After trekking all the way back to the trailer, nymphs and Sugar in tow, I was surprised to see that the sun was already setting, and my stomach was starting to hurt, no doubt telling me I needed to feed soon. The moment I walked in… wait. why are Gilda and Trixie playing poker?
“You two know how to play? Why didn’t you ask me to join you?” I almost laughed at how childish Sugar sounded saying that, and patted her on the head.
“In a bit, I need my food first.” I escorted her to my room.
“Maybe next time Sugar, we don’t want you having an unfair advantage.” Gilda called out.
“Yes, Trixie doesn’t want you using your lack of emotions against us.”
“...Now why didn’t I think of that.” I wondered to myself… I sighed. “Come along Sugar.” Once we were in my room, I scooped her up and held her against my body, smiling as she went limp. Soon the feeling of her emotions being absorbed flowed through me, and the pain in my stomach slowly faded, while I watched as Sugar made this adorable face, like she was being scratched behind the ear.
”Why is she limp? Does does being fed on feel that relaxing, or does it temporarily paralyze her?”
‘Wrong on both counts. its more of... I may have implanted some triggers in her mind to keep her under control. its why I don’t just leave her in a cocoon’
”She is unable to do anything, though? What were all of these commands?”
‘Well, most of those ‘commands’ are more like compulsions, except for the ones I add via the trigger phrase. I did the basics, no leaving the trailer without specific permission from me, no trying break stuff or harm anyone, and I also included a compulsion to look after my nymphs when I’m not there. Now I did later wind up using the trigger phrase to get her to shut up, because she was pestering me to talk about a certain incident that left me rather rattled at the time, to the point where I used the trigger to tell her to ‘be quiet and let me hold you.’ I just decided to keep the ‘let me hold you’ part because she actually makes a nice plushie.’
”I’m sure thats the only reason.”
‘What are talking about?’
”Why else would you, an emotivore, keep the ‘Let me hold you’ Command.” I was a little confused. What was she trying to imply? ”Sex, I’m talking about sex. I can feel the confusion in you.”
“Excuse me?! I’ll have you know I did no such thing to her!”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Remember the shadow? She can talk to me telepathically.”
“Like you and Peeko?”
“Sorta.”
”As if you haven’t thought of it, how easy it would be to do. She already seems pretty content with you.”
‘Okay, even I have standards. And rape is not something I would want to force her to experience, especially after it nearly happened to me!’
”And if she said yes to it? It would be painfully easy to get a ‘yes’ out of her in this state. Not to mention the food it would bring.”
‘Not going to happen.’
”Fine, fine. I’m just trying to look at it logically. If she’s your only food source, you need to increase the strength of the emotions she puts out.”
‘...You just want to watch me have sex, don’t you?’
”Oh, no no no. The stronger you are the stronger I am and the less often you’ll need to feed.”
‘Can we please drop this topic?’ I mentally pleaded. I’d rather not become a nymphomaniac trying to keep my children fed. It was then that I realized the flow of Sugars emotions had begun petering out, causing me to immediately stop feeding. “Uhhh Sugar? you feeling okay?”
“I’m very tired.” I winced at the tone in her voice. I got distracted by Nightmare and ended up taking too much.
“Why don’t you go lay down for a bit.” ‘Look what you made me do!’
”Me?! You were you one who wasn’t paying attention!”
‘You think it’s easy trying to ignore you encouraging me to fuck her!?’
”Well excuse me! I was just trying to point out that you’d have more food! And I’ve been poking about in this body, it’s basically made for sex!”
‘Wat...’
”There are nerve endings at the base of your wings, although hidden. Nerve endings in the base of your horn, in between the segments for your tail, and in the holes in your hooves. Lets not forget the memory I came across of you in the shower!” I blushed profusely, rather embarrassed that she had found out about the shower incident.
‘You’ve been reading my memories?’
”All the way from the forest where you woke up and forward, you don’t seem to have have any memories from before that. I thought you may have amnesia, correct?”
‘...it’s complicated. I have memories before then, but they feel as if they don’t belong to me, yet do at the same time… some of events yet to come, which is why I am taking them with a grain of salt.’ I quickly lied. ‘You not being able to find them further cement my belief that they aren't true memories.’
”Hmm.”
‘Now then… since you were poking around in my body, what else did you find?’
”From your memories it would seem you are unaware of the second set of eyelids. They seem somewhat pointless, though.” I blinked, realizing I never even thought to look for extra muscles in my facial area. I took the opportunity to do so, feeling for something that felt unfamiliar, and almost jumped when the room grew a lot darker and tinted blue. ”Look at me, in your shadow.” I complied. ”Your eyes have turned a solid blue. They are semi-translucent, perhaps they are meant to protect you from bright lights that would normally blind you.”
‘That would explain why everything got darker.’ I did my best to put on a poker face, just to see how emotionless I looked like this.
“You look weird just staring at each other like that.” I heard the dull monotone voice of Sugar, who was just staring at me and the Nightmare from her bed.
*A week later, Filly Delphia*
It still amazed me how fast a changeling nymph could grow and learn. In only a week, Peeko had doubled in size, and was now speaking in full, albit simple, sentences. Pigments growth was slower, but if I understood correctly, it was because a drone was not as large as a Queen, but he was already beginning to speak, having heard Trixie speaking enough to parrot her name.
