Integration

by Raugos

Chapter 3

“All right, class, say Hi to your new teacher, Miss Cheerilee!” said Mister Oakey, gesturing at the mare standing by the door.

“Hi, Miss Cheerilee!” everypony chorused.

The purple coated, pink-and-frizzy-maned teacher was wearing a pair of huge earrings plus a ridiculous number of bracelets, and her smile revealed a set of shiny braces. She waved energetically at them all as she trotted into the classroom and gushed, “Shucks, that’s so sweet of you kids, thank you. I think we’re going to have a wonderful time!”

“Did she just step out of a dance club?” Shining Armour murmured to Lucky with a conspiratorial grin. “Just look at that mane. Even my mom wouldn’t have it like that!”

The grey colt was staring. “Yeah, I’d dance with her…” he droned with a dreamy, crooked smile on his face.

One of Shining’s eyes twitched; he looked like he’d just witnessed his best friend do something really gross, like eating a worm or something. He frowned and waved a hoof in front of Lucky’s muzzle, saying, “Helloooo, anypony home? Equestria to Lucky, helloooo…”

Hah, somepony’s got a crush! Caramel snickered and covered his mouth with a hoof. Shining Armour wasn’t having much luck with getting Lucky’s attention; he barely got more than a dim-witted ‘Huh?’ when he resorted to digging his hoof into his friend’s ribs.

“Well, my little ponies, the first thing on the agenda is for me to get to know your names.” Miss Cheerilee smiled and glanced at Vinyl, who was sitting at the left-most desk in the class. “So, we’ll just be going one by one from left to right. As you all know, my name is Cheerilee. What’s yours?” She then indicated to the spiky-maned filly with a welcoming hoof.

“Vinyl Scratch, ma’am!” she sang out.

“Berry Punch!” said the plum filly on her right.

“Noteworthy,” mumbled the blue colt.

Caramel found himself thinking that somepony’s name was going to be missing from this roll call. Sassaflash always disappeared for a couple of weeks every few months. The first time he’d asked about it, she’d said that some relatives from far away were visiting, and she absolutely wasn’t allowed to miss the family reunion. The next time, it was something about a drought back home, and she had to help out with troubles in the town. Then it was a bad storm, then a dragon migration… Even though it was a different thing every time, he could see that it was sort of a regular thing.

“Psst.”

She was always worn out and a little quiet when she finally came back to school, but she seemed to get back to normal pretty quickly once she’d spent some time in the classroom, strangely enough.

“Psst!”

Funny how none of the teachers seemed to mind, though. Maybe Sash’s parents or guardians had already told them something about—

Yikes! Caramel yelped when his chair suddenly jerked forward after being kicked by somepony from behind. He whirled round and shot a glare at Lyra.

What the heck was that for?

The teal unicorn’s eyes were half-lidded, and she had her forelegs folded in front of her chest. She almost looked bored. Without saying a word, she raised an eyebrow and pointed a hoof at something over his shoulder.

Then, Caramel realised that everypony was looking at him. Shining Armour was smirking, Berry Punch and Vinyl were giggling, and he could imagine the rest were going ‘Ooh, busted!’ in their heads. He could feel his ears drooping as he turned around slowly and saw the new teacher watching him intently, with a patient smile on her face.

Aagh!

“Miss Cheerilee!” he blurted.

She chuckled along with the rest of the class’s giggling and replied, “I believe that’s my name, dear. But what’s yours?”

Please don’t send me to detention!

“Sorry!” he yelped.

More giggles and snorts followed.

He groaned and planted his face on the desk and covered his head with both forelegs. “I mean, I’m Caramel,” he mumbled into the wood.

“Thank you, dear.”

Caramel didn’t remove his face from the desk as others continued to announce their names to Miss Cheerilee. His was sure his cheeks were redder than Vinyl’s eyes by now, and probably giving off enough heat to power a train all the way to the next city.

