//------------------------------//
// The Visitation 
// Story: He never had so sweet a Changeling 
// by Gabriel LaVedier 
//------------------------------//

	Double watched with slightly blank eyes as the doctor slowly and skillfully drew the rasp across her cast, carefully filing away the material in order to properly crack it apart. She had barely had the presence of mind to adopt her Dee Dee guise again. Only Vanilla's sharp call had broken through her mental distance to just give her the inclination to assume a proper shape.
The time had come. Three months of healing. Of tears and laughter, good meals, bad decisions and one agonized night of confusion and near-tragedy. There was no telling what would happen when she had the cast off, given that she had been changed for part of the recovery period.
A few last scrapes of the rasp finished a network of score lines along the surface, which were carefully cracked with the application of the doctor's magic. The cast split along the scores and the pieces were picked off and set aside, slowly revealing the rubbery coating placed beneath and the leg of the alleged mare.
“Looks good. It's straight, there's no surface damage that I can see. Seems to have come through this just fine,” The doctor said, his horn lighting again and washing over the rubbery coating. The material began to stretch, pulling away from the leg like a giant rubber tube. It was then slipped off, leaving just the mussed hair of the leg. “Give it a try, Miss Dee Dee. Just have a stand on it and tell me how it feels.”
Double obeyed mechanically, placing the leg down on the ground and putting weight on it. The limb held up, though she did not comment on how it felt.
“Dee Dee? How does it feel?” Vanilla asked, motioning towards the doctor with his head.
“Feels good. I can support myself now,” Double answered, still staring at nothing a thousand yards away.
“You did a good job, Mister Torte,” The doctor said, as he began packing up his supplies. “She seems in decent health. I see she got ample rest and nutrition. The leg feels solid but I would imagine it's just a little weak. I'd advise some focused physical therapy. Or if you'd rather do it yourself you can take short, frequent walks, leading up to longer walks.”
“I'll be sure to keep her as active as possible,” Vanilla promised, lightly placing a leg around Double's shoulders.
The doctor just happened to notice the gesture and let a grin slowly spread across his features. “So... did her family or friends ever show up to ask after her?”
“N-no. It seems they didn't really care. You know how fickle upper-terracers can sometimes be. That's okay, she pulled through on her own,” Vanilla said, offering a large and hopefully sincere smile.
The doctor only chuckled. “Not quite on her own, I think. I'll leave you two to what you've developed here. As I said before, Miss Dee Dee, our pseudo-community is brighter for your presence. I'm glad you're going to be around.” With that he bore up his equipment and jauntily trotted out of the room.
Both Double and Vanilla were silent and still for a long moment, the only motion being the lick of flames as Double resumed her proper Changeling form. The formerly-broken leg was revealed to be like the other, shot through with holes, looking none the worse for wear.
Vanilla broke the silence with a cheerful, “Well, that's excellent. You're recovered. So, how about we make something big and extravagant to celebrate?”
“I'm not hungry,” Double said in a hollow voice.
“You've been like this since... since it happened. What's the matter? You're alive! You're alive, healed and now we can get on with the life we didn't think we were going to have,” Vanilla said loudly, from the door to the kitchen.
“Don't you understand? Something happened! Sure, maybe it wasn't what Queen Chrysalis told us but something happened, and I feel changed. I know something changed in me but I don't know what,” Double insisted, pressing against her chest right where she had felt the tight pressure. She knew what it was that was different. She hadn't felt the hungry emptiness swallowing endless amounts of love. She didn't know what it meant, but it frightened her.
“I know that you're afraid. You're good at hiding things like that but I can tell that you're scared. Talk to me and we can work it out. It's just one more service a pony coltfriend can offer,” Vanilla said, with a good attempt at a charming smile and good-natured chuckle.
Double strolled over and planted a fangy little kiss on Vanilla's cheek. “I know you want to help. It's in your nature. Kindness and compassion for hurts, that's the pony way. But this is something... uniquely Changeling. I have to figure out what it all means first. Then if I ever do you can smother me in love, like you want to,” she said, with a buzz of her wings.
Vanilla intended to object, but the kiss had softened him, and the adorable buzz of her wings put the idea of opposition out of his mind. He sighed and gave her a kiss in return. “You're going to leave me, aren't you?”
Double shook her head and pressed her neck against Vanilla's. “Never. Don't worry. I'm not going back to the swarm or going on a crazy quest for answers that might never come. I just need time alone. Time to think about this...”
“So, you're going back to how it was...” Vanilla began.
“No. Never. I'll never be like that again,” Double said reassuringly, placing a kiss below Vanilla's horn. “But I do need some time to think. Maybe if I can figure all of this out I won't be so afraid of it. Or maybe I'll just learn to make peace with not knowing... either way, it will only be good for us.”
