Changelings, Love and Lollipops
Chapter 16
Concussive Flight Delays
Thankfully, there were no cutecinerias or birthday parties for little foals scheduled for the day, because the changeling was fairly certain that having a pink pony dance through a crowd of little ponies singing about the joys of… procreation, would not be taken well by the assembled parents. For several hours he was afraid that her exuberant explicit outbursts were going to be permanent, but as lunch approached, the number of gender-specific songs decreased to the point where the Cakes felt that it was acceptable to allow her into Sugarcube Corner’s front room, as long as she limited herself to hugs instead of kisses and kept from increasing the vocabulary of the various Ponyville youth. The coffee machine at the serving area was kept quite busy from the instant that the front door officially opened as the yawning populace of Ponyville seemed to have all somehow heard about the ‘Free Pre-Dawn Coffee’ promotion, and cries of “Pops! Another one! Keep ‘em coming!” kept him pulling levers and moving foam cups at a staggering clip.
It was yet another reason why a unicorn disguise was so useful, as he could be preparing, pouring and presenting all at the same time, as well as keeping an ‘ear’ out for the rough and sultry blasts of triggered hormones whenever one of the mares who had been just a little too close to the changeling over the last few days wandered in, looking for something hot to cure their thirst. And whenever one of the victims of his inadvertent pheromone leakage did show up, he was quick to provide a coffee ‘fortified’ with one of the extra potions that Zecora had left behind ‘On the house,’ just in case there could be any legal charges laid against him.
Although the probability of him surviving to face any kind of trial was still nil.
He could feel the emotions of the happy and loving ponies, but there was still no sensation of the hivemind at all. Noling had ever lost their connection to the hive and regained it, although with some consideration to the tautology, any changeling who had lost their connection and regained it certainly would not have bragged about it, and the ones who had lost it and been discovered had been swiftly killed, so they certainly would not have even had a chance to see if it would come back.
There was no place in pony society for a changeling, even if he was no longer a part of the hive. Neither race could ever trust him. Far below the ponies’ conscious mind, they all knew what his kind was capable of, and would blame him in a heartbeat the instant something bad were to happen in town or across Equestria. Even though the happy ponies were all smiling and laughing in his presence, he could still feel their distrust on a deep instinctual level.
Well, except for Pinkie Pie.
The pure nectar that poured out of her like an endless chocolate fountain did not have a single tinge of resentment or anger tainting its delectable flow. It was distracting as heck, and even after Carrot and Cup Cake took over the front counter so he could grab lunch, he found himself humming along with the pink pony as he dove into his mixed fruit bowl.
“What is the name of that song, Pinkie?” he asked, trying not to grin through a mouthful of strawberries and apples as she loaded several loaves of bread dough into the oven.
“I dunno,” she sang, pivoting on one hoof as she closed the door to the oven and fiddled with the dials. “Do you want to sing along?”
He did.
It was a liberating experience, singing about nothing in particular while running the dishwasher and cleaning up the kitchen. Pinkie had been amazingly productive in the field of frosted and baked goodies over the course of the morning, which thankfully so far seemed to be the only real symptom of having his excess love poured into her last night. As far as he knew, nopony had ever had a changeling’s accumulated love pushed into them, at any time, ever. It was a criminal act almost unthinkable by changeling standards. It was worse than wasting food, it was giving it away, although with the numbers of free coffees he had poured this morning before dawn, he was grateful the ponies did not have the same criminal laws, or there would have been a fight over who got to execute him if he were to survive that long. Which he was not.
A welcome freedom flooded his chest and loosened the tight chains of worry that had bound him more securely than any of physical sticky ropes or ribbons he had been trapped within recently. Absolutely none of his numerous concerns about pony society or criminal actions or even death stuck to his happy sense of self-awareness any more, but instead slid off like water off a duck, or unhappiness off Pinkie Pie. He was going to die in a few hours after the Royal Guard dropped him off at the hive, and it no longer bothered him even slightly.
Rarity had been so right about Pinkie Pie in so many ways, it was hard to believe that she was so wrong about love. If Pinkie was really in love with him, the pure fountain of joy that she was pouring out with such abundance would have been tainted with grief or regret at his upcoming demise. Nopony could possibly love a changeling unless she loved everything so much that a changeling could metaphorically just slip in under the door and soak up whatever splashed out over the edges of her overflowing tub of affection. When he was gone, she would miss him for a few minutes until another pony took his place. Changelings were used to being replaceable that way. He would die, she would still be happy, and the world would continue on as if nothing had happened.