Changeling infrastructure was confusing. After just a minute of following Queen Chrysalis through the winding tunnels, Caramel had lost his sense of direction and was hard-pressed to even guess how many turns they’d taken or what direction he was currently facing. Left, right, front, behind—they were all starting to feel the same to him. If the queen hadn’t kept a ball of green light hovering on the tip of her horn, he was sure that he wouldn’t have been able to keep up with her at all.

“Why can’t Sash follow us?” he asked.

“Because she has to work,” replied Chrysalis without even looking back. “As I said, I don’t tolerate dead weight in my hive. There are very few excuses, and a visiting boyfriend isn’t one of them.”

It was difficult to argue with that, really. Or rather, he could argue, and very stubbornly at that, but it wouldn’t really accomplish anything other than make him sound like a whiny brat. And maybe get himself supped on, in spite of the queen’s promise to keep him from harm so long as he didn’t do anything stupid. Whenever they trotted past other changelings, he couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that they were looking at him with some teeny, tiny bit of hunger in their blue eyes.

He shuddered and changed the subject. “What does Sash do over here, anyway?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Also, the name is cute, but I would suggest you start learning to use her real one.”

Caramel frowned. “What do you have against pony names?”

“Nothing. What do you have against changeling names?”

“Err, nothing. But she never told me what it was.”

Without stopping, she turned her head and gave him a penetrating look. “Do you have any interest in finding out?”

Caramel felt inclined to be indignant for a moment. Of course he was going to find out; she was his special somepony! But then he realised that he’d not even given it thought in the time after she’d revealed her true form to him, and any annoyance he’d felt about the question wilted away. It was something that he should have considered sooner, and it had taken Sash’s mother to point that out to him. Not exactly a prime example of gentlecoltly behaviour.

“I do,” he mumbled, staring at the floor.

“Good enough.”

Chrysalis stopped, and he very nearly collided with her rump. The light from her horn revealed that the tunnel had widened into a chamber of some sort. The ceiling was rather low and had several stalactites poking downwards like fangs, but the floor of the chamber was shrouded in darkness, too far down for the green light to reach the bottom. They were standing on a ledge that was just wide enough for both of them to stand side by side. There were no other tunnels visible.

Caramel edged closer to the precipice. “What’s this place supposed to be?” he asked, peering down into the pit. It was roughly circular in shape, and its walls were dotted with more of the blue, luminescent specks. He could see them further down where it was dark enough for their light to be noticeable.

“Your room,” Queen Chrysalis replied.

What? He turned and found her watching him intently. A little too intently for his liking, and his heart rate shot up when he realised that she was blocking the only exit.

“Can you fly?” she asked.

“Huh?” The question was so unrelated to the situation that Caramel was drawing blanks in his attempts to answer it. I’m an earth pony. Why would you even need to ask? He frowned and glanced at his bare back, then back to her. “What kind of question is that?”

Chrysalis leaned in close and leered at him. “One that you’d better answer,” she growled.

Her bluish-green hair, if it could be called that, smelled like damp, rotting wood. It was in stark contrast to the dry atmosphere in the tunnels. And her breath was… unusual. Not bad as in bad breath, but more like peat. What do changelings eat, anyway? There must be something that those teeth are used for, and—

Belatedly, Caramel realised that he was inspecting her teeth in a way that would have been totally creepy to a regular mare. And he still hadn’t answered her question. He hastily pretended to be very busy looking at his surroundings and said, “Err, no. I can’t fly, Your Highness.”

Chrysalis snorted. “There, was that so hard?” She then placed a foreleg firmly on his shoulder and steered him closer to the edge, and then gestured towards the darkness below. “And to answer your question,” she continued, “this will be your room until you can leave it on your own.”

Uh oh.

Caramel tried to bolt, but it was already too late. She shoved him hard, and he found himself tumbling head over hooves into the black pit. A wordless cry of terror escaped him as he felt his stomach leap into his throat. The darkness swallowed him, and he could hear the wind roaring in his ears—

“Oof!”

