If I don't die from the sheer stress of this week, the first thing I'm gonna do is go to therapy.
I stood there, staring at my fainted mother. I could hardly believe it; everyone in our house had transformed. My mind was racing, trying to cope with it.
"R-Rove, what do we do?" Bea asked, her voice shaky.
I couldn't answer; the stress of the past few days was catching up to me, and it was insurmountable. It felt like the walls were closing in on me, rooting me into place as they crushed my chitin into bloody —
"Rove, snap out of it!" Bea was suddenly in my face, concern written all over hers. "What. Do. We. Do??"
I took some deep breaths, but I couldn't shake off the impending sense of doom. "I-I-I don't know! I mean, what CAN we do? We can't just act like nothing's wrong; he'll flip out at the sight of us! And we can't ignore the call, because that'll make him think something happened to us..."
Bea was now pacing around, too. "What'll we do, what'll we do, what'll we DO?!"
My quivering legs finally gave out, and I collapsed onto the floor. I'd never been so unsure and so scared in my life, and I absolutely hated it. I couldn't even bring myself to words; I just lay there, shaking and hyperventilating. Bea soon joined me, and we both just shut down.
Eventually, Mazarine came to. She jerked back up, immediately looking at her hooves and grumbling when they were still hooves. "Damnit, not a dream..."
Then she heard our whimpering, and gasped when she saw us both huddled on the floor. Forgetting her own troubles for a minute, she stumbled out of bed, tripping over her own long legs. She practically dragged herself over to us, scooping our shaking bodies into a hug and whispering soothing words into our ears. "Shh-shh-shhhh, don't be scared; I'm alright, and I won't let anything bad happen to you."
My voice managed to return, "B-but what about D-d-dad?"
"If he's seen the news, he'll likely know about this happening," she assured us. "He won't abandon us because of something out of our control."
Bea managed to calm down a bit. "You really think so?" she sniffled.
Mazarine responded by nuzzling the base of Bea's horn. "I know so."
She sat there, holding us as we cried the last of our stress out. Once there were no more fearful tears, she set us back down, and we turned our attention to her.
"So, what did you say about being a Queen?" I asked, recalling what she'd said before she fainted.
She flinched, glancing back down at her new body. "Please, don't call me that. I may resemble the Queen from that show, but I'm still just your mother."
I blinked. She's a Queen Changeling? That'd certainly explain the differences between us and her.
Bea then piped up, "Is that why we can hear your thoughts?"
Mazarine balked. "You what now?"
"Before you fainted," I explained, "we started to hear your thoughts. I think you've formed some kind of Hive Mind with us."
She sighed. "Oh, great; there went my privacy..."
Bea clarified, "We didn't actually hear what you were saying, but we could still tell it was you; it had your voice."
I added, "And I promise not to eavesdrop through it."
She thought for a moment, then chuckled. "What did I do to deserve such wonderful kids?"
We blushed at the appraisal. "Aw, thanks, Mom."
She smiled, wrapping us in another hug.
So we waited for Halley to call.
And waited.
The normal time for the call came and went, but still, we waited.
Thirty minutes passed, and we became antsy.
Finally, at the forty-five minute mark, Mazarine decided to call him instead, making sure to turn off the camera first.
*Ring!*
*Ring!*
*Ri—!*
Finally, he answered, but something was wrong; his camera was off, too.
"Mazzie?" his voice came, garbled mostly due to the distance.
"Halley, we need to show you something."
A pause on his end. I could hear him breathing a bit more heavily than usual, before he replied, "I need to show you something, too."
The three of us blinked, giving each other worried looks. "Do you want to turn on your camera first?"
"M-maybe we should both do it at the same time," he replied in the shakiest voice I'd ever heard from him.
Mazarine gulped. Now or never...
"Okay, one..."
"Two..."
"Three!"
The screen brightened up immediately as his camera went on, a dark silhouette off to one side. It took a moment for our eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness, but when we did, we all gawked.
Halley was a Changeling now, too.
And not just any Changeling; he was a Royal, just like Mom. His moppy black hair was now barely tinted blue; his green eyes were cat-like; two fangs stuck out of his mouth; and he had a horn that complimented Mazarine's almost exactly (where hers went forward, his went backward). He still had his cleft chin and his glasses, but he was a Changeling in every other way.
And by the look on his face, he was just as shocked at the sight of us as we were at the sight of him.
"I-I can't believe what I'm seeing..." he muttered blankly to himself, helping to realize that the garble in his voice was only partly caused by the distance between us.
"Neither can I..." Mazarine replied in kind.
We sat there for a long while, just taking in the sight. The last time I'd seen him was two weeks ago, and if I'd've known he'd change so drastically so soon, I would've commited his face to memory.
"So..." he finally broke the tension, "uh... How's the weather over there?"
Mazarine couldn't help it; she began chirp-laughing, her chirps much louder than mine or Bea's. Bea and I joined her, and even Halley chuckled a bit.
But my laugh wasn't as full as theirs.
