//------------------------------//
// "It's in the eyes" 
// Story: For Whom We Are Hungry 
// by Cold in Gardez 
//------------------------------//

You race through the town as though you still had wings. Ponies shout and jump out of your way, but none seem to be giving chase, not yet. You're moving too fast for anypony to get a good look at your injury.

The foal, though. The foal saw, and he – she? – will surely tell the others. Then the taste of shock and relief will fade, replaced by a wave of anger and fear. They will band together, these ponies, and hunt you down. Your disguises won't matter – they have spells to suss out your true form, and you'll end up like those changelings in the woods, the ones who were caught before they could hide.

You don't want to die. Not like that.

There are other towns nearby. You consider simply running straight for them, or heading into the Everfree. They probably won't chase you there. You could escape and try again somewhere else. More carefully this time.

Your ankle hurts. You ignore the pain and continue running, sticking to the gaps between homes. A shadow flits across the road before you, and you crouch against a nearby wall. A pegasus, high above – he doesn't seem to be searching for you, though, and you scurry on away.

The edge of the town is just a few houses away. If you run, you can be in the woods in seconds. Nothing can catch you in there.

But you decide to take a chance. Instead of the woods, you run a few hundred more paces, to the lonely cabin you call your home. It is neatly made outside, with a trimmed lawn and bright paint. It is a house a real pony might live in. A safe place to hide, usually.

Not anymore, of course. Once the mob gets going, no home will be safe. Ponies are peaceful creatures as a rule, herbivores, but they are ferocious when a predator threatens the herd. They dominate this world for a reason. Every other creature that crawls or swims or flies, monsters though they may be, lives in the ponies' shadows.

You toss the door open and slam it shut behind you. There's no lock – this is Ponyville – but a closed door will stop the mob for at least a few seconds, you hope. They're so polite they'll knock before bursting in to kill you.

You probably have a few minutes. There's no taste of a mob yet, no anger or fear or hate filling your mouth like bile. In fact, the town tastes much the same as it always does on market days – busy and tired, but with a thin layer of happiness beneath it all. The foal must not have convinced them yet.

Good, more time for you. You pull a pair of canvas saddlebags out from under your bed. They are filled with as many spare bits as you've been able to hoard and a selection of clothes appropriate for the cold. Sleeping outside on frosty nights, away from the hive, can be fatal for a changeling. A scarf and saddle won't keep you comfortably warm, but they might keep you alive.

You grab a few items from the shelves as you pass, little things you can sell for more bits. Pieces of silverware and a glass hummingbird sculpture. Rare seeds from a previous trip to the Everfree, still drying on your windowsill. They will buy you a few more days in another town.

Good, this is good. You seal the bags, toss them over your back, and consider the wound on your ankle. The wood shard is still lodged in your carapace, but the green ichor leaking from the wound has solidified and begun to blacken. You grimace.

You should have treated it first. Now it will hurt more. Before you have any second thoughts, you bite down on the exposed bit of wood and slowly work it out of your leg. It hurts, but pain to you isn't like pain to ponies – it tastes different. For you it is simply a sensation, a warning. For them it is debilitating and horrible and disgusting. You hate being near ponies in pain.

Finally, it is out. You spit the slimy wood onto the floor and let a bit of magic flow from your heart. The wound sparks a brilliant green, burning, and in moments the flesh is whole. Another burst of magic restores the illusion of a tan earth pony's coat, and once again your disguise is perfect.

Perfect. You give your saddlebags a shake and open the door.

A small foal is standing there. It has a sand coat and a seafoam mane.

You stare at each other for a few moments.

You close the door.

This taste in your mouth, it is panic. It is coming from you, you realize, and you take a long, deep breath. You need to relax. You need to stay calm.

There is a timid knock on the door, followed by silence. If you listen hard enough, you can hear the foal's breathing on the far side.

You still don't taste a mob. Perhaps there is none.

You open the door again. The foal has not moved.

Interesting.

The foal is a colt, you decide. His muzzle is a bit too square, his shoulders a little wide. He's older than you first thought, as well. The ratio of his head and legs suggests he has several molts, at least one more than you expected. For some reason he is smaller than most ponies his age.

