead.
"You're a changeling," she remarked.
The pony's pupils thinned to slits for a moment, then returned to normal. "That's right. And so are you. One of Citlali's new brood. Which, I've noted, you're curiously apart from."
"Yeah." Gwyneth straightened in her seat. "Why do you care? Who are you?"
"Queen Aurelia," they said matter-of-factly. "But call me Aura. Like I said, I like collecting stories. Your hive is fragile enough as it is unless you've done an even better job hiding than I thought. What are you doing all the way out here, so far from home?"
"Like I said, I don't want to share my life's story." At Aura's raised eyebrow, Gwyneth waved her claw. "Look, I get that you're a Queen. Due respect and all that. But right now, I don't really want to talk to you."
Aura tilted their head to the side. "Sure, but here you are anyway, so you might as well make use of it. I might even have a few things worth your interest if you'd be willing to follow me home?"
Gwyneth sighed. "What kind of things?"
"I'm one of the people that started the Trader's Exchange so many years ago. You would not believe the kinds of things end up in my hooves. Cursed artifacts, magical talismans, probably a piece of some dark lord? Lots of people see the Exchange as a chance to get rid of things they don't need and walk away with something better. Perhaps I can take whatever's weighing you down? Make a trade?"
The offer tempted her, as much as she didn't want to deal with changelings. "Fine," she sighed. "Just a quick look."
Aura smiled. "Then follow me."