Ten thousand years...
Ten thousand years away from the world...
Amber... my prison, and now, my namesake...
…
It is pleasant to have others listen, I thank you for that, and truly I do apologize for my somber mood. It is not often a Changeling Queen receives an audience out of sympathy rather than fear. I will share my story with you, should you wish to hear it, but be warned; it starts long ago... very, very long ago...
In my time, an ancient time, the first the kind you know as Changelings were born. Our heritage is a closely-guarded secret, but I will, admittedly at some risk, give knowledge to you on the matter; the ponies of the world, and our own kind, once looked rather similar...
…
I'm sorry, I cannot say more... It might make things... a bit more uneasy in the world if I went on further.
…
Hmm... As I was saying...
Like all creatures, when Changelings appeared in the world we were hungry, and quickly discovered our need for love to survive. It was a remarkable discovery that changed our way of life in the same way that we had changed from... well... those who came before us. At first, the early Changelings clung to the old ways of life, eating the foods that had sustained our ancestors. It did not take long to discover though that mere food and drink did not satisfy; anything eaten would merely force its way back out our throats...
If one looks at a Changeling today and declares them to be thin, they would be shocked as to what had happened to us back then. The early Changelings nearly starved away, withering to mere thin, black husks, looking very much like charred skeletons shambling around in some kind of twisted undeath.
We Queens fell into despair, worried that there would be no future for any of us. Making it all worse was a trait we soon discovered in our subjects; they had a complete lack of feeling. Each one was completely apathetic, not caring if they starved to death or not. All emotions had been lost... gone... rotted away. Only we Queens had any semblance of feeling left. At first we thought it was merely starvation, but... even the more healthy ones didn't respond to any feeling at all.
Nothing at all... just... husks...
Empty inside.
…
…
I... I am sorry for... for... just how long my story has become... It is not easy to remember such times and maintain even a semblance of calmness...
*Ahem... *
...
One day, however, a Pony came from a foreign land, her nomadic tribe having stopped for the night as they made their way through our lands. She spied us in the distance, at first afraid, but ventured into our original colony. She hesitantly asked what had happened to us, and when we Queens told her of our plight she began to weep with sorrow, her sympathy and concern nearly palpable. Our subjects began to take notice, their shriveled forms creeping up around the Pony. One by one, we Queens watched in amazement as the Pony's eyes, and our subjects, began to glow with a faint green light, the starved bodies of the other Changelings quickly filling out, becoming as healthy as they had been before.
As their feeding ended, we Queens felt overjoyed; hope had returned to us in the form of love itself. In our glee, however, we noticed the Pony, still alive yet very much tired, faint from the energy being siphoned out of her. A member of her tribe, another Pony, had seen the entire event, the angered equine dashing down a nearby hill, grabbing the unconscious mare up, and with slander and hate in his voice retreated with his friend up the hill, the rest of the nomadic group quickly running away with them.
Our glee quickly turned to shame. We hated the thought of being seen as little more than monsters, but we could stand the thought of our subjects dying even less. An accord was struck; for the sake of our subjects, we would steal the love of others.
We had to survive, and survive we did.
All was not well though. As our subjects gathered love from wandering tribes, the other Queens and I began to become quite attached to the power we had gathered, becoming intoxicated by it in a way. Years went on, becoming decades. Decades became centuries, and it was through the passage of time that we discovered another trait we had come to possess; as long as we fed, we stayed young, vibrant, and as energetic as they day we'd been born. Injury and illness still did claim lives, but time could not touch us.
Changelings had in them the ability to live forever, a trait that nearly all, even to this day, see as a blessing of the highest kind, but we Queens began to revel in it, adding to our constant want for power, and competition over that power soon began to rise up.
This constant struggle for love created an imbalance within our ranks. Some of our kind ventured out from our original home, venturing out into the world and trying to gain the affection of various creatures. Unfortunately their efforts were to no avail, the creatures of the land becoming wise to our ways. Minotaurs and Gryphons saw us as vermin or game to be hunted, Buffalo and Zebras saw us as beings of impure spirit, banishing us with strange tribal incantations, and dragons... well... we never did find out what they thought; their response was, as always, a seething-hot jet of flame.
A schism formed within Changeling society, and from that arose the Hives that exist in Equestria to this day. At first they remained in the place of our birth, each scared like a newborn foal to venture beyond their cradle. Fear eventually gave way to bickering among the Queens, who could only watch as their Swarms seemed on the verge of collapse.
“And why travel to there?!” Some would say. “Why take up that direction when clearly the other is more in our favor?!”
“No, clearly this is wrong!” others would reply. “This path suits us not!”
“Fools, all of you!”
“How dare you?!”
“I could say the same!”
…
Eventually a question was asked whose words would echo through us all, remaining with us, in some form, to this day.
“And so which to choose? Tell me, Queens of the Changeling Swarms...”
I can't remember her name, only her face on that day.
“Where do your own hearts wander?”
Her tone was sarcastic and angry. It was a mere mask however; an illusion put up to appear strong.
“North, South, East, or West; which one holds your favor?”
…
In those times it was an insult, a slander meant to make on feel indecisive, unaware, and unintelligent. As time went by, however, it became a marker, a way for us to find our home.
As the Changeling Hives went their separate ways, each found themselves venturing into a new frontier. One remained in the place of our birth. The other four went in each cardinal direction, taking their path's name for their own. My Swarm, my Hive, went south, and so we became the south; the Southern Swarm, our home the dense jungles and rain forests that covered what is now Equestria's southern border.
At the time I thought it was ingenious, the dense trees and foliage a perfect hiding place, and dwelling. In certain spots, the trees' canopies wove themselves together, forming a thick, strong blanket under which we would take shelter from the ever-present rain. My subjects were content for a time, my small Swarm eking out an existence under the trees and water.
