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// 8 - Do Your Part 
// Story: A Change in Darkness 
// by David Silver 
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"Not get sleep?" Piercing was sudsing himself, the two standing in the shower. "Never saw that before."

Skyline frowned. "What? You never saw anycreature not sleep perfectly before?"

"Not that." He willed a bar of soap over to help cleaning Skyline. "A member of Luna's guard. Being one of hers usually means some good Zs."

Skyline caught the soap from the air with a wing, taking over using it on himself. "Well, not last night. I had the strangest dreams."

"Wanna share?" he asked with a little shrug. "We're partners in arms and all."

"Not the sharing kind of dreams." He shook himself free of suds  and circled around to get the water everywhere. "We'd get in trouble, sharing that."

Piercing took a step back. "That kind? You got a, you know, personal friend? The close and snuggly kind, if you're in for that?"

"No." A flat denial, received and understood. The conversation died away and Skyline emerged, cleaned, if showing signs of a night of little rest.

He sat in the cafeteria and munched on breakfast. It was a fine breakfast, no quick eggs and slop for soldiers. It was fit for a princess. Celestia demanded the best to pass her lips, and what failed to reach them was there for soldiers to enjoy. That meant cookies, cakes, and various caffeine sources were also on tap. He sipped at a mug of coffee, trying to shake away the fog of the night before.

One could forgive him for not even noticing others making room around him suddenly. He only looked up when something, or someone, heavy settled across from him. Across from him was their ultimate commanding officer. Princess Luna, watching him intently.

"Can I... help you, ma'am?" He wasn't, technically, on-duty yet. Skyline was still eating breakfast!

"Taking a moment." She looked him over intently, perhaps too intently. "Mmm... Perhaps she is right."

He set the mug down with his wings. "Ma'am?" He could but guess. "Your sister, ma'am?"

"One and the same." Luna curled a wing in front of herself. "She cautioned me that I cannot ask you something, but I think you have exactly the reason why I can do exactly that."

"What is that, ma'am?" He nibbled on a bit of light cake, watching her. He was awake then. He could see the others avoiding that part of the table by quite a margin. "Is this open to others? They can hear us."

"It involves all of the night guards." That had some looking over. "But you, to start. I have a question, one I'm uncertain of, but do require the answer of, before I can consider moving forward."

"Yeah?" He lifted a tufted ear. "How can I help, ma'am? Is this a... changeling thing? I can't think of too many other things I might know that you don't already."

"Actually... yes. Astute of you." She set her hooves on the table, eyes matching his. "If a changeling were to... copulate... would they have children of whatever they were imitating at the time, or not?"

Skyline went still. His fork clattered to his plate. "Ma'am? Did I hear you correctly?"

"If a changeling were to, say, be a pegasus, could they have a pegasus child with another pegasus?" pressed on Luna, as if a simple understanding were the root of the problem.

"I..." He looked around. It felt like every single eye in the room was fixed on him. "Well..." He tapped his hooves awkwardly together. "Ma'am... We should... start with the basics, ma'am."

"The basics, yes." Luna nodded without argument. "Let us begin there. Continue."

Skyline turned a hoof on himself. "I am a changeling. They are not ponies. They aren't even mammals, ma'am."

"Yes?" Luna waved for Skyline to continue.

Skyline applied a hoof to his face. "We 'propogate' in a cluster of eggs in the hive. New grubs emerge, and they grow up to be new changelings. Yay." He looked up at her with a faint frown. "Ponies don't do that."

"They do not." Luna did not seem deterred. "But you skipped a step. How do these eggs come about? They don't just... appear... I assume?"

Skyline buried his face in his hooves as faint snickers sounded from those watching. "I'm not and never was one of those changelings, ma'am. I don't know. I never did it... I know more about how ponies do it than I ever did learn how changelings go about it. That wasn't my job. We changelings tend to be very focused on our purpose." He pointed down at his cutie mark. "I thought this meant ponies were too, in theory. Why do all of them know about it?"

"We have many purposes." Luna sat up proudly. "I am a guardian of dreams, and a princess. You are my guard. But we are not only these purposes. Either of us may find a special somepony we wish to make a family with, and that is a grand thing. I could take up baking, if it did not interfere with my royal duties."

Images of Luna with a baker's hat on entered Skyline's mind. "I see. But I'm a changeling."

"Not the way you envision it." She set a hoof on his nose. "You do not have a task for your hive. You have no hive. You live with us ponies, as a pony. We have accepted you, and you, I hope, have accepted us. Your purpose is, now, what you make of it. A glorious thing, terrible it may be at times." She pointed at a night guard that jumped at the motion. "You. How are ponies made?"

