Changelings, Love and Lollipops
Chapter 8
Cute Tea Mark Crusaders
“So your stomach had been giving you trouble ever since the Princess of Love created that bubble. I can see how the incident could make you quite ill, but I’m really surprised that you didn’t get killed.”
The changeling did not respond, still looking around the hut and its strange inhabitant in disbelief. Zebras were creatures of ancient legend and stories from the other side of the world, not next-door neighbors who lived inside a spooky dark forest. But still, there was Zecora the Zebra, striped in a way that gave the changeling a throbbing headache whenever he tried to look at her.
Stripes. Give me a plain pastel pony to copy any day of the week. Except Pinkie.
While Pinkie told his life story to date, including all of the times he had lied to her in specific and precise detail, the changeling continued to silently observe his surroundings. An alarm bell was ringing in the back of his mind at the size of the fairly small windows and the thickness of her front door, and in particular the ivory-white object sitting on a nearby shelf. The foreleg-long thing came to a sharp point on one end, and widened at the other, looking almost like a—
“It is the claw of a bandersnatch’s paw. By grinding the substance into a dust, I can stop the sensation of unending lust.”
“Uh?” The changeling looked up into the zebra’s blue eyes, which seemed to twinkle dangerously in the dim firelight that lit her small room. “Really?”
“To have another burn with unquenchable fire is a sensation that changelings desire. This potion quenches that unbearable need so that a changeling has nothing upon which to feed.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” chirped Pinkie Pie before whispering something into the zebra’s ear.
“We don’t feed on lust,” protested the changeling, although after a moment he added, “mostly. Admittedly it’s good for flavor, but it would be like a pony trying to survive entirely on frosting.”
For some reason, his comment seemed to strike the zebra as hilarious and Pinkie as insulting, earning him a laugh and a scowl simultaneously.
“Perhaps this is the problem causing your stomach ills,” said Zecora. “A simple malady which can be treated without pills. Your consumption of the Royal Couple’s love caused you to plummet down from above, but in that explosion of burning desire, came the condition which set your stomach on fire. A simple cure may be found not from me, but from one who truly knows her tea.”
~ ~ ~ ♥ ♥ ♥ ~ ~ ~
“Welcome to the Carousel Boutique, where every garment is chic, unique, and magnifique. Oh, Pinkie Pie. What a pleasure. And who might I ask is your handsome friend?” The snow-white unicorn mare fairly glowed with a friendly acceptance, her deep violet curls thrown back in a fashionable bounce, looking nearly identical to the briefing the changeling had received, although the puzzled expression she was wearing now did not match her fierce scowl when they had last met in Canterlot. In fact, it looked familiar, as if Pinkie Pie somehow induced bafflement with her very presence. Rarity’s eyes traced a line from the thin ribbon tied to her friend’s hoof, then over to the disguised changeling, and then back again. It should have triggered a question, but it seemed that the inhabitants of the town had developed a strong tendency not to ask questions that they did not want answered, much like the changeling was learning.
“This is Mister Tolliver,” bubbled Pinkie Pie, bouncing around him with the streamer trailing in her wake. “He’s a meany-weany changeling who lies a lot, but—”
“Changeling!” shrieked the unicorn, turning and running upstairs with a clatter of hooves. “We’re closed!” came a muffled shout from behind the bedroom door, mixed with the solid thuds of a number of heavy objects being piled up against it.
Pinkie started to bounce up the stairs, stopped, and quickly tied the changeling to a nearby dressmaker’s dummy before resuming her dash after her friend. “Don’t worry, Rarity! I’m his Habitation Officer,” echoed down from the staircase as the changeling quietly untied the ribbon from the mechanical pony. Holding the end in his teeth, he silently tip-hooved for the front door before stopping in frustration.
I untied the wrong stupid end of the ribbon. I’m getting too used to being treated like an animal.
The door a few feet in front of his nose slammed open and the little white unicorn from yesterday bounced happily into the room. She stopped almost instantly upon seeing him, her eyes taking in the ribbon with an entirely too intelligent expression and an exuberant grin that the changeling knew was the first sign of impending disaster. She vanished out the door even quicker than she had appeared, returning with both of her friends. “See!” she declared. “Right there. He’s a he.”