After that, we got to talking. Apparently, Halley also transformed just that morning, and he was also afraid of how we'd react to him. Talk about a coincidence!
So we talked about what we'd become, filling him in on what Changelings were and how they lived. In return, he told us about how some of the other soldiers in his squad were also changing, and we sent our best wishes.
Funnily enough, he noted that he could feel our love even from where he was, and we could feel the love he sent in return. Fancy that.
Eventually, his squad leader came in and told him he was out of time, so we said our goodbyes, and hung up.
"Well," I observed, "that went much better than I'd expected."
But I still couldn't shake the feelings in my stomach. Our lives were changing so quickly that I could hardly keep up with it all. And the way I'd just shut down earlier...
I never wanted to feel that powerless again.
Since Mom wasn't feeling up to doing much, she decided to call us all in sick (us from school, and her from work). That gave us a whole day to get accustomed to our new life.
A day I spent practicing my flight, moreso to distract myself than anything. The rain had stopped sometime last night, allowing us to practice outside, but the sky was still a collage of grays.
"C'mon Rove," Bea encouraged, "you can do it!"
I huffed and puffed as I buzzed my wings, barely a foot off the ground. I could tell I was doing something wrong, but I wasn't actually sure what.
Eventually, my wings gave out, and I flopped back to the dirt. Bea gave out a disappointed sigh, "You were so close..."
"Yeah," I retorted, "to buzzing my wings off of my body."
She began to pace as she thought. "What do we need to do to get you properly into the air...?"
I shrugged, "I dunno. Heck, I'm surprised I even made it that far off the ground."
If we were in a cartoon, a lightbulb would've popped up over her head. "That's it! You're still in the mindset that flying is impossible, and that's holding you back!"
I raised an eyebrow. "How exactly does that work?"
"It's the quitter's mentality," she explained. "You believe you can't do it, so you're subconsciously quitting before you've even started. It's similar to how, if you're expecting a movie to be bad and you head in with that mindset, you'll be more likely to pick out the flaws."
Huh. "Y'know, you scare me sometimes with just how smart you are."
She blushed. "It's a gift."
Then I looked back at my wings. "So, I've just gotta believe I can do it, huh?"
Bea nodded, "You've just gotta believe!"
"I thought 'Cliché Day' was Monday."
"Well, today's 'Gunpowder Day', and there's not much I can do with that."
That got a good chuckle out of me. "Alright, if you say so."
Refocusing on my training, I crouched down on all fours. My wings began to buzz, and I eventually began to lift up.
'Alright, just believe,' I thought to myself. 'You're not restrained to the ground anymore. You can already walk on walls; flying is just the next step. Just believe, don't doubt. The air is your friend, the ground—"
"Rove, look!"
I blinked, then looked down at my sister.
I was about fifteen feet above the ground. Bea was happily prancing about, celebrating my first successful flight.
I would've been celebrating with her were it not for one teensy problem: "Uh, how do I get down?"
She paused. "I dunno."
Fuck me. "H-h-help!" I began flailing my legs uselessly. "I can't get down! Help!"
Bea quickly started to panic, too. "Rove, calm down! I'm sure I can think of—"
"HELP!!" I cried out as I felt the wind pick up slightly.
It was then that Mazarine rushed outside, gasping at the sight of me. "Rove!"
"I can't get down!!" I screamed.
"Slow your wings!" she called out.
I tried as she suggested, but the increasing wind threatened to blow me out of the yard, forcing me to flap harder to keep steady. "The wind's too strong!"
Beware which way the wind blows.
I gasped as the words from my dream came back to me. I glanced in the direction the wind was blowing from, scanning the ground.
Then I began to glide.
I began pivoting my wings in a manner similar to a kid sticking their hand out the car window. Angling them to push against the wind, I slowed my descent substantially. The landing may have been rough, but I still managed to do it without any substantial injury.
Bea was immediately upon me, Mazarine not far behind. "Rove, are you okay?!"
I nodded, brushing my flank off with my tail. "Y-yeah, I'm fine."
"What were you thinking?!" Mazarine chastised me. "You could've gotten seriously hurt!"
"S-sorry, Mom," I wilted under her stern look.
She sighed. "I'm just glad you're okay. Be more careful next time, okay?"
I nodded, "Will do, Mom."
Mazarine gave me a small smile, before sitting herself on the edge of the patio to watch over us.
"Dude," Bea continued, "you were flying!"
I blinked. "I was, wasn't I?"
Her smile grew huge, and she resumed her prancing. I chuckled a little out of relief, then joined her celebration of my aeronautical feat.
But right as we were starting to wind down our celebrations, the doorbell rang. We all looked at each other, then I decided to get the door (I was the most comfortable in public out of all of us).
When I opened the door, I was surprised to see Os carrying a bunch of paper in her wings, and looking like she'd spent all morning running non-stop. "Os, what're you—?"
"Did you have the dream, too?"
I blanched. "You mean, that dream where the Moon talked to us?"
She nodded. "I think that was Princess Luna."
What.