The air was driven out of his lungs when his back slammed into something soft and grainy. After a bit of sputtering and flailing around, he realised that it was sand. Lots of it. Deep and fine enough that it had broken his fall without really hurting him. He looked up and saw the changeling queen partially obscured by the glare of her horn’s light, about three or four storeys above.

That’s all? He was sure that he’d fallen a much greater distance than that.

The green light vanished, and so did everything else. There was only darkness, and the faint, receding clip clop of Chrysalis’ hooves as she went away.

“Hey! What’s this all about?” Caramel shouted.

Nopony answered. He continued to yell until he was hoarse, after which he gave up and sat on the sand. Well, he hadn’t expected to be thrown into a dark, lightless pit so soon after joining the changelings. Then again, he hadn’t been thinking very far ahead. Things had basically boiled down to getting caught and stuffed into a cocoon, or having Sash somehow stay with him throughout, or the two of them escaping and going back to Ponyville.

Disgusted with his lack of foresight, he kicked at the sand and lay on his back in resignation, staring up into the great emptiness above. His eyes had adjusted by now, and the luminescent splotches on the walls were clearly visible, like little blue eyes that never blinked. They were a poor substitute for stars, though. There was no wind underground, or the sweet scent of wet grass, the rustling of trees or the rich glow of the night sky. And then the realisation hit struck him like a party cannon to the face; he was trapped.

He eventually got tired of moping and feeling sorry for himself, though. What sort of stallion could expect to have everything easily resolved, least of all a quest to earn his place by Sash’s side once more? He had made a conscious decision to join the changelings, and though they hadn’t shown much in the way of hospitality so far, he still had to honour his part of the bargain. He was going to make himself useful in spite of how hopeless the queen seemed to think he was!

Chrysalis had said that earth pony skill in agriculture was useless down here. Obviously. There wasn’t any sunlight to begin with. But he had noted that, arid though the surface was, it was probably feasible to get an apple plantation going with proper irrigation. The Appleloosans had made do with a land that was just as dry; he only needed to somehow convince the changelings to cooperate. He’d learnt a fair bit from his time helping out on the Apple family farm in Ponyville and was confident that he knew enough to make it work. Plus, if the changelings could get a steady supply of food, they might be less inclined to go after ponies. At least, that was what he hoped.

So he began to draw up plans in his mind, setting up an imaginary orchard with what he could remember of the surface landscape. He’d found several reliable sources of fresh water when he was wandering out in the wilderness, and given the elaborate underground home of the changelings, he was sure that they’d be amazing at working the soil. And seeds could be easily gotten from a quick trip back to town.

By the time he was ready to think about the more complex logistics of running an apple orchard in the middle of nowhere, he realised that his eyelids were drooping. It felt like it had been hours since he entered the tunnel, and his limbs were aching slightly in spite of the fact that he was lying down. He had to admit that the cool sand was rather comfortable, even though it wasn’t so pleasant on the places where he had been scraped during the initial scuffle with the changeling sentry. It had been a long day filled with the excitement of getting mobbed by changelings, roughed up by their queen, and then thrown into a pit. He could easily get back to planning after a quick, much-needed nap.

The first thing he realised when he woke up was that it was pitch-black; he couldn’t even see his snout.

What the hay? He abruptly sat up, breathing heavily as he whipped his head back and forth like a desperate, cornered animal. His heart fluttered like a mad thing in his chest as he went through a dozen or so explanations in his mind for his waking up in total darkness. As far as he knew, he had been out in the wilderness not too long ago, looking for… Oh, right. He remembered now. He’d just pledged his life to a possibly psychopathic half-bug-half-pony queen whose house was several hundred feet underground. And—

His mouth was parched. There was sand on his tongue, and little needles of pain stabbed right through it when he tried to lick the inside of his mouth to get some saliva flowing. There was little to be had. He tried to swallow, and the insides of his throat and mouth stuck together painfully wherever their surfaces came into contact with each other. And his lips felt like they were going to crack.

