"I planned my escape from the hive that night" Thorax told the ponies. "I knew a bit about the patrols and when the gaps in time would be. All I had to do was know when to disguise myself as some innocuous feature like a rock or a mushroom. Once I had all that ironed out, I only needed to wait for the most opportune moment."
"Little did I know that it would come only a few nights later."
The work that needed to be done in the hive for the day had been completed. Love was gathered from cocooned prey, tunnels that needed dug out were excavated as much as time would allow, nymphs were taught the lessons of the hive, and the hatchery was watched over and maintained. Now, every changeling was going to bed, or at least, most of them.
A special group of changelings that served as the night guard were up and about. Their task was simple: monitor the hive. If there was an intruder, they captured and cocooned them. If there was a changeling milling about, they were detained and questioned. If they noticed some kind of damage to the hive, they investigated it and reported it.
Simply put, they took care of the hive's security and safety while the other changelings slept.
A time or two before, I would have to perform this duty. I would often try to get assigned to areas around the nursery, so the most that I would need to do would be to stop wayward changelings and ask what they were doing. Most times, however, I was put outside, where I would have to capture small animals that would then provide sustenance to the grubs in the nursery.
My experiences with guard duty did give me some familiarity with how the rotations worked. Because of that, I had a rough idea of when there would be gaps for me to exploit. I waited until nightfall, until I was sure the first guard patrols had been completed, before I put my plan into motion.
The hive was quiet. Most changelings were asleep. The ones that weren't were the guards patrolling the hive, their wings buzzing as they made their rounds.
I was hiding in an alcove, having waited for Pharynx to finally drift off to sleep. Cautioning a look, a poked my head out a little to scan the hallway. I ducked back in quickly as a patrol was rounding the corner.
They kept going, and I breathed a sigh of relief. That had been too close of a call.
Making sure the patrol was not doubling back around, I quickly made my way past some of the other living quarters and started making my way up to the hive's entrance. The large opening was not my intended target, but was not far from it.
Just a short distance away and concealed by a pile of rocks was an entrance that most changelings didn't know about. Barely large enough for an adult drone to fit through, it was often used by curious nymphs who wanted to explore the wasteland outside the hive.
Tonight, it was my tunnel to freedom out of this veritable prison.
"Thorax?"
I froze up. Almost immediately, I began to curse myself for carelessness, but then I recognized the voice.
Turning around, I spot a nymph that is only a few short years from adulthood. She looks like nearly every other changeling drone, except her eyes are a much paler blue.
"Ocellus?" I respond cautiously, unsure of what the young changeling would do.
"What are you doing?" she asked me, eyes tired but expression curious.
"What are youdoing?" I counter. "It's a bit late for you to still be awake."
"I was thirsty" she tells me. "I was going down to the trickle to get a drink."
The trickle was the hive's term for our water source. It was a spring head that the hive had been built up around. I'm not sure where the water comes from, but I think it could be from the Hayseed Swamp, and the normally murky water gets filtered out by the soil.
"You never answered my question" Ocellus then points out.
I let out a sigh. Ocellus was a bright nymph. If she was fortunate, she would be trained to become an archivist and catalog the information that infiltrators brought back from the various nations of the world. I certainly hoped that's where she would end up; she was very eager when it came to books.
As for the current situation, I was in a bit of a pickle. I knew that Ocellus was much more sympathetic to my ideas than other drones, but she also felt duty-bound to the hive, so telling her what I planned to do was a risk.
Fate, it seemed, had chosen for me.
"You're leaving, aren't you?"
I couldn't look her in the eyes, nor could I bring myself to answer her question. In the end, my silence was answer enough for her.
"The queen will label you a traitor" Ocellus tells me, her tone sounding more cautionary than threatening.
"I know," I finally respond, "but I must do this. Something inside me is telling me that I need to go so that I can find out."
Ocellus looks at me for a moment, and then steps forward, wrapping her small forelegs around one of my larger ones.
"Take care of yourself, Thorax," she tells me, "and please come back if you find what you're looking for."
"I will" I respond as I wrap my free foreleg around her and hug her back. I could never be completely certain, but I think we shared some of our love back then, without either of us even realizing it.
We separated and Ocellus wished me luck, then made her way back to her parents. I left out through the small entrance and into the badlands around the hive.
The desert stretched out a good ways around the hive, but there was some visible treeline in one direction, so I kept low and made a move for it.
I got almost the whole way there before something large tackled me to the ground. I rolled over to see what it was and froze.
Looking back at me were a pair of dark purple changeling eyes.
It was Pharynx; he'd apparently followed me out of the hive and chose to confront me out here and away from any other changelings.
His eyes glared at me as he asked me the big question of the night.
"And just where do you think you're going?"