//------------------------------//
// Chapter 11 - Bees, Part 2 
// Story: Hope and Changeling 
// by FrontSevens 
//------------------------------//

“What’s going on?”
 
Honeydew was in the kitchen when we came in with the changeling.  It was a moderately sized kitchen, with plaid curtains and a pot rack and decorative plates hanging on the wall and such.  There were more decorations than I was used to, but this is coming from the man who won’t give his kitchen any more decoration than a clock.
 
Wheat Flour answered with a question of her own.  “Ms. Honeydew, do you have a spare bedroom we could use?”
 
Honeydew nodded, looking at the changeling drooped across Whole Grain’s back.  “Uh, yes, I do.  Upstairs, second door on the right.”
 
We hurried up the stairs.  I led the way, finding the door and holding it open for Whole Grain.  It was a small guest bedroom with only a bed and a window.  Wheat Flour and she went to the side of the bed and carefully laid him onto it.  He squirmed, either in pain or for sympathy, but probably in pain.
 
“What is that?” Honeydew asked.  “What happened to it?”
 
Whole Grain pulled aside the curtains of the window and pointed to the fallen tree outside.  “He did that.”
 
Honeydew gaped at the sight.  “Oh…  Oh my.”
 
Everyone’s attention turned to the creature shifting on the bed.  His arms and legs were retracted, and his eyes were squeezed shut.  “What’s your name?” I asked.  Or number, whatever.
 
“Foreign…. Foreign…” he mumbled.
 
“Foreign what?” Whole Grain barked.  “Speak up!”  But he didn’t speak up.  He just kept moaning and groaning.
 
Wheat Flour looked over his body.  “Are you hurt?” she asked him.
 
I had an idea.  If he couldn’t tell us himself that he was hurt… “Maybe we could start touching things and see if he reacts in pain.”
 
“Nonsense, that’s dangerous!” Honeydew said.
 
He continued to grunt and twist on the bed.  I had a feeling that not a single one of us had had any medical training, as we all stood there and watched him squirm.  Then, Whole Grain reached out to touch him, but Honeydew smacked her hoof away.
 
“I said no!” she said.  “This is ridiculous.  We need to get a doctor in here.”
 
“Would a doctor know what to do with him?” Wheat Flour asked.
 
She did a double take.  “I don’t know.  I’m not even sure what it is,” Honeydew said.  “What’d you call it again, a…?”
 
“Changeling,” I replied.  “And it’s a he, I think.”  Actually, for all I knew, it could’ve been a she.  I hadn’t met a female changeling – unless male and female changelings both talked in the same low, scratchy voice.
 
“Well… I’ll stay here for now and see if he needs anything,” Honeydew said.  “Until then, you can go back out and finish planting.”
 
“We have to tie him here,” Whole Grain said.
 
Honeydew blinked.  “Um, why?”
 
“He’s going to run off.”
 
“And the problem with that is…?”
 
“Short answer: changelings are evil and they can’t be trusted.  If I were you, I’d read up on them.”  Whole Grain looked at the creature continuing to squirm.  “We need to keep him from escaping if we’re going to take him to the police later.  You got any kind of restraint around here?”
 
“Yes, I do.  One moment.”  Honeydew walked out of the room, returning shortly with a pair of hoof cuffs.  She walked to the bedpost near the changeling’s head and fastened part of the cuff there.
 
“Put the other one through one of the holes in his arm,” Whole Grain said.  “It’s more secure that way.”
 
I looked at her and cringed.  On one hand, I was in favour of this, for I wanted to interrogate him later.  On the other hand, it reinforced my wariness of Whole Grain.  She had no problem chaining up a changeling, much less leading one straight to jail.  She was like a time bomb.  At any time, she could turn on me when nopony else was looking.  I’d have to watch my tail.
 
We went back outside for about a half-hour, finishing up that flower bed.  Whole Grain watered near us again, I think to deter any talking behind her back.  As I dug, I couldn’t help but glance at the ruptured tree every once in a while.
 
What had made that changeling fly so fast?  Was he launched?  Was he flying away from a monster?  If so, were we in any danger?  I kept looking out to where he had come from, but there wasn’t anything else flying our way.  Maybe it went chasing after other changelings – I had seen more than one dot, after all.
 
But what would make more than one changeling fly away from one place?  Was there something I was missing here?  I thought back to any interactions with changelings I had had….
 