Water. He needed water. The air down here must be substantially drier than even on the arid surface, and all that sand wasn’t helping. He had been dehydrating the whole time without even realising it.

Just then, a loud gurgle came from his midsection, followed by a pang of hunger. Oh, that’s just great. Just how long had he been asleep for? He needed food, too, and his saddlebags were nowhere to be found, courtesy of his most thoughtful hosts.

Muttering under his breath, Caramel trotted to the edge of the pit and looked up in what he hoped was the direction of the exit tunnel. “Hey, I don’t know about you guys, but ponies need water to survive!” he bellowed, and winced when his dry throat and mouth protested with more pricks of agony.

All he got for an answer was a shower of dust from somewhere above. Somehow, that didn’t surprise him. Were they testing him? Seeing how long he could last before he started begging?

Fine, be that way. Jerks.

Caramel began scrounging around his little pit, feeling about blindly with both forelegs, mentally cataloguing every little nook and cranny he touched. The sand on which he stood was as dry as sawdust and it took only a little bit of digging to convince him that there was nothing worthwhile buried beneath him, least of all water. The walls of the pit were more promising, though. They were rough to the touch, and there was no shortage of cracks and depressions. Unfortunately, he had found nothing of interest even after he had made a complete round, and it was too steep for him to climb higher than double his own height. All the while, his stomach continued to growl and clench. He gave up and simply curled into a ball, hoping to supress the pangs of hunger and burning thirst.

“Sash, where are you?” he tried to shout, but it came out more like a croak. He coughed and swallowed the gummy remains of his saliva, blinking away tears. Did she know of what the changelings were doing to him? Did she care? Could she do anything about it even if she knew? It was with these questions burning in his mind that Caramel settled into a daze, staring into the darkness, with only his thirst and hunger as companions. There was nothing for him to do but wait.

It was difficult to tell how much time had passed, since there was pretty much nothing to help him gauge its passing. There was no sun or moon to track across the sky, and it was deathly quiet in his ‘room’. But after an indistinct amount of time, a droning sound roused him from his stupor. He pricked his ears and raised his head off the sand, listening intently. Wings. Somepony was flying down into the pit.

Green light flared into existence above the pit, and Caramel gasped when the brightness stung his eyes. He turned away and hid face with a foreleg, gradually easing it away to give his eyes time to adjust. By the time he could see again, Queen Chrysalis was standing in front of him, watching with an expression that seemed to be equal parts scorn and pity.

Come to gloat, Your Highness? He might have said it aloud if his throat wasn’t so dry.

Without saying a word, Chrysalis levitated a round-ish object and set it on the sand in front of his muzzle. Caramel eyed it suspiciously at first; it was the size of an average fishbowl and looked like it was made of black, dried-up resin, and it was filled with fluid.

Water.

He looked up at the queen, tacitly asking for permission. Her nod was almost imperceptible, but it was all he could do to not abandon all sense of dignity and gulp all of it down. He took the bowl and drank greedily, inwardly sighing in relief as the cool liquid soothed his parched mouth and throat. It even lessened his hunger, somewhat.

“That’s enough,” Chrysalis said.

What? The bowl was still half full, for crying out loud! Caramel slowed down a little, but continued to drink. His thirst wasn’t slaked yet.

“I said that’s enough!”

The bowl glowed green and was yanked out of his hooves even as he tried to get another sip. It hovered high up, out of his reach. A hoof crashed down into the sand right in front of him, and he yelped and scrambled backwards as the queen advanced on him like an angry bull. He retreated until his back was pressed to the wall and bit his lip as he stared at her stern face.

“Do you realise that you’ve just drunk the daily water rations of three changelings in one go?” she hissed, baring her fangs.

Three? You’ve got to be kidding me.

“You’re eating into the rations of my children, your foster siblings, so I suggest you show a little consideration and restraint,” she continued, ignoring his incredulous stare. “This land is dry for most of the year. Water is scarce, and even though we don’t need very much of it, it’s still essential for our survival.”