It did not last, however. Our numbers grew as the love we stockpiled increased, admittedly at my own fault; Queens are not merely leaders of our Swarms, we are mothers as well, the only ones able to produce fertile eggs. I became ambitious, careless even as I though of a day when my Swarm would soar in power to match the others, all of them larger than us.
Eventually our larders were bare. The Zebra tribes we'd scavenged love from had since moved on, and with no other beings to harvest from I quickly became worried that my Swarm would simply die out, starving to death before ever coming close to the grandiosity of the others. In my own arrogance, I once led a raiding party away from our nest, heading out towards a nearby tribal village.
I had been a fool.
We were ensnared, and I barely escaped with but a scant few of the hunters I'd taken with me. On the journey back to our home, I signaled for us all to rest in a nearby tree. The plant was giant, and more than stable enough for us to rest upon. As we landed, I noticed just how exhausted my subjects had become. I sat between all of them unfolding my wings as far as I could, sheltering them all with my diaphanous embrace.
In that moment I forgot all about splendor and grandiosity, about pride and power. I... I merely wanted them to live.
I went to sleep, and... well...
They had tried to wake me; I remember them tugging at my side, urging me to move, but I did not. I was simply too exhausted to fly. I...
The tree had fallen slightly, a few upper branches had given way, and in a tree as large as that... well... it contains quite a bit of sap. Before I could even struggle I felt myself coated in the viscous resin, the substance quickly hardening around me before I could move. As I became coated, I tried to use my magic to escape, my aura reaching out through the tree's golden slime, but...
It did me no good...
I had merely set down for a few hours of rest.
A few hours had turned into thousands of years.
When I awoke, a group of scholars was standing over me, all of them ponies. One of them, an alicorn—to my amazement—slowly trotted up to me, greeting me in a gentle manner. Suffice to say that the ponies there were less than thrilled at the fact that I had somehow survived. They were afraid, and I suppose with good reason; they were our prey after all. The alicorn made her best attempt to be civil and kind, but as a mistress of deception I could tell a lie from the truth; she was afraid as well.
I noticed then, after seeing a lock of my mane drift by my eyes, that the combination of sap and magic had changed me. No longer did I have the dull blue tinge to my chitin and mane, or the azure bands around my abdomen; I was, from then on, amber in everything but my jet-black hide, and even that shined with a dull orange glow.
I was confused, scared, and felt as though I should fly away. I feared for my Swarm, my subjects... my children... and... and...
…
It wasn't until a Zebra, one who lived in a nearby town, stepped in that the worries of the others dissipated. To my shock, he argued in my defense, leading the others and me to a nearby structure in the heart of the forest. I felt a chill as the familiar scent of Changeling pheromones filled my nose, and as I approached the large building a buzzing filled my ears. I looked up, a Changeling guard hovering above me, her chitin a glimmering red.
“And the messenger asked,” she spoke to me, “North, South, East, or West; which one holds your favor?”
That old question, back again not in jest or mockery, but in complete honesty.
“The South,” I replied, as I had to the other Queens long ago, “where the jungle grows thick and tall.”
The guard's eyes went wide. A second later, a thick, scent-laden cloud of pheromones drifted through the air, the entire Hive quickly coming out to greet me. The Changelings, much to my amazement, alive with emotion and tears, each one absolutely stunned to see me. I felt a tear in my own eye too; somehow they had regained what the ancestors had lost; they need never steal love again, for they had managed to regain it on their own.
The crowd of black forms and translucent wings retreated slightly as a tall, thin Changeling, a Queen, made her way through their ranks. She looked at me, a few strands of her blue mane in her eyes, and quickly ran up to my side, nuzzling me with all the affection a daughter could give.
She had been one of my hunters, and the first one to crawl up to my side on that long journey after our failed raid.
I hugged her tightly as she told me her tale. After she and her sisters had flown off, they had returned to the Hive even more empty inside than they were before. This Queen, my daughter, and the clever girl that she is, realized that without a leader the Swarm would vanish, never to be heard from again. She, at the time, had understood what love is, even though she could not feel it herself; it was not just our food, it was a feeling inside that compelled you to care for others you looked after, and felt safe around. This inspiration, this awareness... it changed her inside, my daughter growing from hunter to Queen as the very essence of love awakened inside of her. With her guidance over the centuries, the Swarm grew, her own daughters learning from their mother about the true nature of love itself. In time, their emotions returned, and then blossomed, leaving them reliant on no one but themselves to survive, and live. Tribes of Zebras in the area learned of this, and as generation after generation of the striped equines went by, they became closer and closer to the Southern Swarm, the two coexisting as friends.
It was as if my wildest dreams had come true.
…
Now we come to the present day. My Swarm, now more my daughter's Swarm, is doing very well. The other swarms have learned and changed, and even despite the history, attacks both ancient and recent, Changelings, Ponies, and other races are beginning to coexist. Through our magic, we have even been able to give other races one of our most precious gifts; our immortality, as we weave our own life forces with theirs. Changelings continue to be eternally young, our love and magic sustaining us forever, and now others have the opportunity to join us in a joyous eternity.
As for my children, well... I left my Swarm in the care of my daughter. She protested, but I reassured her that she has become a far better Queen than I. The young, purple alicorn that found me has become a personal friend of mine, as she has among all Queens, and now, for the first time since our discovery that love can preserve us, we Changelings feel... complete... content...
…
Words do not do it justice.
I thank you, for you too came to me in curiosity rather than anger. Please know this; Changelings may have had a past riddled with deceit, and even violence, but now we can put it behind us for the sake of a future where perhaps all can coexist. For once, perhaps, we too will have our own happily ever after, one we can share with others for eternity.