Hive, sergeant, out of line, punishment, public demonstrations, beating, off the hook, you mean nothing to us….  No, they were only things to do with me.  If there was something else going on with the changelings, I wasn’t aware of it.  And if it did concern me or how I got here, then I should’ve been aware.  That changeling and I would have to talk.  After lunch, of course.
 
Lunch was very good.  Honeydew served us steamed broccoli, honey-glazed carrots, and some daisies that I didn’t exactly care for.  I tried them, but they tasted too much like grass.  Plants are plants, I suppose.
 
Everypony else at the table was focused on eating their own meals, so I decided to start a conversation this time.  “How’s the changeling?”
 
“Okay, I think,” Honeydew said.  “He’s in less pain, from what I can tell.  If he can talk, he’s doing a good job of hiding it.”
 
Whole Grain huffed after swallowing a mouthful of food.  “He can talk, all right.  Like I said, you should read up on changelings.”
 
“I’ll definitely do that,” Honeydew said.  “I’m stopping by the library this afternoon and seeing what I can find.”  She stared down at her plate, tired.
 
“Something wrong?” Wheat Flour asked.
 
Honeydew scratched the back of her head, and then adjusted the bun back there.  “I honestly don’t know what to do.  I’ve never seen anything like it before.  I’ve never dealt with that kind of animal before.”
 
“Animal?” I asked.  That didn’t make me feel too comfortable at all.
 
“Well, not animal animal, but creature.  I doubt that it can talk, though all of you make it sound like it can.”  She sighed.  “Oh, don’t worry about me.  I’ll understand what it is in time.  But not knowing is just… scary.”
 
I looked down at my plate, too.  I decided that when she came back from the library, I’d have to ask to see that book and find out what exactly changelings were.  Until then, what our guest was up to would be enough.  After a long break from talking, I helped myself to another serving of each dish.  “I’ll go up and see how he’s doing,” I said.  “Have you given him anything to eat already?”
 
Honeydew shook her head.  “I tried, but he wouldn’t take anything.”
 
“Maybe he’s changed his mind.  I’ll be back down in a bit.  Save some work for me,” I added with a smile.  I excused myself and carried the plate with me.
 
He could talk, I knew that for certain.  I wanted to know what was going on.  If the changelings were hunting me down again, well, I wanted to know what exactly their plan was and how to avoid it.  If it involved explosions, then I wanted to avoid it twice as much.
 
I climbed up the stairs, trying to keep the plate level.  It was easier than I had expected; ponies’ jaws seemed to be built for that sort of thing.  When I entered the room, the changeling was lying on the bed and facing the window.  The bed’s blankets had been kicked to the side and the posts near the hoofcuff were somewhat scratched.  He had tried to escape, just as Whole Grain had predicted.
 
Now to get something out of him.  Maybe if I started as coming off nice, he might talk to me.  I talked around the plate in my mouth.  “Hey.  How’re you feeling?”
 
He turned on the bed and squinted at me.  I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t.
 
“I brought you some food.”  I set the plate next to him on the bed, within his reach.
 
Not taking his eyes off of me, he folded his free arm, seemingly irritated about something.
 
I shrugged.  “You can take it or leave it.  It’ll be right there.”
 
I turned to leave, but I stopped as he finally spoke.  He grumbled, and I didn’t quite hear what he had said, but he didn’t sound grateful.  I said, “Just so you know, you’re lucky to be alive and even luckier that we’re caring for you.”
 
He moved his hoof up, causing the hoofcuff through his arm to clink against the bedpost.  “You call this being cared for?”
 
Walking back towards the bed, I tapped my hoof on the plate of food.  “And you don’t call this being cared for?”
 
He turned to look out of the second-storey window and shook his head.  “I will never understand ponies.”
 
I was about to retort about how I’d never understand changelings, either, but I didn’t want him to think that I had been around changelings before, because that would lead him to believe that I was a changeling, and I didn’t want him to know that.  What if this was 6 F 26?  He’d run and tattle about my whereabouts.  I supposed that asking for his name wouldn’t hurt….  “What’s your name?”
 
He scoffed.  “What’s it to you?”
 
“We saved your life, so the least you could do is tell me your name.”
 
The changeling took a deep breath in and released it.  “4 N 7,” he replied.
 
Oh, he had said 4 N….  That made more sense.  Well, 4 N 7 didn’t seem remotely close to 6 F 25, so he probably didn’t know me.  Once I had felt safer, I went straight to business.  “So, 4 N 7, what happened?”
 