“It’s a pink ribbon,” said Apple Bloom.
“I thought you said you couldn’t change,” said Scootaloo with a suspicious glare.
“I can’t!” he blurted out with an empathetic wave of one yellow hoof, adding, “I couldn’t! I mean I couldn't then but I can now.” He paused, one hoof in the air and considered the devilish wagon most likely parked outside the door.
Don’t tell them about tea. They’ll drag you off screaming to some horrid torture chamber and feed you bizzare poisonous concoctions until you die. That is, unless the wagon crashes into a tree and kills us all.
“So are you here to get a disguise from my sister?” asked Sweetie Belle with her head cocked to one side and a puzzled frown.
“Naa. I bet it means you’re going to get a hat for when you’re out at the farm helping with my apple picking chores this afternoon, right?” asked the little earth pony.
“No way, Applebloom!” declared Scootaloo, which gave the changeling a tiny fraction of a second of relaxation before she continued, “He’s coming with me out to the school so we can show everypony we actually caught a real, live changeling.”
* * *
“Good morning, class,” announced the teacher, smiling at the classroom filled with eager little ponies. “Today we have a real treat in store for us. Normally in Biology class, we have you dissect a frog, but thanks to Scootaloo, we have something a little more challenging.”
She swept the tarp off the restrained changeling, struggling against the dissecting pins shoved through each limb and looking in horror at the dotted lines covering his body and a huge supply of barbed identification tags labelled with things like Liver, Spleen, and Unidentified Wriggly Bit.
“Now everypony grab a scalpel, and we’ll all take turns. Once we’ve got our specimen opened up enough, I’ll get out the electrical wires and we can demonstrate his galvanic response.”
* * *
“I’m supposed to be taste-testing teas!” he blurted out.
Mercifully, he could not remember much of the next few minutes, other than the helmet jammed down over his eyes and the roar of the wind.
Unfortunately, when he could think, he found himself in a familiar small house, surrounded by small animals who did not like him one bit.
~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~
“Cutie Mark Crusader Tea Party!”
Three small fillies and one uncomfortable changeling in the guise of a yellow unicorn sat around Fluttershy’s kitchen table, with a pot of hot water on the stove and a number of small containers strewn around the various cabinets and shelves. Off to one side, the collection of animals maintained a wary relative silence, exchanging tweets and chirps between themselves as they watched and waited. A few of them even exchanged seeds and nuts while consulting with a cranky white rabbit, who appeared to be running a betting pool.
The animals did not bother the changeling very much. Well, other than the bear. It was the relative absence of the yellow pegasus that worried him. She could be out in the frightening forest at this very minute, retrieving some horrible changeling-eating monster to dispose of the body, or worse.
* * *
The quiet pegasus crept through the steamy forest and up on the dark cave opening before calling inside. “Mister Fangy? Could I get just a teensy, weensy little favor from you today?”
The resulting rumbling screech shook the trees and caused birds to fly away in terror.
“Oh, nothing that serious,” whispered Fluttershy. “I just need you to come to my house and eat a changeling. If you don’t mind, please.”
A second bellowing screech sounded, and Fluttershy shook her head. “No, just one of them. But I think we have some barbeque sauce left, if that would make him more tasty for you.”
* * *
“Here, drink this and see if it helps.”
The changeling eyed the teacup with considerable suspicion. “First, that’s cold water with some weeds in it. Second, you dropped them on the floor and stepped on them just a minute ago. And third… No, I think that will do it.” He cleared his throat and dumped the ‘tea’ into the sink before adopting his Rushian accent again. “First, you need hot water for tea. Heat brings out flavor in leaves and keeps you varm in bitter Sneighberian winter.”
Scootaloo looked outside. “It’s Fall. We haven’t even had the Running of the Leaves yet.”
“Nyet! Less talking, more listening. Vere is dat hot water?”
“How can we tell when the water is done?” complained Sweetie Belle, lifting the lid of the teapot and twisting a knob on the oven.