Caramel cringed and averted his eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

Her wings buzzed irritably for a moment, but then her expression softened and she settled into a more relaxed stance. “Well, now you do,” she huffed.

If what she said was true, then the changelings were being a whole lot more hospitable than he’d thought. Or Chrysalis was, at any rate. Merely keeping him alive was going to be a strain on their supplies.

Queen Chrysalis made a cricket-like sound with her wings, and a regular changeling hovered down, carrying another resinous bowl just like the previous one. It placed the container before Caramel, then retreated off to one side and watched silently. He squinted at the dark, viscous contents, wondering what it was supposed to be.

“Eat up,” the queen said, gesturing at the bowl with a hoof. “I prepared this just for you.”

“I… thanks.” He peered into the bowl and sniffed. It smelled like honey and looked sort of similar, but it was hard to tell in the green light.

“Royal jelly,” Chrysalis explained. “It’s normally reserved for our nymphs, but it’s the only thing we have that won’t make you sick.”

That didn’t do much to reassure him, though. He was doubtful that anything normally eaten by half-bug ponies was going to be appetising by any stretch of the imagination. And the green sparks didn’t look very—

Caramel blinked and stared into the bowl. Maybe it was just the light playing tricks on him, but he was quite sure that he just saw magical sparks coursing through the stuff a second ago. He gave Chrysalis a quizzical look, but all it took was a raised eyebrow from her to send his suspicion scampering for cover under obedience. He didn’t dare to offend her now, not so soon after helping himself to what she considered more than his fair share of water rations.

So he bent down and gingerly took a mouthful of the stuff. It tasted like honey, all right. But it was also waxy and extremely awkward for eating, being too thick to drink up and not solid enough to chew. Queen Chrysalis watched him the whole while—a fact that he studiously tried to ignore.

He ate slowly, fearing another reprimand from Chrysalis, but she made no move to stop him as he took mouthful after mouthful. But when the bowl was half empty, he was beginning to feel a little bloated. He hadn’t eaten all that much, but the stuff was extremely rich and heavy.

Chrysalis inspected the half-empty bowl and gave him a small, slightly devious smile. “Not bad. I was expecting you to throw up after your first swallow.” She then chirped and magically tossed the bowl over her shoulder, after which the changeling in the corner darted forward and caught it. She made some clicking noises, and the servant buzzed up and out of the pit.

Caramel wiped his mouth with a hoof. “What happens now?”

Her horn flared up, and she levitated the bowl of water over to him and placed it on the sand. “This is meant to last you for the whole of tomorrow. Whether you drink it slowly or all at once is up to you.” Her voice and expression hardened. “But don’t come whining to me if you want more—you won’t get any until the time is right. Is that clear?”

He gulped and nodded. “Rationing. Got it.”

“Let that be your first lesson,” Chrysalis intoned. “Down here, I rule. I decide who eats and who starves, and your relationship with one of my children isn’t going to save you if you prove to be more trouble than you’re worth.”

Caramel nodded solemnly.

“Rest, now. There is a lot that you will have to adapt to in the next few hours.”

A few hours? Does she seriously expect me to get over this so soon? “Is that all I’m going to be doing down here?”

She gave him a toothy grin. “Oh, don’t thank me yet. I have plans for you, and you’d best be ready when it is time for you to do your part in serving the hive.”

Before he could ask her what exactly that entailed, she’d already spread her wings and was spiralling up and out of his pit. The light on her horn went out, and the darkness engulfed him once more.

Oddly enough, that no longer seemed to trouble him. His hunger and thirst were gone, and he had no desire to add further to the contents of his stomach. After placing the bowl of precious water somewhere safe and out of the way, he eased himself into the sand, savouring its cool caress, and yawned widely. He briefly wondered whether Chrysalis had slipped something into the jelly to make him feel like this, but quickly dismissed the idea. He was too pleasantly tired to care.

