//------------------------------//
// Chapter 34 
// Story: Don't Bug Me 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Amie had to carry them to the fire after that. Technically she had to build the fire first, then beg for Ivy's help to carry her unconscious campers one at a time. But despite her initial fear, she helped Amie lift the bugs onto her shoulders one after another. 

They were so light compared to the unicorn body she'd taken that she could lift even Rick easily. By the time the fire was built, the two of them were sleeping peacefully beside it. Really sleeping, deeper than anything Amie had felt from another changeling. Whether that would last for a half hour the way it usually went for her, or maybe longer, she couldn't say.

Ivy sat on an overturned log, staring blankly at the fire. Despite all their eager conversations about what they would have for dinner up here, and how cool it would be to cook out under the stars, she didn't touch the cans. Amie did it, as much to keep herself busy as for her friend's well-being.

She made only one bowl of savory, vegetarian stew, and offered it to Ivy. Despite her complaints, she took it, and ate the whole thing. She'd still climbed halfway to hell, after all.

"We did it," Ivy said, when she had finally emptied the bowl, and settled it silently in front of her. "Kinda... spoils everything I had planned. Jumping off the waterfall, leaving a trophy for one of my dad's stupid guards to find up here. Telling him how we made it up here without breaking a sweat. The look on his face when he's forced to let me into the guard..."

She trailed off, staring down at the resting bugs. She was silent for almost a minute before continuing. "They look so peaceful like that. Hideous, but—I can almost forget they're monsters."

Amie still sat beside Ivy, with her campers in the grass opposite her. They'd dragged over the oversized human sleeping bags for the task, so they weren't on open ground. But so long as they kept the fire burning, she wasn't worried about them freezing out here. "Remember what I said about different kinds of changelings?"

She gestured at Rick across the fire. "The ones who invaded Canterlot are blue. These ones are green. Notice the difference?"

Ivy levitated a sharp stick, and poked at the fire. When she spoke, it was a low whisper, barely audible over the wind and the crackling fire. "I noticed the way you talked to that one. Knew her name. And you gave them a healing potion." She tossed the stick into the fire, sending up a shower of orange sparks. She stood at the same moment, along with the surge of smoke that followed.

"You aren't telling me something, Rain Fly. I want to know what it is. You're my friend—whatever it is, you can trust me. I can keep a secret, but I have to know. I deserve to know, after what I just helped you do."

Amie's heart froze in her chest. She remained perfectly still, mind reeling. This would be bad enough if it was some random pony—but this was Ivy, the commander's own daughter! If this got back to him, he might take action against Stella Lacus.

"Rain Fly," Ivy repeated, louder. "Rain Fly, I'm serious. You'd seen changelings before. You didn't run away—and you know what the Canterlot invaders looked like? Rain Fly, who are you?" She slumped into her seat, ears pressing to her head. Suspicion and anger were replaced with sudden, crushing despair. "You're with SMILE, aren't you? My father... pulled some strings, so you would follow me. Pretend to be my friend all this time. Make sure I stayed out of trouble."

Amie would've let her go on. But with every word, she felt the pony's despair grow deeper. If she let this happen, Amie wouldn't just be out of a job—she might very well do lasting damage. Ivy would never trust again.


"No!" Amie snapped, rising to her hooves. "Nothing like that, Ivy. I don't know what SMILE is, but that's nothing to do with it. I promise."

"Yeah?" Ivy looked up, tears streaming down her face. It was the first time she'd ever seen her cry so freely. But considering the pain she felt, the pony probably couldn't suppress it no matter how much she wanted to. "Why should I believe you? Expert climber, explorer, way better at magic than you want me to think. You know state secrets about Equestria's most dangerous enemy. You want to explain that a different way?"

Amie reached out, touching her shoulder consolingly. The mare shoved her back, hard enough that Amie almost fell over. She rose, meeting her eyes at last. "My real name is Amie!" she screamed, so loud that Ivy stopped short. 

She wiped her eyes, staring. "Your... what?"

"You want to know the truth, Ivy? The real truth?" She settled one leg on her shoulder, so forceful that she couldn't pull away. "Promise me you won't tell. Really promise me. Mean it when you say it!"

Ivy didn't move, didn't speak, not for several seconds. Then she nodded. Amie felt her sincerity, but that was no real proof of anything. Even if she meant her silence in that second, what would she be feeling in a few minutes? What about a few weeks?

But there was no way out now. Her friends were too smart for her after all. "My name is Amie," she said again. "My real name. It sounds weird to you because it's not a pony name, it's from another world."

She gestured out into the night, at the faint amber lights of camp glowing on the next peak over. She could see them clearly from up here, even trace the trail that ran from camp mess down to each of the living areas. "That mountain you're looking at. It's not a changeling isolation zone. It's a chunk of my reality, dumped into yours."