“Normally it catches on fire for you,” said Apple Bloom, rummaging through a box of teas and scattering mismatched brown leaves across the counter.
“Or explodes,” added Scootaloo, trying to untangle a small bundle of silvery tea infusers.
“Errr…” said the changeling. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be that ho—”
An explosive bang surrounded the stove with steam, and by the time Sweetie Belle got the stove put out and the kettle of boiling water put on the table, the changeling decided it had become safe enough for him to look out from under the table for survivors.
“Darn,” said Scootaloo, somewhat muffled by the fire extinguisher in her mouth. “No fire-fighting cutie mark. Do you think we need more hot water?”
“No!” yelped the changeling. “Just… This is just fine.” He looked around the table and quickly gathered up the tea things in front of him before they could be turned into any more deadly weapons, to Apple Bloom’s expressed disappointment.
“We should have gone over to Twilight’s. She knows her tea.”
* * *
Drop by drop, the viscous tea-flavored fluid dripped into the changeling’s propped-open jaws as the attentive unicorn sat by his side, clipboard at the ready.
“Now remember, when you start to lose sensation in your limbs, grunt once, and when the poison begins to affect your thinking, just squeal in pain. Try to be descriptive,” she added. “It’s for science, after all.”
“It’s going to spoil the taste of his brain,” grumbled the dragon, coiled around the helpless changeling’s body and sniffing at one ear. “Can’t I just have a few bites now?”
* * *
“I think I’d rather be here,” said the changeling in a very small voice. “So… Have you three ever made tea before?”
“No,” said Sweetie Belle with a frown. “Not all the way before it caught on fire.”
“I think I have,” said Scootaloo. “You just put the powder into the milk, right?”
“Does it take apples?” asked Apple Bloom.
If I’m going to drink their tea, I better teach them how to make it or they’ll poison me by accident.
“Tea can be a very complicated beverage,” said the changeling, lifting the tea kettle and filling a cup. “Over seven percent of the inhabitants of Canterlot have cutie marks that are tea-related.” Slightly nervous at the sudden intense concentration on the behalf of his previous jailers, the changeling opened up the small silver cage of a tea infuser and pointed. “That’s why the infuser was invented. No fuss, no muss, just add tea leaves, dunk, and drink.”
“Seems like cheating,” said Apple Bloom, struggling to open up one of the little silver balls.
“What’s wrong with cheating?” answered the changeling, floating over a few leaves from the first container and stuffing them inside the tiny infuser.
“Will it help us get our cutie marks?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Um. Yes?”
Every changeling was trained to look for weaknesses that could be exploited in the further progress of love harvesting. The phrase ‘cutie mark’ was most certainly the convenient handle with which to manipulate all three of the cute little larvae, and if he could only think of a way to convince them that releasing him would provide some sort of Changeling Freedom Contributors cutie mark, he would be up in the sky and on the way to home in a minute.
Although with the way his stomach was hurting, it would be a very long and painful flight, if he could get off the ground at all.
Tea was the key, or at least the strange zebra in the tree said that’s what the solution would be. So for one entire kettle of hot water, he dutifully dunked infusers and drank the result, watching as each time the little fillies would look at him in giddy anticipation, check their still-bare flanks, and sigh in dejection. There were an amazing variety of teas in Fluttershy’s various cabinets and bins, from small packages with a few loose leaves to what seemed to be about a solid bale of a pungent green leaf that he could barely stand to taste. The plain chamomile seemed to work the best, but with as much fun as the little ponies were having, he really did not want to just abandon them in the middle of their project. So he sipped and talked, trying to figure out just what was driving the three little energetic ponies into such a frenzy.
“So do changelings really get cutie marks?” asked Scootaloo, gesturing to the crossed lollipops on her prisoner’s flank.
“Not really,” admitted the changeling. “We tend to have our specialties, but I picked this one several years ago because I liked it and it was fairly common. Little ponies like candy… Let me rephrase that. Since ponies get their cutie marks early in life, sometimes they get a cutie mark in something they don’t wind up doing for a living when they get older.” He finished off his second cup of the mushroom tea and licked his lips. “Like this delicious shitaki tea, for example. You did a very good job chopping up the fresh mushrooms and mixing it, but even if you got a tea cutie mark—” Scootaloo took a quick check, just in case “—you could still wind up doing something else for a living that you liked just as much.”