Caramel was reclining against the trunk of an apple tree, happily munching on one of the fruits he’d bucked down. It was a nice, cool evening, and he had an amazing view of the orange sunset from the top of the hill on Sweet Apple Acres.

“I thought I told you not to eat the seeds,” said Sassaflash as she trotted over to join him. “They’ll give you a tummy ache.”

He raised an eyebrow and inspected his apple. He’d bitten halfway through the core, but he’d already swallowed. Turning back to Sash, he snorted and said, “Nah, I’ll be fine. The seeds go in, the seeds go out; nothing happens in between.”

The pale turquoise pegasus raised an eyebrow. “Then why is your stomach like that?” So saying, she prodded his belly with a hoof.

“Ouch!” Caramel sat bolt upright and stared at his friend in surprise. “Why’d you do that?” He looked down and continued, “My stomach’s fine. You didn’t have… to…” His words trailed off. His belly was twice its usual size and bulging out. And he suddenly realised that it hurt.

“What the?” he gasped. “When did this happen?”

“The seeds have sprouted in your stomach. You really should have listened to me,” Sash replied. She shook her head in pity and turned away. “You never listen. That’s the problem.”

“What? How did—no! Seeds can’t grow like this!” he blabbered. “I can’t have a tree growing—aagh!”

The rest of his words ended in a cry of alarm as something in his belly throbbed. Roots, he thought. The seeds really were growing inside of him! His belly ballooned up and grew tight, and the pain increased from a dull ache to twisting agony. It felt ten times worse than the worst stomach cramp he’d ever experienced. He groaned and rolled to his side, but that only made things worse.

“Help me!” he cried.

But Sassaflash was gone. He was alone on the hilltop, far from anypony, and miles away from the nearest hospital. There was only the pain…

Caramel gasped and coughed when his mouth filled with sand. He spat and tried to rise, but fell back down almost instantly. When did everything get so cold? Even though the air was still, the place felt like the inside of a freezer, and there was a deep aching sensation in his muscles and joints.

He shivered and curled up into a tight ball. His pulse was incredibly loud; it was pounding in his ears like an internalised drum, and the veins in his extremities were throbbing to the rhythm of his racing heart. Even the insides of his eyes were somehow aching. Something had given him a fever.

“Urghh,” he groaned. The memory of it came back at once. Whatever Chrysalis had fed him, it wasn’t pony-friendly.

The only thing that wouldn’t make you sick, she’d said. Liar. His stomach felt like it had had a whole buffet stuffed into it. The throbbing discomfort was as bad as the time after he’d been dared by Lucky and Shining Armour to eat some mouldy hay. And he’d been just as stupid as his past self in simply listening to everything the queen had ordered him to.

He retched as a wave of nausea washed over him, but nothing came out no matter how much he wanted to empty his stomach of its offending contents.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he muttered to himself.

But what was done was done. The only thing left to do was to wait it out. He eventually broke out into a cold sweat, and his heavy breathing echoed noisily in the darkness.

It took Caramel some time to realise that he’d somehow fallen asleep again. Some things had changed; his stomach no longer hurt so much, and he was no longer sweaty. But he still felt cold, and his limbs were stricken with weariness and aching from the fever.

Well, this has been a swell day. Or days. He couldn’t tell. Time had little meaning when there was neither light nor anything to do.

A shiver went through his body as he opened his eyes, and he failed to suppress a moan when he tried to dig himself deeper into the sand to hide from the cold. But something soft and warm brushed up against his side, and it was so unexpected that he instinctively jerked away. Or tried to, at any rate. His body wasn’t very keen on doing what he told it to. His heart was the only thing that got itself worked up to any appreciable measure of speed.

But in the next moment, he calmed down somewhat when he realised it was Sassaflash lying next to him.

Wait.