“I take it that you won't be wanting the Chef's Table for lunch?” Vanilla inquired.
“I don't even know if I'll eat dinner. Don't say it. I know starving myself isn't the answer but honestly, I don't think I even want the distraction of food settled in my belly. I'm sorry...” Double said.
Vanilla stroked her cheek and gave her a smile. “Take all the time you need. Don't worry. When you need me, I'll be here for you.”
“I know. That's why I'm still here,” Double said, placing another kiss on Vanilla's cheek before moving up the stairs and back into the room she had occupied.
The door shut firmly behind her and she was alone with her thoughts in the sparse space. Bare as it was there was a certain comfort to it, the comfort of the familiar and the personal. By Vanilla's allowance, it was all hers, genuinely hers. Everything in it belonged to her. She actually had real property, even if it just amounted to some slightly-older furniture, a few sets of bedclothes and a guest bedroom. That was more than the average Changeling claimed.
She had given up so much, shedding bits and pieces of what it meant to be a Changeling. Her pledge as she fell in failure seemed silly to her now. To forever be a Changeling of the swarm and nothing else. She was far more. She had given up secrets, lies, her belief in the acceptability of culling and her unwavering trust in Queen Chrysalis. She had pasted the pony ways over the parts of her she no longer wanted, and made herself better for it.
She was happy, and living in a standard and manner far above what she had had. She had a loving stallion that had accepted the alien creature sleeping beside him. He didn't shy away from the touch of her holed legs or the brush of her fangs as they kissed. That alone was worth everything. Good food, property and soft living were all just extras.
The sacrifice of her deceptive nature had demanded a real price, however. Her holes closing had happened, in some sense, even if they opened again. She had felt the pressure and pain, felt the void be silent, and then be gone. She had been altered. It was more than living in a pleasant house with a more-than-pleasant pony. It was even more than just acting differently. Something was fundamentally altered. Something deep inside.
She lay on the bed once more and rested comfortably, savoring the softness she had come to expect. She also looked within, feeling for the old familiar hunger. She felt an actual hunger in the pit of her stomach and briefly felt foolish for waving off one of Vanilla's delicious extravagances. But no mater how she searched and probed within, she could not feel the yawning emptiness, the screaming void. Not even the whispering of its constant demands for more and more. She was no longer filled with a greedy hunger.
“What am I now?” She asked herself, pressing her hooves over her eyes and slowly rubbing them until she saw sparks and swirls. It wasn't quite good for her but it at least gave her a focus. She watched the fading flashes of light and the whirling shapes vanish into the nothingness from which they had come and wondered if maybe they were where her hunger had gone.
In the silence that followed her question and her consideration she became aware of a humming, which was not the muted and distant sound of a record playing or Vanilla baking. A look around eventually led her to look up and see her own horn was glowing green and humming with energy. It was both hers and not hers; her magic was being used but she was not controlling it on her own.
The magic built and surged and hummed louder until it shot off the tip and struck a point in the empty middle of the room. Slowly the magic built itself into a green-tinted illusion, the image of a figure she knew. “Q-queen Chrysalis?” Double asked, with faded reverence and some twinge of fear.
“You disobeyed...” the image said, in an echoing, distorted voice. “I warned you. I told you. I even planted the illusion of your own holes closing with this message to dissuade you.”
“What are-” Double began, awkwardly rising from the bed.
“If you're speaking, try to have some intellect and don't insult your fellow Changelings by forgetting this is a mere illusion. You live with enough to recognize them,” the image sneered, the illusory Chrysalis seeming no kinder than the real one.
“Why did you do this?!” Double shouted, in defiance of the order to silence. “Why did you say we would be killed?”
“You have some questions. I don't care about them, this is just to let you know my disdain,” the illusion continued, looking disgusted and almost offended. “You're dead to me. I would know you from a normal Changeling. You would be culled back in the swarm. You are weak. You are the ultimate sign of weakness, of defiance and betrayal and all that would shatter the power of the swarm.”
“Maybe it deserved it,” Double muttered, strolling forward to thrust a hoof through the image. It wavered but remained, just a trick, though one that few could really manage well. Chrysalis had, indeed, been the author of the message.
“You don't even know what you did, do you? Do you?!” The false Chrysalis shouted in a rage, seething through her fangs afterward. “You did more than defy nature and your proper place, you did more than do what must never be done. You went against the nature of what it is to be a Changeling. Make no mistake, you will always be a Changeling. What were we before this? No record can tell, and it never mattered to me. Those days can never come back, and that is the reality of it. We are now what we will always be. Changelings. But to be a Changeling is not merely a body, it is a manner of being.