It was nearly time again, another egg was going to hatch. Except this time it was happening quite early in the morning. ”You’re up early today.”
‘One of my eggs is going to hatch soon.’ I absentmindedly replied to her as I tried to pinpoint which egg it was that was nearly ready to hatch.
”Hmm? Which one?”
“Umm… no, not that one… ah, there it is.” I tried to keep my voice from raising, not wanting to wake the others. I crouched down in front of the egg, waiting. ‘Any moment now...’ The egg shook. ‘It’s happening!’
Nightmare, once I had found the right egg, had pulled herself up from my shadow to look at the egg. That was another thing she learned how to do. Although, she could only pull her head up to look around with her own eyes, she was getting better at it. She was still transparent and you could walk right through her, but she was there.
The egg shook again, harder this time, as its denizen struggled to escape its confines and enter the world of the living. Soon, a horn burst through the shell, before retracting, and an emerald eye cautiously peeked through the opening. “C’mon, mamas here!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Nightmare looking at me strangely. I didn’t care, I was going to encourage him. “It’s okay, you don’t need to hide little one…” I cooed to the currently hatching nymph, who seemed to want to hide away inside the egg.
”Maybe use that annoying hive thing to reassure him, if you haven’t yet.”
...Goddamit. I didn’t think of that. I took a moment to focus, and tried to spread a sense of reassuring calmness throughout the hivemind. I smiled as the nymph peeked out of the hole he had made in the egg once more, before ever so hesitantly trying to wiggle the hole open further with a hoof. “Come on, you can do it!”
”You’re a fool.”
‘No, you.’ I quickly replied, before returning to watching the nymph force its way out. He eventually got his head through, his dried earth brown mane looking like the world's worst case of bedhead ever. I had to suppress the urge to giggle at how adorably ridiculous he looked right now. ‘Isn’t he cute?’
I heard Nightmare sigh. ”Yes, he’s cute.”
The nymph tried to retract his head so he could widen the hole, but soon found his head stuck, and started making a distressed chirping noise. Nightmare sighed again, she’s found the chirping that Pigment does very annoying. Luckily Peeko outgrew it already.
I gently gripped the egg in my magic, chipping away at the shell slowly until there was enough room for him to get his head back in, where he begun trying to kick the shell apart. It worked a little too well, and he fell to the floor with a thump. The moment I saw him start to inhale, tears forming in his eyes, a single thought crossed my mind.
‘Shit’
I quickly scooped him up, trying to keep the watery eyed nymph from waking up everyone else in the trailer. Nuzzling him managed to quell the whimpering, but he was still leaking tears, much to my dismay. “It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re safe now. Please don’t cry…”
“Now we have another one that can annoy me.”
“Hey, not cool. I mean, does he even act remotely like Pigment? He’s not going to be a troublemaker, that I can guarantee.”
“I’m not going to take me chances.” Nightmare lied down with a quiet and muffled thump as her eyes disappeared… somepony’s butthurt.
“Now what am I going to call you… So far you’ve been a lot calmer the Peeko or Pigment… ah.” I thought of a fitting name, one that also sounded nice as well. “Tranquil.” He made a happy little cooing noise upon hearing his new name, causing me to smile.
“Mommy?” I turned upon hearing Peekos rather distressed voice. I could feel the fear she was experiencing, as well as… relief?
“What are you doing up so early?”
She ran up to me and clung onto my free foreleg like a vice. “I had a bad dream…”
“How bad?”
“Dragon pony thingie hurt you and Sugar… and was after me and Piggy… Momma? why is your eye twitching?” As much as I already wanted to rend the flesh from that fuckers bones with my bare fangs, the last thing I needed was another murder on my consciousness. That, and the less ponies I killed, the more likely they were to try and capture me instead of kill on sight… Annnd I completely forgot to wipe his memories of our encounter. Just fucking great.
Screw it, is not worth worrying over right now, not when Peekos been so badly shaken by what happened. I took a deep breath to calm myself, not wanting to wind up scaring Peeko or Tranquil. “Its okay Peeko, I would never let something like that happen.” I was tempted to try and scoop her up into a hug, but considering I was already holding Tranquil, that would not be a good idea. Tranquil took the opportunity to peek his head over my foreleg and glance at Peeko, before ducking back down with a small ‘eep!’
“Huh?” Peeko was staring at where Tranquil had just glanced at her, confused. She quickly trotted over to me, trying to get a better look. She tried to pull herself up onto her hind legs, using a foreleg to brace herself against me. When that didn’t give her enough height, she crawled up me, causing me to shift my weight onto my hind legs so I could keep my balance. She soon smiled as she peered over my foreleg to see the newly hatched nymph I was cradling. And I mean smiled, causing Tranquil to flinch at the massive grin on her face.
“Alright, don’t scare him. He just hatched after all.” I paused, waiting for Peeko to settle down, before formally introducing her to the newest hatchling. “Peeko, meet Tranquil.” She had completely forgotten about the nightmare he had, to busy fawning over Tranquil, making those adorable chirping noises, like it was the changeling equivalent of baby talk, at first Tranquil just stared at her like she was crazy, but eventually made a few soft chirping noises himself. I had to resist the urge to hug the both of them because of how adorable this was.
It’s going to start getting really hectic around here as more of my nymphs hatch. I think I got lucky with Tranquil.