He is afraid of you. You can taste fear dripping from him, and he cannot stop his legs from trembling. He is so afraid he can barely move, and yet he has followed you here, and knocked on your door.

Ponies fear death. You've been around them long enough to know this. It's possible this colt is smart enough to realize he nearly died a few minutes ago, and this is why he is afraid. Most young mammals think they are invincible, in your experience, but perhaps this one is smarter than the rest.

You move your hoof forward an inch, and the taste of fear doubles. The colt flinches but doesn't bolt. He stares up at you with those water eyes – blue eyes – and you freeze.

He is afraid of you. He is terrified of you.

It burns your tongue. “Please stop,” you whisper.

The colt jerks again. His jaw works, and eventually he manages to stammer out a response. “S-stop what?”

That was not smart of you. You didn't think, you just spoke, and now this colt has another reason to wonder what you are. You take a deep breath before answering.

“Why are you here?”

“I just wanted to say thank you,” the colt says. His eyes are huge, and they slowly travel down your body to your leg, to the injury you just healed. Only a perfect, solid coat remains, and he stares at it.

Right. You follow his eyes, and realize a smear of dark green blood still discolors your chest. He has noticed it too, and quickly glances away.

“And I won't tell anyone,” he says. “I mean it. I won't tell.”

Oh gods, he does know. The microscopic bit of relief that had begun to rise in your chest blows out like a candle in a rainstorm. Fear grips you, freezes you in place. For a long moment you cannot even breathe.

The colts sees this. “I mean it,” he says. “I won't tell. I promise.”

“You won't tell?” you repeat.

He shakes his head weakly. “No. Promise.”

You stare at him, tasting him for any hint of deceit or trickery. There is none – only the earnestness of a foal and a tiny, sweet note of gratitude.

He might be telling the truth.

Maybe this is not the end.

“Okay,” you say. You stare at each other in silence again, and then you close the door.

Quite a while passes before you hear him walk away.


* * *


You wake up hungry. Again.

It's been a week since 'the incident,' as you've taken to thinking about it. A week since last market day, and you have not stepped hoof outside your house.

Whatever tiny bit of relief the foal gave you didn't last more than a night. Lying in your bed, it was too easy to imagine him talking to his parents, or to the other foals. He would tell them what happened, and eventually your role would come out. Maybe not all of it – he might not even mention your injury, or your true nature, but it would still cause attention. Ponies would want to talk to you. They would try to get to know you.

So, no. Nothing lies down that road but disaster. You've survived this long because you avoided notice, not by being the town's hero, savior of innocent foals.

You can't even remember deciding to save him. You must have been confused, or startled into acting. The shock of the accident got to you, is all.

Those thoughts, or some variant of them, are all that have gone through your head the past week. You huddled in your bed, your bags ready on the floor, ready to grab and fly away at the first taste of a mob. Every day you grew hungrier and a bit weaker, but not even that was enough to send you outside. Better to starve slowly than get your head beaten in with a rock quickly.

And now it has been a week, and it is market day again.

Perhaps enough time has passed? Ponies are busy creatures, and a week is a long time. Your memories go back many lifetimes, hundreds of years. In the deepest recesses of your mind, you dimly recall a different land, a vast desert with no landmarks but wind-driven dunes of sand, hundreds of feet high. In it there were no ponies, only a young queen, barely larger than a drone, and a few blind hatchlings. You remember mewling in that dark heat, buried beneath the sand, searching for your sisters. Your racial memory is deep. To you, a week is nothing. A flutter of your wings. To ponies, especially to foals with only a few molts, a week is a long time. Perhaps long enough to forget.

So, you decide to go to the market. You have a few seeds to sell, and if you don't go, you'll starve before the next nightfall. That makes your decision fairly simple.

You walk slowly to the market square. It is warmer this week, and no frosted grass cracks beneath your hooves, but the gnawing hunger in your belly and weakness in your limbs keeps you to a snail's pace. Nearly an hour passes before you finally limp into the center of town.

Cinnabar greets you at her stall, as chipper as ever. She doesn't notice anything different about you – you're an expert at hiding things, after all. And hunger is something you've grown used to. It's like an old friend, always at your side. You exchange a few words with her – as few as possible – and she buys a few of your seeds. If she wonders why you don't have anything fresher from the Everfree, she keeps her questions to herself.