“I thought all you wanted was my name.”  He smirked.
 
“I said that was the least you could do, but saving your life is a pretty big deal.  We deserve to know what happened.”
 
He broke eye contact.  “I was flying a little too fast.  Ran into a tree.  Now I’m here.  Can I go now?”
 
“Not yet.”  Flying away from an explosion was suspicious.  Now, I’m not usually one for illusory correlations, but I didn’t trust changelings anyway.  “We heard a ‘boom’ coming from the same direction you flew from.  Did you set off a bomb?”
 
“A bomb?  What?”  His wings buzzed for a moment, but they calmed down.  “No, there was no bomb.”
 
“Well, what was it, then?”
 
“It was a cannon,” he said.  “I was shot out of it.”
 
“Shot out of a cannon?  Why?”
 
“How else do you test a changeling cannon?”  He sighed.  “Anyway, yeah.  Guess it was a little too powerful, and I ran into that tree.”
 
A changeling cannon sounded too ridiculous to be a real thing.  Then again, so were shocktopi and Vanhoover and talking horses…  Still, it was a hard story to buy.  “What would you need a changeling cannon for?”
 
“Duh, to shoot changelings,” he replied.  “I prefer the mare that was in here before.  She didn’t ask questions as stupid as yours.”
 
Yeah, ‘cause my questions were irrelevant to anything that had happened in the past hour.  I wrote it off as unfounded bitterness and exited the room.  Maybe he’d be in a better, more truth-telling mood later.
 
When I had come back down the stairs, Honeydew was handing out strange hats to the wheat sisters.  She offered one to me.  “Here, put this on,” she said.  “One size fits all.”
 
I took the hat from her and observed it.  It was large and round, and had a wide brim with a thin veil draped around it.  I turned it over.  What was this for?   The only thing that I had seen a hat like that was for… beekeeping.
 
“Ms. Honeydew,” I began.
 
“Yes, young colt?” she said with a smile. 
 
Colt?  Oh, right.  Male horse.  Noting that for later, I held up the hat.  “What is this for?”
 
“Well, otherwise, what’s to stop you from sneezing all over the bees?”  She laughed at her joke.
 
Bees.  Bees.  How wonderful.  She wasn’t only Fillydelphia’s judge, but she just had to be a beekeeper.
 
I hate coincidences.
 

~ ~ ~

 
I can’t remember what was louder: the bees buzzing or my heart yelling in my ears.
 
She had led us to the other side of the warehouse, the side that was not visible from the road.  Inside the wide-open doors of the warehouse were several hives lined up, and hundreds of bees swarming aound them like, well, bees.
 
It seemed like such a simple task.  Turn the hive upside down, let the honey run down into the jar, and put the hive back.  My arms didn’t want to do that, though.  Nothing in me wanted to move.  The buzzing of bees had always seemed like an angry sound.  It made bees seem ticked off and ready to strike at the moment they disliked you even a little bit.
 
Honeydew was making an effort to help me, though.  She made a motion to the hive.  “Hives don’t sting, you know.  Just grab it like a bucket of honey.  As long as you’re careful with it, you’ll be fine.”
 
A bucket of honey?  It was a bucket of bees.  A bucket of buzzing, angry bees just waiting to attack.  For some people, it’s heights, or the dark, or spiders, or enclosed spaces.  My fear has been of bees ever since I was young.
 
“Talk to the bees,” she said.  “They’ll relax if you talk to them.  Say something friendly.”
 
How do I get me to relax first?  Well, I might as well give it a try if I was going to do this.  I wanted to wipe the sweat off of my forehead, but the veil was in the way.  That was all I had for protective clothing, too.  No full body suit, not even gloves – just that hat with the thin veil.
 
“H- Hi, um, bees…”  I sat down and brought my arms up around the hive, hesitating before actually touching it.  I felt like I was about to hurl again.
 
“That’s it,” Honeydew encouraged.  “It’s alright; they’re not going to hurt you.  Don’t be afraid.” 
 
Slowly, I pressed my arms inward to get a good grip.  The challenge then was to tip it over far enough that honey would flow out of it.  I lifted the thing and rotated it as best as I could to meet the mason jar.  My arms were shaking it, so I had trouble keeping it steady over the mouth of the jar.
 
“Keep talking to ‘em,” she said softly.  “It’ll help you as much as it helps them.”
 