The poor mare blushed. "Well, when a mother pony and a father pony love each other very much..." The room erupted into laughter as the mare shrank on herself.

"Do changelings not have a similar tale?" Luna inclined her head. "Surely they have something they tell their little ones when they ask where they came from."

"I just told you. We come from eggs in the hive. Luna, ma'am... why are you asking? I don't have a special somepony, nor feel the urge at the moment to seriously fix that."

Luna tapped her hooves gently. "Let's put this aside a moment. My question stands. If a changeling and a pony were to fall in love... could a child result?"

Before Skyline could answer, she thrust a hoof at him. "Theoretically, not specifically involving you."

Skyline let out a slow breath. "There's a story. You could call it a folktale, or a legend. It has no proof, but it hasn't gone away. Take it how you like it... But they say, a long time ago, across a river and a mountain, where true desire can be found..." He could see Luna was fixed on him, along with the rest of the room.

"Love came quick and easy, the hive was full, the changelings fat and pleased." The ponies looked less pleased at that part. "But there was one drone that wasn't happy, even with that. She had so much love, it must have... overflowed." Skyline frowned at the idea. "She had so much, it spilled back out of her. Instead of taking it, she gave it back. She fell in love with a creature, and tried feeding them some of the love she had too much of."

"Aw," crooned out one of the many watchers.

Skyline stuck out his tongue, curled in disgust. "Why it happened, noling knows, but it happened, and he didn't even keep it! He gave it right back, so she was full, so she gave it back, and they kept pushing it back on each other. Full of love she couldn't get rid of, she found... another way to use the love."

Luna perked. "I would hear what method that was?"

"I'm getting to it." Princess or not, it was like an eager child at times... " She swallowed the love down deep and gathered it up. She made a special egg with it, one noling had seen before, or since. She laid one egg. Just one!" To him, a clearly strange event. The ponies did not gather the import of that event. "And from that egg... the result of their love."

Luna clapped, visions of her plan coming together. "Was the child of the father's race? A hybrid? What was it?!"

"Who knows?" Skyline shrugged with a little smirk. "She was out of love, so she ate all the love he had to give, and he was so used to giving it to her. She left him dry and went back to the hive, like a sane changeling. The end."

Luna sagged, deflating dramatically at the sharp end of the story. "But..." She clopped the table before her. "That can't be the end! What of the child? What happened to it?"

"She didn't know and didn't care. She went back to the hive and forgot the whole thing. Her queen forgave her for running off when she gave a nice big offering of love when she came back."

Luna scowled at Skyline. "This is an ancient story. You are not a changeling like this. If you had a child, there would be no hive to return to. What would you do, were you overburdened with love?"

Skyline stroked his chin with thought. "I'm not..." the kinship of his peers was nice, but he wasn't overflowing with love. "Still, no...  No, I wouldn't go back to any hive. I don't have one." He raised a brow at Luna. "And you wouldn't want any offering of love I gave you, I assume?"

"I would not." Luna shook her head firmly. "So what would you do?"

"Well! If I was that full..." He licked his lips, imagining having so much love... It was a delirious thought, to be so full one could explode with it. "If I was that full... I could do what she did."

Luna perked her ears. "But you are a stallion!"

His brows fell as one. "I am a changeling. I'm whatever I want to be, ma'am. I could put the egg in somecreature else, but that might be rude." He colored at the idea of it. "Very rude... You don't want me to do that, I imagine?"

"That... is a future concern." She hissclicked softly, a calculating look on her face. "But, even if we don't know the result entirely... That changeling mare, she did have a child. That child was hers. That child was his. A changeling and a not changeling had a child."

"Ma'am."

"Hm?"

"While you are very interesting and I enjoy working for you, I have no interest in you as a special somecreature." He tried to speak calmly and rationally.

Luna blinked at him as the room exploded into laughs, gasps, and some incredulous noises. Someone had just shot down Princess Luna, so coldly at that. "I wasn't asking!" She stood up, pushing the bench back in the motion. "Enjoy your breakfast. We will speak later." She marched from the room, defeated, but not sullen in appearance.

Piercing landed right where Luna had been a moment before, helping others to push the bench back into place. "You did not just do that!" Though, clearly, he had witnessed it. "If Luna showed interest in me, I wouldn't even know what to do, and you just... came out and said 'no thanks'? Are you mad?" Voices rose, others in clear agreement, and gathering around the changeling that was a bat pony.

Skyline pushed his plate away and stood up, grabbing the plate with his wings. "I'm done with breakfast. I'll see you all out on the field." He ended up with a crowd following him, demanding more satisfying answers despite his attempts to ignore them all.

It was only the stern glare of their commanding officer that got them back into line to start their duties of the day. Being a guard didn't pause for gossip trades, much as they'd prefer to focus on that.