She took one step away from her then, closer to the two sleeping bugs. "Your dad didn't hire me from Equestria to watch you. If he knew what was happening, he'd probably think I was a spy, waiting for my chance to attack Equestria. But I don't want to attack anyone. I just want to live my life, and let ponies live theirs."

Silence descended on the mountain. Even the alpine wind seemed subdued, only occasionally rising over the crackling of their campfire. With each passing second, Amie was more confident she'd made a mistake. How many people would she tell the truth before someone spoke up about it? Every one of them was another potential road to ruin, even if they didn't try to destroy her.

She felt the change from Ivy first. The bitterness of resentment and regret faded, joined by something sweeter. Compassion, with a metallic tint of guilt and rebellion. Amie knew what she would say before Ivy even opened her mouth. "You're a changeling too, Rain Fly? Or... not Rain Fly. You said your name was Amie."

"Amie Blythe," she said. "I'm a changeling now. But two months ago, I was something else. Where I came from, nopony had to eat emotions or starve—there was no magic, no ponies, nothing like that. Then one day..."

She concentrated, then changed. Not into a changeling, but the same pegasus she first learned with Tailslide, the one that met him on the street. "We were here, and we were different. We couldn't eat our own food; we didn't know where we were. We have machines that can talk with anywhere in the world—but they stopped working. We called for help, and no one came."

Even choosing another pony to change into instead of herself left Ivy radiating shock. Her emotions twisted back together into a conflicted sludge; one Amie couldn't easily read. There were too many flavors of confusion and discomfort all at once, impossible to pick apart. 

"Why would you hide?" she asked. "You could've asked for help! When you hide, of course ponies think you're suspicious!"

Amie laughed bitterly. "Ponies visited our mountain in secret. They didn't talk to anyone, didn't try to tell us what was going on. They scouted the place, then left us. Next time a bug tried to leave, your soldiers killed two of us while we were crossing the river. Attacked them right out of the sky, without even trying to talk." And saved my life.

Amie concentrated, then changed back into Rain Fly. Ivy might know her real identity now, but looking familiar would still make her more trustworthy. She hoped. 

"They would." Ivy slumped beside the fire, staring down into the flickering orange depths. "My dad's talked about that... changelings are creatures of subterfuge. Never talk to one, and they can't get into your head."

She whimpered, wiping away tears. "How am I supposed to believe you, Amie Blythe? I want to. But all I know for sure is you're a changeling pretending to be my friend. Everything else... it could be true; it could be lies. How am I supposed to know?"

Amie nudged her in a familiar pony hug. This time, Ivy didn't shove her away. "I wasn't pretending, first of all. I lied about my name, and my family." And the company that hired me to be here in the first place. This little burst of honesty might've spared Ivy's pride from the worst beating it had taken so far. But if she ever found out Amie had been hired for this...

"But that was all. Everything I just told you is true." She let go, then levitated something out of the bag behind her. Her phone, slightly oversized compared to the scale it was supposed to have. But everything real looked big after the first night. 

Ivy stared at it, floating there. "What's that supposed to do?"

Then Amie turned it on, using the little ball of foil in the case to navigate on the touchscreen. It was under half battery since the last time she'd used the solar charger. But she could hardly think of a better use than this. Finally she opened the gallery app.

"This is my family," she said, stopping on the very first photo. The family photo they'd taken, with Amie and Wes packed up for camp, outside the parking lot full of buses. "That's what I'm supposed to look like. Not a bug, not a spy. Just a girl who felt better out here in the wild than cooped up in a city."

She started scrolling through photos, feeling for Ivy's emotions. The shock came first, but that faded quickly. The horror and disgust Ivy felt for changelings, that deep instinct she'd seen in every pony who first saw them—that never came. Humans didn't elicit that same defense response.

She showed her other folders. Pictures of home, her first few nights as an EMT, an older folder of high school stuff. Her old boyfriend, that stupid birthday party at Grandma's when the rain destroyed the cake, and they ended up at the Olive Garden soaking wet.

"We're... wrong," Ivy finally said. Her shock was completely gone now, replaced with horror. "They think we're at war, but they're wrong. Buck me—you're innocent. What are we supposed to do now?"

Amie couldn't exactly make things any worse by giving her answer. She switched off the phone, tucking it away. "I've been saving up bits since I got to Agate," she said. "I hoped to have enough to one day make it back to Canterlot. There's a library filled with magic lore there... once I got there, I was gonna find a spell to send everyone back to our world." 

She gestured across the fire, at the two resting bugs. One of them wasn't asleep anymore, now that she looked. Rick had one eye open, watching without moving. But his injuries weren't as serious. There was less to heal. "They're just kids—young fillies and colts, who came to camp to swim and climb and hike. Their families must be missing them terribly by now. All I want to do is send them home."