He could see! Glancing upwards, he noted that the luminescent nodes dotted on the walls and ceiling were much brighter than before. Everything was bathed in a cool, green light that reminded him somewhat of the decorations and lightings used on Nightmare Night every year. Or like those glow-in-the-dark stickers that he used to place on the ceiling of his room when he was younger, making the place look like a starry night sky.

Another shiver suddenly went through him, and he released a shuddering breath. Then, a warm body pressed up against him and feathery wing draped over his shoulder. He started, but quickly remembered that it was Sassaflash. He sighed in relief and gazed at her; she was in her pony shape again, and was biting her lip in worry as she stroked his back to warm him.

“It’s me,” she soothed. “Just rest. You’ve had a rough night.”

“No kidding,” he mumbled.

A green aura flashed on her horn – She has a horn! – and a roughshod black bowl hovered over to his muzzle.

“Drink,” she instructed. “You’ve been sweating a lot.”

He swallowed and realised that his mouth was dry once again. He bent down, but stopped just short. “I can’t. Chrysalis told me—” he began, but was cut off by her angry snort.

“I’m sure she did,” Sash growled. “But Mother said nothing against you getting more water from me. Besides, you’re not well, and even we take care of family when things get difficult.”

“If—if you say so.” He sipped from the bowl and savoured the wetness. But even though it provided some relief, he was still running a fever, and another groan escaped him as he was wracked by a wave of bone-deep aches.

Sash took the bowl away and hugged him gently. Guilt welled up in his chest as he realised just how much of an inconvenience he was being. He had come to the hive and joined them to keep Sash company, not the other way around! He tried to think of something to say that might make her worry less about him, but nothing came to mind. The silence grew deafening.

“Please don’t leave me,” he eventually whispered.

Gee, way to go, tough guy.

She nuzzled him in response. “I’ll stay as long as I can. But I’ll have to go when it’s my turn to work. My brothers and sisters need me too.”

Caramel’s eyelids were growing heavy again. Even thinking was beginning to take more effort than he seemed able to give. He was dimly aware that Sash was humming something.

~ My name is Pinkie Pie, and I am here to say, I’m gonna make you smile and I will brighten up your da-a-a-ay! ~

One of Pinkie Pie’s songs. The one that he happened to like. Sash, where will I be without you? He rocked gently to the tune, and the last thing he saw as his eyelids slid closed was a faint glow on Sash’s newly-acquired horn.

She was gone when he next woke up. He yawned and carefully stretched himself out on the sand, mildly enjoying the feeling of his joints popping. The fever was gone, but he wasn’t back at full strength. Still, it was a far sight better than how he’d felt the last time he was awake. The ache in his limbs and stomach had receded to the point where he could almost ignore them, and he no longer felt chilly.

Chrysalis poisoned me.

The memory being reduced to a shivering, helpless lump of a pony in the darkness was enough to make him wince. Why had she done it? To prove a point? That he couldn’t survive down here? That he was no use to them? But what good would that do? If they really didn’t want him, they could have just put him in a cocoon and be done with it. It didn’t make any sense!

Caramel scowled and looked up to the entrance to his pit, hoping to find a changeling there to interrogate. He found no one, of course.

Whilst pondering, he absentmindedly scratched at an itch on his forehead, and realised two things. The first was that he could actually see. The place was nowhere near as dark as when he had first been tossed in; it was even bright enough for him to make out the individual hairs on his tail. The second was that there was a hard lump right in the middle of his forehead, underneath the skin. It was too prominent to be a bit of swelling from an impact, and it didn’t hurt at all. He pressed on it with his hoof, and found that it had a rather sharp point when it pricked the inside of his skin.

Then, everything clicked into place. The indigestion, the fever, the brightness of the place, the thing on his forehead, all of it.

Okay, so she didn’t poison me.

What she had really done was much, much worse. Caramel wasn’t particularly prone to panic attacks, but he felt that the situation genuinely called for one. His breathing quickened, and he began to pace aimlessly about.

“Aww, ponyfeathers. This was not part of the plan!”