“It’s… nice to meet… you all.”  Honey was dripping out of the hive.  One hive per jar, she had said.  However, my shaking arms were not enough to encourage the honey to come out any faster.  Honeydew said something else, but between the sound of bees buzzing and my own focus on the jar, I didn’t quite catch what she said.
 
Then, I heard an even worse noise.  A cracking noise, followed by the feeling of my arms coming together and my heart turning over.
 
I broke the hive.
 
Mother of all hiccups….
 
That’s when I learned what an angry buzz really sounds like.  Granted, it was hard to hear over my own screaming, but I could still hear it.  They were mad, alright, as what felt like sharp needles plunged into my skin.  The pain was unbearable, so I did what any other level-headed person would do: I ran and continued to scream.
 

o o o

 
“Mom!  Mom!”
 
I ran into the house and slammed both the screen door and the front door.  My mother rushed to me.  “Don’t slam the door.  What is it?” she asked.
 
“I got stung by bees, Mom.  All over,” I sputtered.  Tears were streaming down my cheeks, with pain darting into me on my arms, my face, everywhere. 
 
“Into the kitchen,” she said, removing her oven mitts.  She had two tones: level and firm.  This was firm.  “Wipe your feet first.”
 
I did as I was told and waited in the kitchen.  I was ashamed, and afraid that she was going to make me tell the truth.  I didn’t think I would get hurt that badly, but even though I knew how dares usually went, I did them anyway.  It was a pride thing, I think.  I wanted to impress the other kids on the street, but crying and running home to my mother hadn’t helped with that.
 
My mom entered, armed with a butter knife and ointment.  “What did you do, Sawyer?”
 
“I was…  I was….” I said, gasping for air from crying.
 
She crossed her arms.  “You were what?”
 
My skin were throbbing all over.  The sooner I told her the truth, the sooner she’d remove the stingers.  “I was in the park and Gabe told me to go touch the beehive up in the tree and-”
 
“That’s enough,” she said.  “You know better than that, Sawyer.  You don’t just do dangerous things because Gabe told you to.  You have to choose your friends more carefully.  Do you understand?”
 
Then I felt bad on the inside, too.  I wanted to argue about how Gabe didn’t mean any harm and it was all in good fun, but there wasn’t much use.  Her word was law, so I nodded.  “Yes, Mom.”
 
“Good,” she said.  “Now, hold still…”
 

o o o

 
“Ow!”
 
“I did say to hold still,” Honeydew said.
 
When we had returned to her house, she had led me into the kitchen.  She was using her magic to pull out each of the stingers, one by one.  I won’t lie; I was blubbering.  Sure, it was a shot to the pride, but technically I can still keep my man card because I was a pony.  Actually, I wasn’t even a pony; I was a changeling.  They could revoke my changeling card if they wanted to.  I didn’t want it in the first place.
 
And just in time to catch me crying like a child, Lucid came in.  “What happened?” he asked, looking at me.
 
It was hard to think of a full, concise explanation while trying to swallow my sobs.  “Honeydew has bees.”  Between that and the red spots peppering my body, I figured that would be enough.
 
“Oh.”  He raised his eyebrows.  “How bad is it?”
 
“It could be worse,” Honeydew replied.  “He’s got several bee stings, but that’s all they are.  These will only take a couple of days to heal.”
 
Lucid looked at me, up and down.  “May I speak with you in private for a moment?” he asked Honeydew.
 
Honeydew nodded, handing Wheat Flour a tube of something.  “Here, can you apply this?  Just a pea-sized dab for each one.”
 
“Of course,” she said and accepted the tube.
 
Honeydew left the room with Lucid as Wheat Flour squeezed a bit of stuff out of the tube and onto her white hoof.  She walked over to me and began to apply it.  It smelled like… toothpaste, and looked like it, too.  “Try not to move,” she said, as if I hadn’t already.
 
Whole Grain sat and watched.  She didn’t have a mad face anymore, as I expected.  It was a neutral face.  I preferred that face over the demise-wishing face.  However, her sitting there with her arms folded and not saying anything still made me uneasy.
 
I looked past her at a pan hanging from the pot rack, and saw my reflection.  Oh, I was still Gouda…
 
I cleared my throat and said in a hushed voice, “Whole Grain, I’m sorry about yesterday.  I should’ve changed into somepony other than Gouda.  Should I do that now?”
 