Just talking to her is a small bit of nourishment. It whets your appetite for more.

With no more oddities to sell, you wander over to the old poplar, where parents have gathered to watch their foals play. A few of them lounge outside its shade, splayed out on their backs or sides, basking in the early spring sun. The sun has no happy memories for you, but they seem to be enjoying themselves, so you find an open patch of grass and lower yourself to the ground. It is still cool, and a bit damp, but after only a few seconds the sun begins to warm your back, and you feel your ears sag as every muscle in your body relaxes.

Time passes. The parents are close enough that even though you are not the recipient of their emotions, you can taste them nevertheless. Their feelings run the full gamut – happiness and contentment, mostly, but worry as well, and irritation, and anger, all hidden in the mix. You close your eyes and follow the tastes as the town flows by around you.

A new flavor suddenly intrudes. Apprehension and fear, both sour. You open your eyes and see a colt with a sand coat and seafoam mane standing a few feet from you.

You're past being afraid yourself. There's no point in it anymore, not when hunger is far more likely to kill you than a mob of angry ponies. You flick your ears back against your skull and wait for the foal to speak.

He digs the edge of his hoof into the dirt. “Uh... hi. I mean, hello. Sir.”

You give him a slight nod. “Good morning.”

You've never seen a pony drowning, but you imagine this is what it looks like. The colt shuffles from hoof to hoof, exuding nervous energy. It tastes like camphor. He opens his mouth, and a sound starts to emerge, but just as quickly he ducks his head and lapses into silence.

Neither of you speak for a full minute, even as the scenes of small town life proceed around you. Eventually, the colt gives up trying to talk, and instead reaches back into his saddlebags with his muzzle. The bags are burlap, and worn, with small holes and patches along the corners. They look ready to fall apart at any moment, but before they can, the colt pulls out his prize – a huge, ripe apple, brighter than blood and still smelling of sunlight.

The colt leans toward you, carefully, as though he were reaching over the edge of a cliff. The apple dangles by its stem from his teeth.

You raise an eyebrow. “For me?”

The colt nods, setting the apple bobbing. “Uh huh.”

You don't need the apple – you don't need food, period – but you're in public, and ponies would find it odd if you didn't accept this offering. Slowly, so as not to startle the colt, you lean forward and grasp it with your teeth. The skin dents but doesn't break, and you set it down between your legs.

“Big Macintosh gave it to me,” the colt says. He sits back on his haunches, and the scent of anxiety is gone now. “After the accident. He said I could have as many apples as I wanted.”

You consider the apple for a moment in silence, then look back to the colt. “Why give it to me?”

“I want you to have it.” The colt rubs his foreleg against his chest and glances away. “And you looked hungry. I know what that's like.”

Your lungs freeze, and for a heartbeat you cannot draw a breath. Nopony should be able to see that – your disguises are too perfect. You could be on fire and nopony would notice beneath your illusions.

“It's in the eyes,” he mumbles, still looking away.

Wonderful. You blink like a hummingbird, trying to clear whatever pall he noticed. “I'm not hungry,” you say.

He doesn't answer. Around you, ponies begin to pack up their stalls and prepare for lunch. The crowds ease as the herd is drawn home or to the town's various delis for food.

Hunger has no taste. It is one of the few feelings ponies possess that does not trigger some reaction in your senses. You could be in a town on the verge of famine, and you would taste their despair and misery, but not their hunger. It cannot nourish you.

You wonder if this foal is hungry as well.

“What's your name?” you ask him.

“Saw Dust. What's yours?”

You take a second before answering to consider that. Most ponies name their foals something aspirational or meaningful. Saw Dust is neither of those.

Whatever. “Gin Star,” you say.

“Is that your real name?”

The foal already knows the truth about you. There's no danger in going a step further. You shake your head minutely. “No.”

“Oh.” He considers that. “Neat.”

For the rest of the lunch hour you are both silent, though at some point you split the apple and give back one of the halves. The colt – Saw Dust – inhales it in a few bites, while you take longer with your half. It tastes like satisfaction, with a bit of bitter nostalgia when you eat the core.

Oddly enough, it eases some of your hunger.