“Mithter Tolliver? The girlth are all ready to go hunting for grathhopperth. Are you and Pinkie about done with the ditheth?” A smiling little earth pony filly with the most vibrant red mane was regarding him from the kitchen door, and he returned her curious stare with a cheerful wave that scattered a few suds around the room.
“Just a moment, Twist,” he called back. “We just want to make sure all of the clean pots and pans are put away to dry before we can go. How are we doing, Pinkie?”
“Almost there!” she caroled in return, bouncing a trio of pie plates in a peppy beat that ended in a crash as she bounced them off her rear and up onto the top shelf. “Done!”
“Done too!” he said as he floated the last three long-handled skillets up onto the drying rack. “I’ll bet I can catch more grasshoppers than you can.”
“Nuh-uh!” replied Pinkie, sticking her tongue out. “I’m the bestest grasshopper catcher in Ponyville. Nopony catches bugs better than me!”
“Well, you better get running,” he called out over his shoulder as he darted out the door. “Because this bug has a head start! Come on, girls! Race you all to the pasture!”
~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~
It was not a single feeling. It was several hundred feelings, all tied together with ribbons and bows in one giant pink-flavored mega-gigantic feeling that overloaded his every sense. It was so many feelings and emotions at once that he was almost numb to them all. For some reason it seemed as if he could even feel the grasshoppers leaping in the meadow in joyous bounds, singing their songs of spring and freedom.
Well, until they were snagged in a net, popped into a jar, and tossed into the pond to be eaten.
He had been in meadows before, and had even caught a grasshopper once by accident, but he had never had a group of little ponies just run him ragged until he could barely breathe and then somehow make him volunteer to play kite puller. While Scootaloo held onto a flimsy contraption made out of paper and twigs, the changeling held the string in his teeth and ran at his top speed through the grass with the screaming little pegasus somewhat float/bounce/hover/rebounding along behind. Little ponies with nets sprang from ambush as the frightened grasshoppers took wing and fled from the bizzare duo, and in almost no time at all, it was time to visit the pond and throw them all in.
The grasshoppers, not the little ponies.
And then it was time to do it again, and again, and again, until his knees were wobbly and the world seemed to be swimming around him in slow circles. The little ponies were bottomless barrels of energy, laughing and calling to each other as they swung their nets and leapt from grass tuft to hillock, even occasionally managing to catch one of the wildly flying grasshoppers. It was Life, lived as he had never lived it before, so distant from his previous life of stealing love that he might as well have died and gone to the Heavenly Pastures already. Rarity had been perfectly right in one particular way, and he only regretted that he had not met Pinkie Pie sooner.
She may be crude at times, or incomprehensible, but if you have only a short time to live, she will pack more life into those few minutes than anypony else could in a century.
He excused himself from the current race to the pond to throw in the grasshoppers by claiming fatigue, and leaned up against a tree to watch the swarm of little ponies race Pinkie Pie. There should have been no way Pinkie could lose, but she was out in front, then tripping over her hooves as two or three little ponies dashed by, and then neck and neck, keeping up a running commentary as she hopped and skipped along.
The rough bark of the tree felt cool against his sweaty back and scratched as he laughed, but it turned out to be surprisingly comfortable as he rested and watched. Little ponies had it made. As a small changeling, he had been drilled in the endless lessons that all changelings were subject to until he felt as if his brains were going to leak out his ears. Learning was drudgery, youth was endless labor, and his adult life had been one long string of assignments. Slip into a role, drain as much love as possible, return it to the hive, and repeat in a different location. Little ponies got to laugh and play in the sun; little changelings strove to be as alike and obedient as every other changeling.
The bright sun filtering through the shady tree and warming his sweaty coat was too pleasant to make moving from his grassy spot any kind of a priority item on his bucket list. He giggled as Pinkie and the little ponies waved the jars in the breeze and sent another cloud of grasshoppers across the still water, which rapidly turned into a churning mass of happy fish, and a loud ‘plop’ as one of the little ponies followed the bugs.
Shrieks of joy soon followed, as did the rest of the little ponies with a series of small splashes and one larger Pinkie-sized splash while the trout pond became a pony-trout pond, and their happy laughter and cries filled the air. It was wonderful, comfortable, and warm under the tree, and he had just rested his eyes for a moment when a cool shadow swept over his body.