Whole Grain shook her head.  “Not now.  Honeydew would notice.”
 
Wheat Flour put another dab of cream on one of the last sting on my leg.  One leg down, three to go.  I looked down at the ground.  “Still, now that I know who Gouda is, I’m sorry I didn’t even change today.”
 
Whole Grain shrugged.  “Whatever.  It doesn’t matter anymore.  We won’t meet any more ponies we know at this point.  Besides…”  She chuckled and turned away.  “…you do Gouda better justice than he does.”
 
“Oh?”  I was shocked and distracted by her smile.  That was the first time I’d seen it.
 
She nodded.  “Gouda was a jerk.  He’d make up excuses for everything, blaming it on work.  At first I believed him, but then I met his boss, and he was less ‘iron-hoofed’ than Gouda made him out to be.  I realized that Gouda was just rude, and especially when Sunflower Seed came to visit.”  She tried to shake the memory out of her head.  “That was a nightmare.”
 
I jumped as Wheat Flour touched a group of stings on my shoulder.  “Hold still,” Wheat Flour said gently.
 
“Sorry.”  I sat down, but stood back up after discovering more stings in that area, too.
 
Whole Grain’s arms remained folded as she watched us.  I looked down at the ground and away from Wheat Flour as she finished tending to the last of my wounds.  The pain had lessened somewhat.  It wasn’t as bad as after the train, but it was still more than noticeable.
 
And just as Wheat Flour was finishing up, Honeydew and Lucid came back into the room.  Honeydew closed the book in her hoof and laid it on the kitchen counter.  “Well, it seems that according to a sub-clause of Equestrian law, workplace hazards have been the cause of a mild-to-severe injury to you, and you’re no longer bound by law to continue your sentence.  You’re free to go,” she said.
 
The last part was the only thing I fully understood and needed to hear.  I smiled.  “Thank you, Honeydew.”
 
“What about the changeling?” Wheat Flour asked.
 
Honeydew half-smiled.  “Oh, I don’t know.  I’ll read up on changelings, like you said, and see what to do from there.”
 
And have him arrested.  That wouldn’t have been a bad thing at all, no.  It probably was for the best that a potential threat was locked up and far away from me.  He could’ve been a spy.  I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t have any reason to.
 
However, if we had one more changeling with us, that’d also be one more changeling that we knew was a changeling.  I wasn’t sure who I could trust; anypony could’ve been a changeling.  And if we took him with us, we’d keep him on a short leash and force him to remain a changeling, and he’d never have a chance to escape and impersonate somepony else while we weren’t looking.
 
Well, of course he’d have a chance to escape.  Who was I kidding?  And the longer we kept him, the more he’d hate us.  And the more he hated us, the greater the chances would be of him not only abandoning us but attacking or robbing us or telling on me, too.
 
I thought about him, chained to a bed upstairs.  I had been in a jail cell before.  I had wanted to get back home.  I had wanted someone to bail me out, and that’s exactly what had happened.  My own kind, in a way, was there to help me out, and I felt the need to return the favour.  Maybe 4 N 7 would see it that way, too.
 
I stepped forward, as hard as that was to do with bee stings all over.  “We’ll take him with us.”
 
Whole Grain nodded.  “We’ll bring him to the police station for you.”
 
“No, I think we can take-  Can someone take this off, please?” I asked, the veil starting to annoy me.
 
Honeydew reached out and took the hat off.  “Thank you,” I said, and tried to turn my head towards Whole Grain.  “I don’t think taking him to the police station is necessary.”
 
“There’s no question, Gouda.  He’s going there,” she said.
 
The only way to fight stubbornness was with more stubbornness.  “He’s coming with us.”
 
“No!  We’re not taking another… traveller.  That’s final,” Whole Grain asserted, stomping her yellow hoof.
 
I knew what she was about to say, had Honeydew been absent.  But she was not going to boss me around anymore.  This was something I wanted to do, and maybe something good would come out of it. 
 
“For the love of Celestia, you two are making me work off duty,” Honeydew said, turning to me.  “Do you promise to take care of him?”
 
I nodded.  “Yes, I do.”
 
“Then that settles it.  I’ll go get him,” she said, leaving the room.
 
Whole Grain’s eyebrows sunk further.  “Fine.  Under one condition,” she said.
 
Whatever.  Anything to keep her happy and not kicking me in the side.  “What?” I said.
 
“We put him on a leash.”