“A Changeling is a thief. A deceiver. A parasite. We take what is not ours from those who are giving to another, by trickery and guile. We are shadows and whispers, malevolent siphons drifting through the lives of others to make things a bit darker and then running away to prepare to do it all again. This is the truth. But you found more.
“The emptiness is part and parcel of our nature, the source of magnificent and transcendent power. There is a reason it is forever empty. It was put there as a curse, an ever-screaming curse to call us to suffer. But our wise foremothers conceived of more, because of the nature of that void.
“They saw what comes of drawing in more and more, taking and taking what was not rightfully theirs to be cast into a cup with no bottom. Stolen love feeds that emptiness and desire. You feed the void, grow more mighty and feed it more and more. A Changeling without satiation is a bottomless pit capable of being unstoppable as they steal and steal. Filling the void leads to satisfaction. A sated Changeling is merely strong. But a sated Changeling will never be overpowering again.
“Now you have done it, you miserable fool,” Chrysalis' illusion seethed again, sneering out in Double's general direction. “You have silenced the void in the only way it was ever possible. Love was given, not stolen. It was directed at you, at your horrible, alien figure. Some idiot creature, blind or insane or simply too stupid to deserve life, poured feeling into you in a ruinous cascade that filled the emptiness. I tried to warn you, I showed you with an illusion more powerful than any you could do, and so could not undo. And now you know.
“You can survive on pony food. Fill your normal belly with that trash all you wish. You will never be troubled with the howling pit again saying it is not enough. Your second stomach will rumble when it truly needs but it can be sated. You can be sated. All the theft in the world will never make you more mighty again. You will never become mighty and grand. You will be as you are, a skittering little bug drawing off ambient love and perhaps more of the emotion that brought you to this pathetic state.
“Don't rely on that, little outcast. You are dead to me, and will be dead if I ever see you again. The deluded fool that made you this way will never be yours forever. Hold no illusions about that, my foolish little Changeling. One day, perhaps not long from now, whatever creature you have found will awaken and see you in the light and know what it has done. They lie beside a horrid, disgusting, alien insect. They will pull from your chitinous touch and flee your fang-filled kisses. You will be left all alone. Other Changelings will shun you, other living beings will chase you. None will ever trust you, for you are a double beast: traitor to your kind and a monster to others. Your touch is anathema, your existence an affront to all other creatures.
“Go then!” The illusion screeched, pointing a trembling hoof off into the distance. “Live your execrable life. Live in misery, suffering and sorrow. I will sleep well knowing you suffer, knowing that you weakened the swarm and were punished, knowing that your love will fail soon and that once delusion passes you will have only loneliness and regrets!”
With a deepening hum and small fizzles of fading magic the green-tinged Changeling queen began to fade from view. Double, who had been barely holding back tears and had a pained look of sorrow unleashed a rage-filled cry towards the ersatz Chrysalis. “That was a warning? You mock your own kind for trying to find something more and for not wanting to live as a parasite?! I knew I was right to think badly about you! You never cared about us! Only about keeping yourself strong! No wonder you tried that stupid invasion! No wonder the invasion failed! You fed your emptiness to bursting and still lost when real love hit you! When it hit all of us! I should have understood it then!
“And as for the source of love... he has a name! It's Vanilla Torte! He gave me love I didn't deserve and made me more than a miserable thing like you could ever be! I'll take that future you imagine I'll have! I'll take every last minute of Vanilla's delusion... because I'll have Vanilla while he's deluded...” Double's rage faded as the doubts prickled across her mind. The image of Chrysalis was gone. She was only talking to the empty room and to herself. Her soft sobs and the spatter of gold-green tears filled in the void that had been laden with Chrysalis' bombastic assertions and insults.
The sound of the door slowly opening was like thunder in the quiet room. Double's head whipped around suddenly, to catch sight of Vanilla standing in the doorway, looking almost guilty about being there. “I didn't hear it all,” he admitted, not quite looking up, “but I heard a bit of it. I heard you get out of bed a little harder than was normal and then I heard the shouting... I listened at the door and...”
“Was she right?” Double asked, staying put in the spot where she had started crying. “Is this going to end someday? Are you just going to..?”
“She lied to you before. Lied about everything. I can tell you, she's lying about that too,” Vanilla said, crossing the room to wrap Double up in a warm, tight embrace. “It's not delusion that keeps me here. It's devotion. That love that changed you will never go away.”
Double leaned her body firmly against Vanilla, taking in his warmth, and basking in the sensation of real love directed at her. At the real her. Chrysalis could say all that she wanted. Double had been exiled from the swarm by implanted message. She was still a Changeling, but what that meant was up to her to decide. No uncaring queen was going to dictate that to her again. “My name is Double Dealing...” she whispered, while nuzzling down against Vanilla's neck. “I am no longer a worker of the swarm. I am a Changeling, and what that means is mine to say...”