“Like racing?” she asked, bouncing so much that the table shook.
“Or teaching racing, or same-day parcel delivery, or something else. You might even start a tea shop with a delivery service for your tea.” He added more finely-chopped mushrooms to his third cup and poured steaming water over it as the little filly thought.
“Miss Cheerilee says that sometimes cutie marks are a metaphorigal… metafarmacal…”
“Metaphorical, Scoots,” suggested Sweetie Belle. “That means your mark can look like something completely different than what it seems to mean, just like hers. She’s got three smiling flowers.”
“Like this?” The changeling concentrated and in a flare of green magic, three bright yellow flowers replaced the crossed lollipops on his flank.
“Cool,” whispered Apple Bloom. “They’re the wrong color, and shape, and too small, but that’s still awfully cool.”
“Do Rainbow Dash!” blurted out Scootaloo, so caught up in the moment that she buzzed up halfway to the ceiling, but descended with a solid thud a moment later. “Ow!”
“No falling down cutie mark,” said Sweetie Belle, looking down at her fallen friend.
“Not everything in life is related to your cutie mark,” said the changeling, sitting his cup down on the table and looking for another sample of tea to try, now that the mushrooms were gone.
“That’s easy for you to say, Mister Tolliver,” snapped Apple Bloom. “You can have whatever cutie mark you want just by using your magic. We gotta earn ours!”
“Yeah,” added Scootaloo. “We’ve tried everything, from skydiving to bungie jumping to deep sea diving.”
“Technically that was the lake,” interjected Sweetie Belle.
“Deep lake diving,” corrected Scootaloo. “We’ve painted and sculpted and cooked—”
“I thought we agreed not to mention cooking again,” said Sweetie Belle.
“—and skiing, and tobogganing, and yodeling and butterfly catching—”
“Fluttershy really didn’t like us for that,” said Apple Bloom with a pout.
“ — and rodeo, and house painting, and crabbing—
“Technically it was only one hermit crab,” said Sweetie Belle. “And it died when you tried to teach it how to swim.”
I’m so glad I’m not one of their pets. Oh, wait…
“I think the chamomile tea worked the best,” said the changeling as he got up from the chair and stretched, stumbling a little at having been seated for so long. “I’m sorry you didn’t get your cutie marks, but there’s always—” He paused as a rumbling noise filled the small kitchen, then dashed over to the sink to be violently sick.
“Oh, no!” wailed Sweetie Belle. “I killed him.”
The changeling managed to blurt out, “No, I’m—” before heaving again, looking at the odd-tinted vomit that was filling the sink and the small chunks of mushroom swirling down the drain. “I think it’s the—” He cut off as his stomach spasmed again and the three little fillies ran around in a panic.
Actually, ran around in a most decidedly un-panic, as Apple Bloom grabbed a book off a nearby shelf, Sweetie Belle pulled out a notepad and a pencil, and Scootaloo scooted a chair up to his side and was checking his temperature and reactions in a far-too experienced fashion.
“Any allergies? Cramps? Is the room spinning? Let me see your eyes,” rattled off the little pegasus at the prompting of Apple Bloom reading down the page of her guide.
“No allergies,” he gasped, trying not to throw up again. “Yes, cramps. Room spinning. Tastes funny.” A third spasm drove the last of the ‘tea’ out of his painful gut and he managed to gasp, “Mushrooms.”
“You mean those mushrooms I picked in back of the compost heap weren’t mushrooms?” asked Scootaloo.
“Toadstool poisoning,” said Apple Bloom, flipping to the correct page. “Characterized by gastro-enter-itus, and my… my…”
“Myalgias,” said Sweetie Belle, scribbling a note. “That means muscle pain.”
“And headaches.” Apple Bloom looked up at the staggering changeling. “Any headaches?”
Three of them…
And the darkness returned.