Yards felt a familiar weight settle on his back. He concentrated on the dozen or so implements he held over his work table, making sure that none of them dipped. If he showed any sign that she had surprised him it would only encourage her bad behavior. Still, his knees buckled.
Feathered wings folded and the weight shifted as two arms wrapped around his neck. A dark blue horn was the first thing to impede his view. It was followed quickly by a dark, sparkling mane.
His anger rose, but he suppressed it. She could still read his emotions, even if his Martyr's Charm kept her out of his mind. Instead he floated down a tiny chisel and a small hammer from the tool cloud and began etching tiny runes to the bracelet on his work bench.
Large, expressive, aqua eyes stared into his. “Huzzah my good subject! We are most pleased with your diligent works. We now command you to go out and have FUN!” she said, waving her hoof away from the workbench.
He ignored her. The eyes narrowed. “Oh, come now, my most intelligent, and I must say handsome, subject.”
“Now I know you're lying.” He'd never been considered handsome. His broad, plain features were that of a work horse, not a show pony. His dark green main and tail had grown out of their military cut into something shaggy and were beginning to become ragged. Likewise, his pale green coat also needed a good trim. His eyes no longer held the slitted pupils of service to the Princess, but were their normal dark yellow. The light spots on the left side of his face made that eye look misshapen and huge compared to the other. He'd bulked out a little from boot, but he was a thinker, not a fighter, so he lacked the huge size of the bruisers who'd served in the infantry, or air. Instead he was just big for an unicorn. Still, after the Civil War, he was one of the few stallions left, and that lowered the bar significantly.
“Are you hungry?” he asked her.
“...and bored,” she added. There was silence while he continued his work. Finally she asked: “Are you still mad?”
“Do you still look like the Princess?”
A ring of green St. Elmo's fire engulfed the horn and trailed down her body. Her weight significantly lessened and in place of the Princess was a purple earth filly with a yellow and white striped mane. “Wanna play?”
Yards had carelessly left out an old photo once of his elementary school girlfriend. She had of course seen it and memorized the image. It was one she used to try and provoke him when he was ignoring her.
She stood on his shoulders and grabbed him below his jaw with her front hooves. “Omnomnomnom.” She began to playfully chew on his ear, begging for his attention.
“That form is more creepy than endearing. Look, can it wait until I'm done?”
“How much longer are you going to be?”
“How much longer are you going to interrupt me?”
She bit the tip of his ear softly again, but remained silent for several minutes. Finally she had to speak again. “I scared you, didn't I?”
“No.”
“You jumped.”
“You've gotten heavier.”
She squealed angrily and slapped the back of his head. “You jerk!”
He turned his head to look at her. “Got ya,” he said with a grin. She only rolled her eyes. “Why don't you go read a book?”
“I've read all the good ones. Yours just have a bunch of math and no pictures.”
“You're smart enough you can understand the math.”
“But it's so boring!”
“Understanding the fundamental laws of the universe is boring?”
“If it doesn't have pictures.”
“Well how about one of your games?”
“They're more fun if you play with me. There's nothing to do in here.”
“Well at least you're not in the Dungeon anymore.”
“At least there I got to go outside a half hour a week.”
He sighed and floated down the tools to their proper places. “I'll feed ya, hang on.”
She squealed and changed forms again. This time she was a blue and pink unicorn that he had served with in the Lunari. Fear had kept him from asking her out. Fear was an odd thing. He hadn't backed down when standing up against Shining Armor and his loyalists so the Princess could escape Canterlot, even after getting stabbed in the neck by The Martyr's own brother. He'd managed to fight back the hydra that had gotten loose in the lab. Somehow, though, asking a cute mare out terrorized him in ways he couldn't believe. He could flirt, but when it came to risking rejection, he chickened out every time.
Feeding a changeling caused a sense of vertigo as your emotions were drained. After six months of sustaining her, he knew to lay down first. She was still on top of him, rubbing her horn along his. Longingly he remembered the scent of her wash, a tasty combination of petunia and geraniums. How she'd looked at him. He thought about what could have been. Knick-knacking, building a home together, filling it. His heart ached with unrequited longing. She took away the pain. The memories became bittersweet.
Normally a changeling would have their target enthralled, so they didn't notice the feeding. The Martyr's Charms blocked their influence but not their feeding. That way everypony could live together. It was what Twilight had wanted--peaceful coexistence.
She sighed contentedly, nestling on top of him to keep pulling the last few emotions from his heart, digesting her meal. “Thank you.”
“Mmhmm.” He was waiting for the barn to stop spinning.