“So thou art the Changeling who is attempting—”
The changeling’s eyes sprang open. The moonlit night sky spread out in glorious array above, eclipsed by a dark alicorn with blazing eyes and an ebon, star-swept mane who towered over him. Out of sheer reflex, he bolted to his hooves—
And awoke, while still bolting to his hooves in the warm summer sunshine, with no trace at all of any terrifying Nightmare who would gobble him up and spit out his bones, leaving only the empty shell.
Although he was still under the tree.
With a low branch.
At about forehead level.
After the stunning impact, he sagged back to the damp grass as his eyes unwillingly closed once again, and just as before, the Nightmare towered over him in the starlit night as if he had not even moved a muscle.
“—intimacy with the Bearer of—”
This time he sprang to his hooves with a panicked shriek, lunging forward, and coming out from his nightmare at a dead run, with his disguise peeling off in a yellow blur and tufts of grass flying in all directions as he threw every bit of energy he had into pure speed and only ending when he ran out of sun-drenched meadow and ran into the cool pond.
~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~
Pinkie giggled as she bounced beside him, much as she had been giggling ever since he had hit Fluttershy’s trout pond at full speed and put up such a massive wave that Scootaloo had tried to surf on it. It had not helped that a few of the smaller trout had actually gotten stuck in the holes in his legs and it had taken several minutes of uncontrollable ticklish laughter to extract them, after which he really did not want to revisit his short but memorable visits with The Nightmare. It was something that needed to be forgotten, a minor distraction much like his disguise, and although he could feel the distrustful glances sent his way by the townsponies on the way back to Sugarcube Corner, they had only been slightly uncomfortable at his natural shape, probably made up for by the tattered pink ribbon he was wearing as a leash .
“Mister Cake! We’re back!” he called out as the two of them bounced into the bakery. “Has the Royal Guard wagon been here yet?”
“Not yet, Pops,” called out Carrot as he backed out of the door to the kitchen with a box balanced on his head. “I’ve got the cupcakes all boxed up for them, and…” The stallion trailed off with a puzzled blinking at the sight of the changeling looking like a changeling for a change.
“I decided not to wear my disguise,” said the changeling. “I thought it would be easier for the little ponies if I wasn’t as identifiable.”
“I… suppose,” said Mister Cake as he put the box of cupcakes onto the counter. “You know, if you wanted to stay here—”
The changeling cut him off with a raised holey hoof. “My place is at the hive. I thought about it for a long time, and Pinkie Pie has helped me realize where I belong. I’ll miss all of you, but it has to be this way.” The changeling stepped forward and gave Carrot a hesitant hug, which was returned in a very stallion-to-stallion fashion and broke up when the older stallion looked out the window.
“Looks like they just landed.” Carrot swallowed and wiped away something from the side of his face. “I’ll just run the cupcakes out to them while you… say goodbye to Pinkie.”
The changeling took one last pass through the kitchen, making sure the oven was turned off and all of the pots and pans hung back up with Pinkie Pie tagging along behind him. He really did not want to get all teary and maudlin, which was certain to happen if he were to look into those dangerous blue eyes, so he contented himself with polishing one small speck of cupcake out of the bottom of a tray while trying not to say the words that finally broke out.
“Looks like it’s about time for me to go.”
“Yeah.” He could hear Pinkie Pie behind him, putting the last of the dry muffin tins back into the cabinet. “The party’s over, I guess.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. Looking out the window showed several of the townsponies all gathered around the Royal Guard wagon, which seemed to be upsetting to the half-dozen or so changelings cowering in terror inside. The ponies looked as if they just wanted to say goodbye to him in person, which at least would be brief and less painful than what he was going through right now. “Well, everything seems to be in order here, so I better get going.”
He took one last look around the kitchen with lines of shining pots and pans all in perfect array, much like a changeling hive with every single changeling doing their part in one cooperative whole. There was just one little flaw that bothered him somewhat. One of the long-handled skillets was missing from its rightful place, and he turned around to tell Pinkie before leaving.
Oh, that’s where it—
The skillet met his skull with a deafening thud, swung with unerring accuracy in the firm grip of Pinkie Pie’s powerful jaws. He staggered on his hooves for a long moment as the kitchen turned in slow circles, barely able to pick out the words that Pinkie was saying over the ringing in his ears and the skillet handle in her mouth.
“This party’s not over until I say it is.”
Then the skillet descended again.