He'd made a lot of renovations to the barn for her since she'd shown up in a livestock crate on his door. The plumbing had been renovated, insulation had been upgraded, there was a soft pallet for her to sleep on, and his reference books had been moved and replaced with the romance novels she had adored. Of course all his pictures had to be taken down. All his posters of the Elementals and pics of his family were in a box in the basement. The basement was locked with a spell that prevented anypony else from opening the door and getting to his serious projects.
There was a knock at the front door. Two heads looked up as the door slid open and Apple Rhubarb came in. “Hello? Yards? May I come in?”
“Sure, Rhu.” Apple Rhubarb was the current owner of Sweet Apple Acres. The second cousin, once removed, of the Elemental Applejack. Big Macintosh was still MIA, but that wasn't surprising. Five years later and they were still sorting bodies from where Los Pegasus had crashed into the ground and crushed most of Celestia's army. Applebloom and Granny Smith had fled to Appleoosa when the war started. Before it was almost wiped out in the buffalo's attack.
“HELP ME! He's got me tied up in here and is forcing me to be his love slave!”
Rhubarb stopped. Her red and pink mane bobbed with the loaf of bread she had balanced on her head. She had scrubbed herself clean after working the farm so her white coat shone. Her cutie mark of an apple tree looked almost alive from the shine on it's leaves. Her large magenta eyes blinked in confusion.
“It's just Delta,” Yards told her. Rhubarb didn't know what Delta was, and luckily she'd only ever seen her in her feeding form of the blue coated, pink shovel banged unicorn. But she'd known that she was involved in some of his experiments. Yards had considered letting her in on the secret, since she was a Lunar sympathizer and knew he still worked for the Princess undercover, but the less she knew the safer her and her daughter would be. As far as anypony else knew, he was a unicorn she'd hired to work on the machinery and improve efficiency so the farm could be more profitable.
Rhubarb Salad was her daughter. Her father, Rhubarb Delight, had died in the war, likely from a weapon Yards had designed. Maybe that was why he couldn't look at her. In her sad eyes was the reflection of every fatherless child he was indirectly responsible for.
Of course, Apple Rhubarb figured pretty heavily on the other side of that equation. You could bounce a bit off that flank. That wasn't her biggest selling point though. He could smell her apple bread from the door. Oh Sweet Luna, could she cook.
Apple walked over to his workbench setting the loaf of bread down. “Ahh, well...” She didn't look at them.
“Thanks.” He disengaged himself from Delta. She slid off with a thud, unmoving, to glare daggers at her competition.
“I figured you two were hungry...” she turned to walk away.
“Well, we were about to head into town, if you want to come...”
Apple immediately looked up. “Well, sure.”
“Great, give us half an hour to finish up and get ready.”
“Sure.” She seemed to blush slightly, stood there a minute, then turned to the door to head back to the house.
Yards picked up his tools again and went back to work.
“So, what are you going to do in town?”
“We are going shopping and maybe to the Library.”
“Well, could you get me some new books?”
“No.”
She sighed, but Yards didn't look up as he said: “We means me, the Rhubarbs, and you.”
“Huh?” She blinked in confusion. “I can't leave this building. Trixie's charm on the door will cancel out my shapeshift and everyone will see what I am.”
Trixie's Great and Powerful Charm of Revelation was Trixie's answer to the Changeling problem. They were common anywhere loyal to Celestia. Any public building and most privately own shops had them on the door. When a changeling walked in, they were forced into their native form and then attacked by the locals. Many changelings had died in mob violence. There also just happened to be one on the door of the barn. It had come in a crate beside the one she had been shipped in, with specific instructions that it be installed before her crate was opened.
“How?” she asked.
He set his tools down and picked up the bracelet, admiring it close up. He then focused his will into a form, sending it through his horn. The spell hit the bracelet and it glowed as the new thaumaturgical pattern embedded itself into the jewelry. He caught his breath, strained from the effort. Softly he floated it over to Delta. Confused she looked at it and at him. He wrapped it around her front hoof.
“How?” she asked again.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Can you dumb it down for me?”
“Why? You've got to stop beating yourself up like that.”
“Okay, layman terms.”
“Well, I found some of Twilight's notes on Star Swirl's Amniomorphic spell, and it turns out Trixie cribbed her design from his work. I created a spell that will fool that spell into thinking your shapeshift is your native form. If it works then we can use our changeling infiltration agents again.”
“Will it work?”
He pointed at the door. “One way to find out.”
Hesitantly, she walked over to the door. Cautiously she stuck her hoof through. Nothing happened. She pulled it back and stuck it through again. Gingerly she stepped outside for the first time in Luna only knows how long. She looked up at the late afternoon sun and smiled. The smile turned into a laugh. Not an evil, maniacal laugh, but a laugh of desperation relieved, tinged with just a hint of madness.